Sweater Knitting Sleeve Island – The Cuttle Corner #20

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Welcome to the twentieth edition of The Cuttle Corner! I’ve finally reached sleeve island on the sweater I’ve been knitting for the past few months.

If you missed last week’s post, you can take a look here.

Now, let’s get cozy!

What’s going on

It was a big week around here because I got to see THE Claire in person! Due to Covid and kids and not living in the same state, we haven’t been face to face in about three years. Not only is she my very good friend, this blog wouldn’t exist without her.

I dabbled in different crafty things as a kid and teenager. A little sewing, embroidery, scrapbooking, and beading here and there, but nothing that I did regularly. Then I started working with Claire.

She was a knitter. If you know a knitter, you know they are always knitting. So at break I would see her making, hats, scarves, shawls, and socks. After a couple of years, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I started knitting too. Now, two spinning wheels (which she also got me hooked on), three sewing machines, a yarn collection, and a crafting blog later, I owe it all to Claire.

Even the name The Cozy Cuttlefish comes from an inside joke between us!

It was so great to be able to see her, catch up, and make plans to hang out again. Hopefully much sooner this time!

What I’m working on

Knitting

Kildalton Cardigan

Welcome to sleeve island!

If you aren’t a knitter, you may not be familiar with this term. Sleeve island describes the loneliness, desperation, and utter lack of hope of being rescued from the never ending, monotonous task of knitting the sleeves of a sweater.

Sleeves are usually a lot of plain knitting, with the added irritation of the rest of the sweater getting in the way as you knit around and around and around. Many sweaters have gone from a work in progress to a wooly pile in the corner that we don’t talk about, just because the knitter couldn’t be bothered to knit the sleeves.

I am determined to not let this happen to this sweater! I will finish these sleeves in a timely manner!

Now that I’ve finished the body of the sweater and joined the shoulders, I finally got a chance to try it on. I love how this is fitting! The shoulders fit especially nicely, which is not always the case for me. Finally getting to see the sweater on is helping with my sleeve motivation.

Vanilla Socks

Sock progress is continuing as well. I haven’t quite made it to the heel of the second sock, but it is coming up very soon.

When I knit socks, I often end up making the leg of the sock about the same length as the foot. For some reason, however, the foot always seems to knit up faster than the leg.

I don’t know if it is because of the excitement of being almost done with the sock, or some warped perception of time. What do you think?

Spinning

I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of spinning time this week. The second bobbin of this Corriedale/Silk/Polwarth blend is filling up quickly. Soon I will have two full bobbins and will be ready to ply.

This will be my first time doing a two-ply on my Norwegian wheel, but I am optimistic that it will go smoothly with the built-in lazy kate.

It’s been so fun watching the colors shift as I spin. I think it was a good call to add the more solid purple fiber to the multicolored fiber. It is giving the overall color a bit more consistency.

Until next time, keep cuttle-ing!

What are you working on? I’d love to hear about your projects in the comments below!