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Knitting a Sweater: Tea Leaves Cardigan Update

Sweater Update: Tea Leaves Cardigan | Red-Handled Scissors

My Tea Leaves Cardigan knitting project is finally starting to show some serious progress: the yoke is done, the sleeves are separated, and the bodice is coming along nicely. (Turns out, buying yarn that’s too expensive to be relegated to a WIP bin really is great motivation to keep working on a sweater!)

Sweater Update: Tea Leaves Cardigan | Red-Handled Scissors

Sweater Update: Tea Leaves Cardigan | Red-Handled Scissors

At this point, my biggest concern is that I’ll power through the bodice, then lose steam when it comes to knitting the sleeves and dealing with the final finishing. So, to avoid ending up with a sleeveless sweater, I’ve taken the bold step of picking up stitches on one of the sleeves now so I can switch back and forth between adding length to the sweater and some quicker, more instantly gratifying sleeve knitting.

Sweater Update: Tea Leaves Cardigan | Red-Handled Scissors

Now, don’t get me wrong: juggling two balls of yarn and two circular needles isn’t always the most orderly approach to knitting, but an extra large project bag is enough to contain most of the chaos. And, in the end, I’m hoping this approach will eventually lead to two finished sleeves and less knitting boredom. Fingers crossed!

That’s about it for my off-the-clock crafting. What’re you working on right now?

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5 comments

  1. jonquil says:

    Working on getting storage furniture put together so that I’m organized enough to start finishing ‘Frost Bearer’ in cross-stitch, a birth record, & add beads to 3 stocking faces. Also, 2 shawl-ettes need their borders knit on.

  2. Lisa Clarke says:

    That is a great strategy. I sometimes lose steam when I hit the sleeves, too. Although there is something to be said for the last-minute spurt of energy that comes from seeing the light at the end of the knitting tunnel – sometimes I blow off everything and spend an entire weekend doing nothing but knitting, when I get to the sleeve stage ;-)

    • I used a 24″ circular for the first sleeve, but switched back to DPNs for the second sleeve. To be honest, while you certainly can make do with one circular needle, it’s not really ideal. Unless you’re using the magic loop method with two circulars, it’s much faster and easier to just use the DPNs.

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