Hearts on Sleeves

"I like to accessorise shirts with a little ribbon tied round my collar or a country style ascot. I've also sewed little hearts on some of my sleeves which I've done for years because I always wear my heart on my sleeve so if you see a little embroidered heart on my clothes, that's why!"

Jessica Brown Findlay

Lady Sybil, Downton Abbey

I wasn't able to find a picture of Jessica with a heart on her sleeve, but as a mom of a nurse, a Red Cross is almost the same thing in my mind!

The next pieces of our hoodie are the sleeves, and no, I haven't embroidered any hearts on my sleeves.  But there would be nothing to stop us if we wanted to!

The main technical feature of the sleeve is again the short-row shaping, and also use of the garter bar (if you have one, or how to get around that if you don't).  Here is my finished, but clearly unblocked sleeve.

The top curve of the sleeve is achieved entirely with short rowing and then hold is cancelled and one row is knit, the piece is taken off on a garter bar and turned, and one final row is knit before the being scrapped off with waste yarn.  At the peak of the cap, I had just 2 stitches still in work (all the other stitches to the right and left were in hold), so therefore the working yarn was smack dab in the centre of the piece.  I scratched my head over that for a few minutes wondering how to get the carriage fully to the right or left so I could knit across all needles at once.  The only solution I could come up with was to break the working yarn, move the carriage to the right, and reattach the working yarn so I could knit all the stitches of the shoulder cap across the entire row in one motion.  If I missed something obvious to everyone else but myself, please don't be afraid to point it out to me!

For the next, and final, row, since I don't have a garter bar for my mid gauge machine, I had two options - I could have scrapped off the piece, turned it and rehung it to knit the final row, or I could reform the stitches on that last row with my latch tool.  I chose the latter and am happy with the results.  Below is a close up of the top of the sleeve.

If you look closely, you can see the "purl" row immediately before the white waste yarn starts.  This is a nice, neat detail that I've not done on a sleeve cap before.

I'm not sure what else to say about the sleeves, honestly.  If you have any questions we'd be happy to try and answer them, but otherwise, I'm sure most of you are very familiar with sleeve knitting.

I do have another word or two about the back and front pieces.   First, a confession - I've gone a bit "rogue" on this pattern and paid more attention to the schematics and measurements and my gauge than I have to some of the finer details of pattern itself.  Well, I didn't think I had, actually, until it was brought to my attention that on the shoulders, it's not just the shoulder slope that is short rowed but also the shoulder's neck edge.  Here's a close up of my shoulder again as a reminder.

You can see quite plainly that I decreased the shoulder neck edge and short rowed at the top of the shoulder.  I also scrapped off the back of the neck (green waste yarn) and haven't cast those off as it calls for in the pattern directions.  I can easily rehang the back of the neck and cast those off, but to change the shoulder neck edge I would have to unravel it down to the start of the decreases and do that over.  For the time being I'm going to leave the shoulder neck edge as it is, though.  Since they are meant to be left as "live" stitches like the top of the shoulder, this may get me into a bit of trouble when it comes time to hang the hood, but I will take one for the team so you can look forward to watching me wiggle my way out of that one when the time comes.  Problem-solving skills are definitely an asset when working with our knitting machines!  And improvisation.

Finally, we have booked the local library for Saturday, May 6, 10 AM to 2 PM, and are welcoming ideas for workshop topics, quick projects we can knit together in that time (we do have an idea on that but will keep you in suspense for just a bit longer) and a suggestion that maybe this would be a perfect time for a wrap up and show and tell on our hoodie projects.  I will post more reminders and more details as the time gets closer, but please give us your feedback in the comments below so we can have time to do any research/planning that might be necessary.

I hope that you are getting as much out of this blog and project as I am.  But if you haven't had time to start yet, don't fret.  Remember - we started this project in 2014.  Read along anyway and you'll get to it when, and if, the time is right.  We did!

Nancy