M1R - painfully difficult!

I'm finally onto the right front, the bit with the 'circle' increases, and I'm finding the M1R increase really really hard. Sure, I did a few of these early on, but it seems nearly impossible to get my needle into the stitch - does anyone have any tips? At the moment I envisage moments of extreme rage (!) and RSI as there are many, many M1R increases in this section.

Any help much appreciated... :)

It sure has been very quiet around here of late...!

That's Weird!

Here's a cool Co-incidence.

A couple of months ago Clair from Xotik Yarns asked me if I have any Red Karabella Soft Tweed for an overseas over she was processing. I had one ball and sent it off. Sadly, I might add, as I had thought about making my Sunrise Circle Jacket in the Red. Seeing as it was gone I got her to send me the blue colour that you see my Jacket now becoming. End of that part of the story. Nothing Special about that

Far far away a blogger called Sharon who lives in Ireland started her Sunrise Jacket when she got Clair's yarn....but came up short a few balls. She started to search for the same yarn - same dye-lot - no joy. Her project stalled.

When fishing through my stash last month I found 2 lonely balls of yarn. Red Soft Tweed to be exact. They have been sitting on my desk as I kept day-dreaming about what scarf to make out of them.

Forward a few weeks. I posted here about my Jacket and my thoughts on it. A few bloggers offered words of encouragement about how theirs had looked strange too but to keep going with it. Still nothing too special.

I love finding out where bloggers are from so when Sharon from Ireland left me a comment I had a wander around her blog. Always wanted to get to Ireland myself and love Irish Music so had a really nice day-dream reading her blog - and read all about weaving mills and lovely villages and right down the very very very bottom of her blog there was a post about her knitting up a Jacket but running out of yarn and waiting to hear from the person she bought the yarn from to see if she could find any other balls to finish the project. She didn't mention the type of yarn in that particular post but she showed a photo of it - and I recognised it as Soft Tweed.

Cue drumroll and Lightbulb moment!

I emailed her to ask if she had bought the yarn from Clair and you have probably worked out the answer as yes.....and I have the 2 balls she needs in the same dyelot sitting her on my desk. Tomorrow they wing their way to Ireland. How cool is that! Can you beat that for blogger co-incidences around the world? Here it is Sharon! Proof! :)

Maybe it's an Aussie thing....

Cause I have a problem with the sleeves too!

Dang!

As I am using Karabella Soft Tweed my gauge and rows are spot on (PHEW!). At least I don't have to worry about that side of things.

But - as you can see I am measuring at 33'ish Cm's ( I am making the 41"/104cm size)...and I am on row 77. Schematics say that at the the 2nd part of the sleeve should total 33.5 cms but I have another 3 rows (not counting purl rows) left to do before I get to 2 stitches.....but boy howdy it is so long....

I am thinking about just knitting 2 tog to move on - I think that should work - it seems so long up my neck. I read Paisley's comments she received so I guess I could do the same thing at the end if it is too long. Spooky!

Apart from that I am still really enjoying the knit - just a little nervous that the whole thing is going to SWIM on me.

Sigh...

I had hoped that I would be able to show you a completed jacket this week. But the sleeves are too long. With my hands by my side, the cuffs are about level with my middle fingertips. Ideally, they would be level with my wrists. Maybe I do have short-a*%e arms in comparison to the general populace as the sleeve is at least 15cm (6") too long.
Anyway, the upshot is not as bad as MintyFresh's having to knit the whole thing again. I am going to attempt the frogging back from the cast-on edge of the cuffs. I haven't done that before so wish me luck.