I am done with the lower half of sleeve #1 for Chutzpah. I knitted the sweater body in one piece from the hem up to the underarm. All of those stitches are threaded onto lifelines (in this case, a doubled strand of Gütermann silk sewing thread): one for each front, one for each underarm, and one for the back.



Now I am knitting both sleeves to the same point and will join them on, then knit raglan decreases up to the neck. Once I get both sleeves added, but before I complete the decreases, I will have to decide: is this a cardigan, opening in the front like the first two doll sweaters I have made and using beads for buttons? Or is it a mock pullover, opening in the back and using snaps or Velcro or ribbon threaded through eyelets to close?



In the meantime, it has been fun to work on a sleeve that, when I reached the underarm, was about about the width of a quarter. I am working the sleeve over 24 stitches, slipping the first stitch (without knitting it) at the beginning of each row to make a nice, neat edge. And the sleeve is one-third the width of the body. So each three-row pattern repeat takes as long as one row on the body. Which didn’t take long at all.

I still wish these needles were pointier on the end. I think that if I were knitting on needles the size that normal people use (i.e. size 5 or larger for a human-sized sweater), these would be sufficiently pointy. But at this gauge I am getting split stitches here and there because the end of the needle just noses at the yarn instead of sliding under it.

There are two itty-bitty lifelines, three stitches wide, at the edge of each sleeve.

Time to cast on for sleeve #2.