Well, turns out that yesterday in fitting my father-in-law I had knitted enough on the body of the sweater and it was time for me to bite my lip and join everything together. Sock Sis had not gotten the info of her knitting wiz to me yet so I was flying by night with two kids running around, REALLY interested in what I was doing. They always are when I am doing something complex and possibly dangerous with pointy things and string. The Little Guy (or Big Guy if you go by his mindset) kept running off with the ladybug measuring tape and SuperGirl (the 4 year old) wanted to give me kisses. I think she was worried about me.
Anyway, I equipped myself with the instructions and Zimmerman's "Knitting Without Tears" (where I remembered she did have some advice about all this; picture that title underlined b/c I can't find the underlining option on my toolbar (note to self)) and guess what: the instructions really were that easy. At least they are 3 rounds later and things aren't screamingly obvious that I screwed up somewhere. I do have some laddering/loose middles at the joining points in the underarm areas but I'm not worried about that; I'll reinforce/tighten them later when I'm weaving in the loose ends. Those happened because of the need to bend the circular needle through what essentially is 1 small loop, one BIG loop, one small loop. The 32" needle didn't like it that much. The further I went the easier it got because things weren't as tight, plus I went to our wonderful, local, newly opened yarn store to get a 40" circular needle.
Last night, after the nightly running-of-the-naked-babies, I sat down and continued the work, making sure everything looked right as I went. I had done the good knitter thing and laced some scrap yarn through the loops of all 3 pieces before I joined them so if I did need to rip everything out I would have an easier starting point (can't remember where I read that tip). I had placed the stitch markers where indicated. The instructions were a little confusing because it called for a double decrease (slip 2 stitches as to knit, knit 1 stitch, pass the 2 slipped stitched over) only 1 stitch away from the stitch marker so I'm having to take the stitch marker out and replace it after the dbl dec. I hope I'm doing that right and if anyone knows, let me know. I don't know if it's that big a deal other than fit-wise because I only continue this for 8 more rounds and those stitches will be in the underarm. It's leaving a nice diagonal line that looks like the completed project diagram so I'm full steam ahead.
Only not taking out the scrap yarn.
Just in case.
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