Fourth Time is the Charm

It seems that in my case it's the fourth time that is the charm. It's been a while since I mentioned my Must Have (and just over a year since I started it). Last time I recall talking about it I was a bit upset about the sleeve caps as written by Pattons.

I finally decided last week that enough was enough and I was going to figure out how to make these sleeves fit. I found this wonderful article on Knitty, printed out my knitting graph paper and gave it a whirl.

The original sleeve is on the right and my second attempt on the left. As you can see there isn't a huge difference in the two. Neither of them worked. I figured out my gauge as it worked in the moss stitch but didn't take into account the actual number of stitches I was working with. So I tried again...

Whoa. Definitely a noticeable change this time. I had my doubts though and didn't want to expend the time or energy in seaming this puppy up only to figure out then that what appears to be an obviously too-skinny sleeve cap wasn't going to work.

It's not easy to tell in the photo, but it wasn't going to work out. It was very tight across my shoulder and if I picked up my arm at all I got these great shoulder peaks that would be fine if this were still the 80's.

So for the fourth and final time I tried to get these caps done. Once it occurred to me I had to do a mental head slap. It was so simple a solution. I followed the pattern as written for the first part of the decreases, then worked a straight section (no decreases) until it was as tall as I wanted it and then followed the final decreases. Whoa.

The original is on the left and final version on the right.

And Voila! It worked great. Finally. I even made myself weave in all the ends, sew on the buttons, and finish all seaming before I took pictures. Huuraaaay.

Well worth the wait and energy. I love this sweater.

If anyone out there is stuck with their sleeves I'll post what I did to make it work here. Hope it helps!