8,000 Feet Hoodie – A Sleeve is Done!

I have so been ignoring my 8,000 Feet Hoodie as of late, I blame it on all the holiday projects. But last Wednesday, a couple friends came over for knitting (& wine) and I finally finished my first sleeve.

First, let’s talk about the sleeve itself. You knit the sleeve in the round right onto your body (yea to no seaming!) by using the stitches you put on holders and picking up stitches at the underarm. I often find I get a hole between the stitches on the holder and those I pick up. To make for a tight join, I pick up two extra stitches and in the next round I knit two together at those points. It takes care of most holes. From there it is pretty basic knitting with decreases every few rounds. Making sure to do the ssk and k2tog in the right order will give a neat decrease line.

Once you have done all the called for decreases, the pattern will tell you the length the sleeve should be for your size. Of course, you might want it longer or shorter. This is another time to try on your sweater. This is also the time to pull out the gauge swatch you did of your colorwork.

Try on the sweater and hold the colorwork swatch at the end. This will be the length of your sleeve plus an additional inch of ribbing. Looking at it this way you can easily decide if the sleeve is the right length for you. Mine was just about perfect, so I moved on to the colorwork.

I was really fearing the colorwork, but it was a breeze! You are only working with two colors at a time and typically no color is carried very far. I tried to make sure the colors get twisted every 3 or 4 stitches, for me this keeps it from getting too tight or loose.

The other thing that I think really made my colorwork easier was this 8″ circular needle. It’s a little tricky to get used to knitting with them, but I found it was nice to not have to deal with all the different colors and 4 needles. (These are the perfect needles for doing things like wristwarmers too.) The only thing I’m not excited about is weaving in all those different color ends. Do your ribbing and try the sweater on again. It should be the right length and you can bind off. If you want a little more length add a few more rows of ribbing.

On to sleeve number 2 and the hood. I think I’ll be wearing this sweater this winter!