Cross-knitting

This is an in-progress "after" photo:

After much re-calculating, knitting, ripping and re-knitting, there's a sleeve on my cardigan-in-progress. One sleeve. The second one is still on the needles, but it is underway. The pattern calls for a sleeve width of 17" at its widest. Not needing that much ease, mine is about 4" narrower. That means I completely redesigned the sleeve cap. While I was knitting the sleeve, I concentrated on a couple of design decisions--when to stop increasing, and how to adjust the sleeve cap decreases to account for 26 fewer sleeve stitches. I should have concentrated on my knitting, instead. Almost to the sleeve cap, I looked down and saw that I had mis-crossed the cables on a row about eight inches earlier.

There was nothing to do but rip back and correct all of those crossings, then knit back up to the cap. I'd say I was cross, but that would be both a bad pun and an understatement. At least reknitting the sleeve improved my plan for the increases. Now I just have to do them one. more. time. To make sure my calculations were correct, I sewed the first sleeve in and checked the fit. I have to make sure. There's just something about me and sleeves that leads to small disasters.

There's another disaster afoot (oh, how punny!), and it is not all my doing. Recently, I decided that knitting two socks at almost the same time is better than the usual one-at-a-time method. (I prefer to knit socks cuff down on dpns, so I just knit one leg, put it on a holder and knit the other leg.) Since my latest sock yarn purchase came as a 380 yard hank, I divided it into two balls when I wound it so that I would have a separate ball for each sock. I remember, vaguely, that I might have wound the second ball twice or even more. The process of winding, weighing, winding as needed to get two equal balls of yarn was complicated. The second ball of yarn might be wound in the opposite direction from the first. A flub that would partially explain this:

My socks are two different colors! The first one is gray with bits of green, and the second one is green with bits of gray. The whole time I was knitting the first one, admiring the colors and the fact that they weren't pooling, I never suspected the second half of the hank would be so much more saturated with green. I probably made the difference more obvious when I started the second sock from the opposite end of the hank. I have thought about ripping it out, but I really like the green one better. Maybe I'll have enough greenish yarn to knit a third, more matchy sock. Three sleeves, three socks (well, at least two and a half), why not?

Color variations aside, this is really nice yarn.

Smooth, silky (that's 30% seacell), with enough merino to hug. Such a nice sock, pretty sock, sweet sock. Too bad you don't have a match. (I'm sure the dyer didn't realize what happened with this skein. Some things you just can't predict until the yarn is knitted. I just made the problem worse by knitting the socks from opposite ends. I keep thinking how nice the effect would be in a shawl or scarf that would get progressively greener from one end to the other.)

I took special pains (after three rips and reknits, it was rather painful) to align the cuff pattern with the leg pattern. I'm doing the same on the heel. I've seen it in other patterns, a "cohesive" approach to sock knitting that makes the cuff, leg, and heel appear more harmonious and interrelated. Rather simple mods to the Spring Foward pattern, changing the ribbing on the cuff and heel, did the trick.