The trials and tribuations of cardi construction

I finished the second sleeve Wednesday night and decided to go ahead and try to connect them at 10:30 at night. Quite harrowing.

The instructions are a little vague, but I understood how the yoke was supposed to work. Knit the right side of the body, add the sleeve and knit the top part of the sleeve, knit the back, then add the other sleeve. Stitches on the bottom of the sleeves would be grafted to the body. The problem was that the instructions said to "return held stitches for right sleeve to needle with RS facing". This made no sense to me, as if I added them to the needle I was using for the body they wouldn't be knit. I took this to actually mean to return them to the dpns and knit the stitches from there. This worked out, and the sleeves were attached.

The problem was that there was a hole where the sleeve stitches were stretched apart. It reminded me of the hole made when you're picking up the stitches for the gusset of a sock. The problem was that I wasn't knitting these and I couldn't reknit anything I picked up. I decided to kitchener the underarm seams right away, rather than waiting until the end. Problem was that the yarn left from the sleeve was in the middle of what I was supposed to graft. I just ran the yarn through the stitches and grafted.

Two notes. One: the yarn that I threaded though showed on the RS. I accepted it since it would be under my arm. Two: I had to spit join more yarn to finish the graft. That was a PITA. The join wouldn't hold, and because I was threading rather than knitting, the small ends kept catching and pulling back. I am a bit worried that some parts of my grafting is only with one ply. I wish it was noted in the pattern to make it a long tail.

I didn't like the way the yarn showed thought when I threaded it, so with the second underarm I decided to knit the stitches so the tail was at the end for grafting. I still had to join more yarn to finish, but I did it sooner so I didn't have to deal with trying to join with a too small tail. Now I am knitting the yoke. Knitting the yoke over the sleeves was a but difficult at first. It was too tight and I had to hold my needles in a very stilted way.

I'm hoping to get the plain part of the yoke done today, as the husband will be gone and finally has some work. I love him, but I never seem to get much knitting done when he's home.