Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Pondering Sleeves

As I said before, I'm not sure the puffy sleeves on Rebecca are working for me. I asked for the opinions of the fine (and opinionated) people in the Knitty Coffeeshop and the reaction was mixed. However, Gretchen suggested that I wear the sweater a few times as it before deciding on what to do. And that's exactly what I am going to do.

But of course, I have been thinking about how to fix the sleeves if I decide to do so. The easiest solution that I see would be to frog the sleeves from the bottom up until I undo all of the cabling part. Then, I would cast off and add the picot edging as before. I think and hope that this process will result in cute little flutter sleeves. Sorta like this:
Cute sleeves

I think shorter sleeves will help immensely and I think the fullness of the flutter sleeves will compliment the fullness of the bottom "peplum." Creating flutter sleeves will also allow me to avoid undoing all the seams and undoing the bottom crocheted edging. (ugh!) If the flutter sleeve idea doesn't fly, I guess I will design and knit new straight sleeves. But I have to wear the sweater a few times before I do anything rash!

Additional Rebecca Error Alert
Yesterday, I was studying the photo of the sweater in the Rebecca magazine and I realized that the pattern had the wrong cable chart for the sleeves as well. One row of cable crossings is missing. So, Rebecca is 0 for 2 as far as charts go. However, if that additional cable row was incorporated, the sleeves would be another 0.5 to 0.75 inches longer! eep! I think they are too long as they current are.

6 comments:

amylovie said...

The flutter sleeves would look great on you too. Decisions, decisions....

Jennifer said...

I think the flutter sleeves are the way to go.

Anonymous said...

When I saw your last post, I immediatey thought that all the sweater needs is long sleeves. Now, I have no idea what the yarn situation is, but if you have more (or can get more) maybe it's a worthwhile consideration.

I would leave the puffy shoulders, I would leave the gathered cables, I would just move the edging down to the wrist. You can even save the cuffs and graft them on later! AND you can work the sleeves down while they are already attached to the armcye, since it's just stockinette. What I'm saying is that you basically don't end up doing any frogging, just more knitting.

Just a thought :).

Helen said...

okay...i love the idea of flutter sleeves. BUT. the way you sewed them in with the pleat might hinder that...

Anonymous said...

Going back and looking at your photo from your last post, I can definitely see "flutter" sleeves working. While I like the current sleeves, I think they give the sweater a very old-fashioned look (sort of early 1900s), and the flutter sleeves would make it more modern.

GretchenX said...

Flutter would work nicely - just make sure that they don't overpower the cable pattern! Brutus wants to know why there aren't any kitty pictures!

:)