Rio Rancho Cardigan Knit-Along Week 4: Onto The Sleeves!

Another week, another many hours spent in seed stitch! How are you all doing with the back and forth?  I confess, I had a little wrist fatigue with this pattern—anybody have any good stretches to share?

I wanted to talk about a few spots in the pattern.

“Continue in Seed st until armholes measure about 6 in.” found in CARDIGAN BACK

and

“Work in pattern as established until armhole measures about 6 in.” found in the FRONT sections.

I matched gauge for this project, so if you did too, I imagine you will have found that no further knitting was required to get to the 6” mark.  In one case I even thought I was beyond 6”.  The bottom line is that this is a tricky spot to measure.  For your reference I took a pic of mine:

Pictured here are both the back and one of the front sections on top of the other.  It measures 6-ish inches, but I thought it was important that the two sides were very similarly OFF the 6” mark.  Hopefully they will be similar to the sleeves when it’s time to construct the garment! (Fingers Crossed!)

Sleeves

I attempted to match up my sleeve colors.  The yarn I had left only had 2 almost identical sections available, so I went with the grey into white. I wish I had known I only needed a small amount of yarn, or I might have attempted more purple sleeves with the yarn I had left.  Just know, it takes about 2 color changes to make the sleeve pattern as written.

I experimented binding off in the established ribbing and also in knitting all.  Knitting all makes a tighter edge, than binding off in the ribbed pattern.  I think that more flexibility is better for this particular garment, so I suggest binding off in the ribbed pattern.

Next week I will talk more about construction and binding off, but in case you are far along in the project, here is a preview of how you piece the garment together: