I think it’s probably time for a knitting update, lest you think I have abandoned my needles completely. When we last saw the striped sweater, it had just been ripped back to here:

Then, I re-knit it to here:

…and was disappointed to find that my fix hadn’t been quite enough. I’d left out one set of increases, but still ended up with too much fabric in that back panel. So, I pulled back to here:

and added a set of decreases as well. Now, it looks like this:

You can still see that there is a bit of a bulge at the armhole. I know how I’d go about fixing it, but I’ve been trying to convince myself to let it go. Unfortunately, as soon as I looked at this latest photo I knew that wasn’t going to work. When I’d last tried it on, the sweater was several inches shorter and the bulge was barely visible at all. Now that I can see how it knits out, I’m pretty sure I need to fix it. Good thing I like working with this yarn!

Pulling back will also give me an opportunity to fix another small thing that’s been bugging me.

See how the color stripes aren’t quite lining up in the yellow yarn? (Sorry for the terrible photos.) The way I’m currently working, I knit 4 rows on one side, carry the yarn across, and knit 4 rows on the other side. That’s fine with the semi-solid colors, but it means that the more variegated yarn gets a little out of sync. It’s not the end of the world, and I probably wouldn’t mind it all that much in the finished sweater, but pulling back gives me a chance to switch to knitting in the round, which will make the front stripes match. This is perhaps going a little overboard in attention to detail, but then it’s the little things that make or break a piece, isn’t it?

This last attempt at least let me try out the geometry of short row shaping on the sides, which I rather like.

And, I like where the point falls in my back in the photo above, so I’m less worried about the arrow-ness of the triangle construction. I think that will actually work out really well when the sides are filled in with a darker complementary yarn. (Someday, provided I ever make it past the sleeve split.)

In the meantime, I have  a lot of non-fiber projects that feel like they’re not going anywhere at the moment, and last weekend I was really feeling the need to make visible progress on something. So, I put the striped sweater away for a few days, while I finished up the body for the new lace ribs sweater.

It’s not blocked yet, so it’s a little unevenly stretched, but I think it’s coming out well. The armhole is a bit bigger than I expected it to be, but I compared it with other cardigans in my wardrobe and I think it’s actually about right. In the past, I’ve often made my underarms just a little too tight, so I think I’m going to leave it this way, with plenty of room for a loose shirt underneath. I’m about half way through the first sleeve, and am polishing up the pattern and calculating sizes as I go. The sleeves should be finished up in the next week or two, as long as I don’t get sucked back into the striped sweater.

And now, I think I’m off to make some more progress by ripping back.