fixing things

Normal sized sleeves at long last

Remember the aran cardigan with giant sleeves? It has had a lot of wear this winter which is a pleasing reward for a labour of love...but the giant sleeves ( a result of not understanding the properties of Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran after washing) could be ignored no longer.

Luckily, in learning how to rectify other mistakes I discovered this technique for shortening sleeves:
1. Using a circular needle pick up loops of stitches in a line at the level you wish the cuff to start - if you have matched up the seam neatly this line should start and end at the same level. This will allow the cuff to be knitted in a round, which is a much neater technique than having a seam.

2. Cut the sleeve off a couple of rows down from the circular needle and remove/unravel any wool below the circular needle - what you end up with is a circular needle threaded neatly through the loops at the bottom edge of the sleeve. Now simply knit the cuffs in an identical pattern to the original ones.

The knit stitches are actually upside down because in the pattern the sleeves were knitted from the cuffs up whereas this is knitting from the top down, but it doesn't seem to matter. In the original fisherman's ganseys, the entire sleeve was knitted from the top down to allow for replacement of worn out sleeves, I guess using a very similar technique. The Kate Davies sweater also has top down sleeves so should I feel inclined I could make it into a long sleeved sweater without too much effort.

close up of cuff knitted from top down on end of sleeve knitted from bottom up