The third ball completed the back and most of the fronts, I thought I might get as far as the start of the neck shaping but I’m still a few rows off. I thought I was being sensible working the back first so I could look at that to get an idea of where the neck opening should be. When I came to look at it with a sit down and a cup of tea it was obvious that there was really only one place for it to start which was at the same time as the new lines of ribbing. I realised then that I should have knitted the fronts first, I should have worked out how long a neck opening I wanted and then started the ribbing at the same time as the opening.  I think I may have got lucky in that it’s probably going to go over his head although another inch wouldn’t have hurt. The incursion of Small Dog With Toy at the top left is because I knelt on the floor to straighten out the knitting for the photo and sitting on the floor is an invitation to play. You will note that no part of dog or toy is on the knitting, this is because I was in the room. If I left and counted to five he’d be asleep right in the middle of all that wool.

I did briefly have a sleeve, a whole sleeve, to show. It was small and baby sized and lasted all of one evening until I got the tape measure out to confirm my suspicions. It had major width issues caused by my tension being totally out of the window and although babies don’t have bulging biceps they do wiggle when you’re trying to stuff them into clothes. I’ve been trying to choose between two patterns, one uses sock yarn at 8 spi and one at 6 spi. I got 8 spi and set off but the sleeve did seem long and thin compared to all those other sleeves I’ve ever knitted. I kept checking my tension (8, 8, 8 again, still 8) and once I’d finished the increases I checked the width against the schematic which is where the sleeve moved from looking wrong to being wrong. Yes, I was knitting pattern B with the perfect tension for pattern A.

It’s a short post today because I need to go away and have a good sulk. I also need to knit the fronts, join the shoulders and find out whether I need to lower the neck opening and fiddle with the rib sections on both the fronts and backs. The tape measure suggests that his head will fit though the hole without having to remove his ears but I won’t sleep tonight unless I’ve seen this proved.