I love trying new things...

I read an interesting article in Interweave Knits on how to do sleeve cap shaping using short rows. I already tackled that with the left front and back pieces so that I could join the live stitches in a three needle bind-off (my personal favourite for joining shoulder seams), so I thought I'd give it a shot for the sleeves. I lovelovelove it! I hate that stepped look that doing the bind-offs at each end of the sleeves, and this gives a nice, graceful curve. So...here's how I did it. I knit the sleeve to the required length. You were supposed to start the shaping having the right side facing and binding off the first three stitches. I knit across and back to this point. I guess I could have started on the last WS row of the un-decreased part, but I wanted to err on the side of caution and have sleeves that were perhaps a titch too long than too short. So, when I came back (on the WS) to the starting point, I knit to the last three stitches and wrapped and turned. Then went back and forth, following the pattern, knitting up to the number of stitches to be bound off, and wrapping and turning. When I got to the end, I knit (well, actually ribbed...when I've been saying 'knit', I've been following the ribbing pattern)across the left hand decreased section, picking up all the wraps. Then I turned my work, knit across the these 17 stitches, binding them off. Then I knit across the remaining stitches, picking up the wraps on the right hand side. The I bound off the remaining stitches.

Clear as mud, eh?

Sorry for the crappy picture quality. We're cameraless for the moment, but I had to share how cool this sleeve was....so I threw it in the scanner. I tweaked the colour a bit in Digital Image Suite, so it wouldn't be as dark.