Derailed on the Learning Curve

I like to understand how things work. I also learn better by doing than by reading (although I enjoy both!). These two little things combine so that (sometimes) when I get to the middle of a project, I have to stop. I frown. I prod. I get out a pen and calculator and scratch my head. I head to the internet, and the library and get my hands on everything I can to figure out how to fix the itty bitty problem that stalled me and somewhere along in this process I have to start to watch my mouth so that little ears don't pick up some new words, because I've come to realized that having half the information can get you into some really "interesting" situations.

Take my Celtic Cardigan. This sweater started out as one thing (the Cardigan for Arwen) got chucked out, kept the cable, pulled Carolyn from Knitty.com for its body and took off running, realized that the fancy cable for the back just wasn't going to work, so found Continuous Cables for its special motif, started the second lap, borrowed a little more from Continuous Cables for the cuffs and then got to the arm cap.... and stopped dead.

Now mind you, I've only done two sweaters before this, and a shrug. The shrug had NO shaping.. it was a big cross that you seamed up on two edges and bam.. it was a shrug instead of ... a funky big cross of lace you couldn't really use for anything. I did a cardigan for my niece which was striped and had slightly inset sleeves, and a pullover for my nephew (oh, dear.. I'm the Knitting Auntie) with drop shoulders. For some reason, then, Carolyn seemed like a good idea to me, with raglan shaping. Don't ask me why, because all of a sudden I realize I had no idea what "raglan" really was.

I don't have raglan shaping now, that's for sure. I have REALLY DEEP inset sleeves. But there are 7 stitches there at the shoulder that seam up. So.. since the sleeves don't go all the way to the neckline, it really isn't a raglan (or so I've found out). This makes an interesting problem when you start considering that the sleeve cap I have is written for a raglan pattern. It's also written with errors, for which I must bless TPTB, because without those errors I would have blithely knit the sleeve cap as-written and then been knocking my brains out trying to figure out how to fit it into an armhole that is much too small!

Except now I'm going to have to sit down with a ruler, paper, pen, my math brain and a very long article on Knitty.com of how to calculate a sleeve cap, and figure out how to design a cap to fit an armhole I've already knit...

Guess I took that curve a little too fast.