Eagles and the White Sweater

During the Eagles game (why are they letting McNabb play? I would have packed him off to his operation so that he can be healed in time for the post-season... they might not make it there without him, but I certainly also don't see them making it there with him, given recent results.), I finally managed to start seaming the white sweater. I finished the inseam of one arm during the four hour game. *So* impressive. Later in the afternoon, I seamed the tops of the shoulders. They are going to have to be redone (they look awful. fake grafting is really hard on stair-stepped-edged ribbing) but I was at least able to see that there is hope that the thing might fit. The sleeves are definitely long-ish, but I think will turn out to be just under the wire for acceptable lengths.


Then, I finally got the the edging done on the pockets. Third time was the charm. After blocking, it was easier to see that the pickup should be seven stitches for every ten, and on the second attempt for that ratio I managed a little spoken mantra that got me through all of them without too much pain (knit one, two, skip three, knit four, five, skip six, knit seven, eight, skip nine, knit ten, one, two, etc...).




If I was to knit the sweater again (not likely, but just in case), I would definitely cast on 9 more stitches at the edge of the front part of the pockets for the seed stitch panel rather than going through the hassle of picking up those stitches at the end. It's a good thing to keep in mind for trim in the future. Seed stitch looks pretty much the same horizontally and vertically, and besides, the button band is knit horizontally with the rest of the sweater -- there was no reason to make this a second step. I'm wishing that I felt a bit more confident about picking up the stitches around the collar. I wonder if I had used short row shaping instead for the shoulders if I could have left all of those stitches live instead of having to pick them up on a diagonal now...