Knitting a Briony Pullover: Body Completed

After completing the yoke, the rest of the body of this jumper has been a nice easy break from the colourwork. The colourwork itself wasn't very difficult but it was nice to do some knitting that I didn't need to pay much attention to. The rest of the body has consisted of a stockinette section, separating for the sleeves and some ribbing. It hasn't taken me much time to get the rest of the body completed, because it's been so easy to just pick it up and get a decent portion of it done.

To avoid having a lot of ends to weave in at the very end I've been periodically taking the time to weave in ends. Lets face it nobody likes weaving in ends and splitting it into several smaller tasks makes it much less daunting. This means after completing the body all the ends from this section are now woven in, however I've had a small mishap. I've noticed a small hole where I think I've accidentally unravelled a stitch, its towards the side of the body and I can't really tell if it's going to be far enough under the arm area to be unnoticeable. I haven't decided whether to try to fix this yet in case it ends up not being noticeable and I'm a bit concerned I might not have enough yarn there to be able to unravel the woven in area and start it again. I've decided to leave this decision for the very end when I can try on the jumper and see if the hole is visible.

I was a bit nervous to bind off the body as I knew it needed to be very stretchy and I have a collection of scarves with one very un-stretchy end as a result of too-tight of a bind off. I really took my time with binding off to ensure I kept my tension very loose and thankfully it was worth it and I'm very pleased with how stretchy it has turned out.

I now just have the sleeves remaining before I can finally wear this jumper, I've been really racing to get this complete before we get to spring and the weather becomes to warm to wear it. It's now been a few days since I finished the body and I still haven't started the sleeves, as I'm a little bit nervous for a couple of reasons. For one thing I'm not convinced I have enough yarn left, I should have a bit more than what the pattern calls for and I haven't deviated from the pattern at any point, but I've only got one 50 gram ball of yarn left. The 50 grams of yarn may actually be enough for the sleeves as I really don't know how much yarn they'll need, but considering I've used five balls of yarn for the body, I'm really not convinced one is enough for both sleeves. I do have a plan though in case I do not have enough yarn, I know I'm not going to be able to get more yarn from the same dye lot, so I have to be prepared to potentially have some slightly different coloured yarn. I'm planning to start a sleeve and keep an eye on how much yarn I have remaining, so that I can get the same amount of both sleeves done from this same ball of yarn and potentially only do half of each sleeve before switching to the new ball of yarn. My logic is that it'll look fine if the change in colour is at the same point on both sleeves and I may be able to alternate the rows a bit to blend it in. Obviously I may not need additional yarn, or the additional yarn may match perfectly, but I want to be prepared.

The other thing that has caused me not to start the sleeves yet is that after picking up the stitches from waste yarn, I'm going to need to pick up some stitches from the body without creating any holes. This isn't something I've done before and I'm a bit scared to do it as I don't want to mess the jumper up when I'm so close to completing it.

I'm hoping to pluck up the courage to get the sleeves started in the next couple of days, so hopefully I'll be writing another post soon about completing my Briony Pullover!