A woman preparing to cut her knitting...

Dear Cynthia,

This week is the big push to finish Hardangervidda! My goal for today is to sew in a sleeve. Given my speed of seaming, and all of the picky stuff with the seam facings which are part of this pattern, it is a lofty goal for me...but I got started on it this morning.

First, I measured the top of a sleeve about ten times and carefully marked how far down from the top of the sweater body I'd have to cut in order to fit the sleeve into the resulting opening. I also placed the sleeve next to the body of the sweater to double check that it looked right. The idea here is to measure twenty times, machine stitch and cut once (because I don't want this to end with anybody (me) crying because an armhole is the wrong size).Then, I put pins along what would be my cutting line in the sweater body. Two knit stitches out from this center cutting line is where I would be machine stitching, so I placed additional pins to mark my actual machine stitching lines. (The stitching lines have four knit stitches between them, and the machine stitches go across those four knit stitches at the bottom of the opening.) I machine stitched once, and then I machine stitched again, just inside of the first stitching, about half of a knit stitch over.
Finally, I cut the opening for my first sleeve. The rest of the day will be spent sewing the shoulder seam, placing the sleeve into the armhole, stitching it in place, and then loosely sewing down the facing on the inside. As I go, I'll take some photos to hopefully show in my next post.

Wish me luck!

Warm regards,
Laura (YarnThrower)