Knitting -- alterations

Some of you may not have been able to unsee the Fair Isle jumper I made with scraps (although I did get a compliment on it from a fellow knitter in a grocery store). 

Well, if you saw the Celtic braid sweater, you know that the sleeves were longer than the body. 

I like it that way. They come down well over my wrists and keep my arms warmer. But with the Fair Isle, I kept the sleeve and body patterns coordinated.

Then I didn't feel warm enough in it.

So here's where the alterations come in. I worked a circular needle into the bottom stitches of one part of the sleeve, unpicked the top of the next lower section, worked an additional motif into it, and knit the two parts of the sleeve back together. Here's a photo showing the circular holder worked into the sleeve.

I did this twice for each sleeve, once at the top of the black section, and once at the top of the darkest gray section. Having those different colors on either side of the dividing line made it easy to pick the sleeve apart.

And here's the reknitted black section.

One important tip. When you knit the sleeve back together, you are going to turn inside out the part of the sleeve with the holder. You're going to stick the other part inside so that right sides are together. Now the stitches on that holder are going to be twisted, but the stitches on the needles are going to be untwisted. When you knit each of two stitches together, you have to put your needle through the back loop of the twisted stitch on the holder, and through the front loop of the stitch from the other part of the sleeve, because this second stitch is NOT twisted. Knit them together, pull them both off, and then bring the previous stitch over.

So now the top part of each sleeve with the lightest gray is the same as it was, it still doesn't have that circular motif. But the sleeves are as long as I want them now, and I don't have any more of the pumpkin colored yarn, nor am I going to buy any.

Because I still have lots of scraps. I mean, I still have 18 yards of that light yellow. Since you get about 1/3 as many yards of actual stitches as you have yarn, there's 6 yards of yellow stitches. Since I size things for a 40 inch body, that's a little over 5 rounds of stitches. It would make nice sparkles, maybe two rounds each on body and sleeves. I have 25 yards of the darker yellow, or about 8 yards of stitches, or 7 rounds of stitches. So there's another Fair Isle scrap jumper in my future, without buying more yarn. 

And here's the altered jumper. 

Moral of the story: DO YOUR MATH. It won't keep you from overbuying, because it's nearly impossible to buy only the amount of yarn you need, you would have to design to the amount of yarn you're buying. BUT it will ensure that you don't have to alter something because you knitted to the wrong measurements.