Cutting the Cuffs

After much consideration, and two other (started and completed) knitting projects, I finally came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do with the cuffs would be to cut the sleeve and then knit the cuff down.  Not the best solution, because there will be a distinct difference in the seed stitch on one row, but in the long run it will work just fine.

I started by laying my sweater out on the floor and examining the sleeves. (Please note that I did sweep my floor prior to doing this, and, yes, I did suck up a lot of dog hair.)

You can clearly see where I’ve folded one sleeve up as I tried to approximate how much fabric I needed to remove. Now, I could have simply picked a spot and bound off the sleeve, but I would have lost the bell shaped cuffs. So, I went another route and decided to knit the cuff down from where I cut the fabric off.

Here you can see where I’ve measured to my wrist. I actually tried the sweater on at this point and picked a spot where it hit my wrist.

Then I decided to actually measure how much “extra” fabric I had. It was not, by-the-way, 5 inches, as I originally stated. It was more like 10 inches. (Also, the tape measure, from the Loopy Ewe. I sort of killed the retractable mechanism. Yes, yes, I did wear out a tape measure. sigh)

After gaping at this picture for a while, I picked up the sweater and snipped. I’ll spare you a picture of me cutting into the sleeve. I wouldn’t want any of you to have a heart attack.

It was as I was carefully unpicking the sleeve row that I realized I had cut too high. I picked a spot that I intended to cut into, about 3 inches above the spot where the sleeve should have hit my wrist (the marker).   Unfortunately, I cut about 4 inches above the wrist.  So, I changed tactics, found my “new” spot in the chart, and inserted my DPNS.

Then I knit the cuff back down, trying on the sweater as I went. I did have to add six rows to the bell cuff (another cable twist, basically) to get the length I wanted.

In this picture you can see the finished sleeve (left in the picture, but it would be the sweater’s right sleeve) and the sleeve that still needs to be altered. The fixed sleeve is much wider and less pretty than the original sleeve, but it will also fit my arm.

And, a close-up of the sleeve with the new cuff. I left the ends unwoven for this picture so you could see where the odd “break” occurs in the sleeve pattern. Blocking helps this “break”, but it doesn’t eliminate it completely.

Finally, here we have the sweater, both sleeves fixed. The sun also decided to make a brief appearance right when I went to take this picture. The sweater is still unblocked, but it was promptly tossed into hot water after this picture and is drying nicely on the deck.

In the end, I even wound up with a pair of cuffs leftover. Now I just have to decide what to do with them. I’m tempted to make fingerless mitts out of them. lol

ps, see? It does look better after a nice soak.