Last Saturday I finished the shoulders on the double-knit jacket! I went to the Purple Purl right when they opened at 10am, bought some breakfast, and stayed until I had one shoulder done — until 2pm. The exposure came out wonky, but here's the photographic proof:
What I did with the shoulders was cast off the fronts, but keep the stitches on the back raw. Then I grafted the fronts and the back together. For double knitting, each side has to be finished separately, which led to some weirdness when it was time to separate each side's stitches so they could be grafted. The results came out looking like this:
Tonight I picked up the stitches for the first sleeve. As with the shoulders, first one side gets picked up onto one needle, then the other. Currently I'm double knitting the separated stitches onto one circular needle to work my way down the sleeve, which means I'm simultaneously dealing with three circular needles and trying to keep the stitch holder with the underarm sleeves on it out of the way. This may well be the most pieces of knitting hardware I've had to wrangle at once.
The other bit of good news is that I had the penny drop again regarding which rows to remove from the sleeve chart to have it come out the right length, which means it's once again easier than I thought. I even have some wiggle room to lengthen or further shorten the sleeve if I need to.
If, in theory, I'm still going to wear this jacket to New York, I need to get just over 100 rounds of knitting done between now and Thursday. It's not very plausible, but it's still not impossible. Yet. Even if I don't quite make that goal, if I'm close enough I can knit over the three-day Canadian Thanksgiving and still make it.
In theory.
What I did with the shoulders was cast off the fronts, but keep the stitches on the back raw. Then I grafted the fronts and the back together. For double knitting, each side has to be finished separately, which led to some weirdness when it was time to separate each side's stitches so they could be grafted. The results came out looking like this:
Tonight I picked up the stitches for the first sleeve. As with the shoulders, first one side gets picked up onto one needle, then the other. Currently I'm double knitting the separated stitches onto one circular needle to work my way down the sleeve, which means I'm simultaneously dealing with three circular needles and trying to keep the stitch holder with the underarm sleeves on it out of the way. This may well be the most pieces of knitting hardware I've had to wrangle at once.
The other bit of good news is that I had the penny drop again regarding which rows to remove from the sleeve chart to have it come out the right length, which means it's once again easier than I thought. I even have some wiggle room to lengthen or further shorten the sleeve if I need to.
If, in theory, I'm still going to wear this jacket to New York, I need to get just over 100 rounds of knitting done between now and Thursday. It's not very plausible, but it's still not impossible. Yet. Even if I don't quite make that goal, if I'm close enough I can knit over the three-day Canadian Thanksgiving and still make it.
In theory.