04 May
Caked the yarn. Decided to add in another color to make it striped and give me more yarn and thus a better chance of not running out.

Swatched with US3 but the gauge was too tight to even follow directions for the XL. So I’m going with the bold and stupid plan of increasing to a US4 and following the XL directions without swatching. I’m a rebel. A stupid, stupid rebel.

08 May
Getting near the end of the arm increases and my gauge is still a tad small to get the right size so I shall work more increases before joining. I really should have done a few more increases on the first part of the shoulder increases (the top seam bit) however I had no idea what I was doing since this is my first time using contiguous sleeve construction. Now that I’ve done it once, though, I shall be able to make adjustments in the future.

12 May
Started waist shaping on 7th stripe but it resulted in some heavy pooling. Ripped back and switched to US3 with no decreases.

27 May
All finished and soaking now. Honestly, it’s a little snug so I hope it relaxes during blocking (it should a tad based on my gauge swatch). The v-neck bind off was really simple and neat, I think, though it does remove the stretch from it. Looks nice though.

Ultimately, I think this type of sleeve doesn’t go fabulously with my wide shoulders. If I did them again (which I might try) I’d have to make them deeper, but I couldn’t do that for this sweater since I hadn’t grasped quite how everything came together. Now that I’ve knit it, I probably could adapt it to fit better. But I still think a normal raglan might look better on me.

2017 Feb
I found I pretty much never wore this sweater because of the unforgiving fit in the shoulders. So I decided to rip out the optional v-neck finishing. That relaxed things a TON so the sweater fits my shoulders MUCH better and the neckline still looks finished because of the way it is knit. NOW this sweater will get some wear! <3