the same but opposite...

I really did think I was being so smart. Last year, I made that awesome denim lace jean jacket – here was the plan - https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/02/jean-jacket-re-visited.html

As with a lot of my knitting lately, some of the issues - https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/03/knitting-knightmares.html

Here’s what it looked like finished - https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/04/denim-done.html

After wearing it a time or two, I decided that the sleeves were too long – they have a buttoned cuff, meant to sit at the wrist and, obviously without thinking it through, I made the sleeve length like I would my regular sleeve without cuff, that I’ve been pulling down over my hand to act as a glove, you know, for opening doors and stuff when you didn’t want to be in contact with whatever. Also, not sure if you noticed but the sleeves were a different colour. When I made it, I did have two different dye-lots of the denim, one being slightly darker than the other, but I figured it would all come out in the wash.

Well, it didn’t and when I was wearing the thing, as I glanced down, that lighter-shaded sleeve bugged me a bit. Add that to the sleeve length issue and I got my first brain wave! I could remove the sleeves, shorten them, over-dye ‘em and Bob’s your uncle! Yeah! (she later said to herself with an eye-roll.)

Brimming with self-confidence, I pulled the sleeves off. Unravelled them down to row 100, counting the rows down from the underarm (that I knew from my notes) as I reeled the wool winder, cleverly, I thought and, not breaking the yarn, re-knit back up to new desired length (20 rows less than original), reshaped the sleeve cap with shortrows as per usual. At the top of the shortrowing, I like to knit a full row to get rid of the wraps, then do an RTR (remove, turn, rehang) and knit another row, which creates a nice purl stitch ridge, then take off on the garter bar, to join into the sleeve opening. But, if you read back, this sleeve has to be inserted into the circular opening on the body so did the RTR, K1R thing and then knit  4 more rows of the sleeve yarn so there would be enough yarn to join the sleeve in the same over-dyed colour. Nifty, huh? Then knit 8 rows waste yarn and cast off – ya don’t want it unravelling in the dye job, right?

Did the dye thing, stove top method, so far so good. Rinsed and dried the sleeves. Removed the waste yarn and carefully unravelled the last four rows, down to the purl ridge. Still okay but prudently decided that new waste yarn was required. It’s still flat, easy to do. Got the sleeves attached, all done. Gosh, darn…sleeves are the perfect length but…