TL;DR Do you expect stockinette in a silk/mohair blend (Tilia by Filcolana) to grow longer after blocking?
The complete story
Do you remember my fluffy WIP of doom? It was nearly finished before the holidays. But I ran out of yarn, with no hope of getting my hands on more of the same. Filcolana has apparently changed suppliers or something and the new lots look completely different nowadays (much more muted colours - I'm really happy I have the older version).
Anyway, I was absolutely devastated. So I took pictures of the sweater to show you, thinking I might take away some of the body length in order to finish the sleeves. Seeing the pics, however, I think I'm not mad at the proportions as they are.
Side note: Thank all the gods of knitting for TAAT, otherwise I'd have one sleeve and a half.
OK, now time for a confession: When I started this project, I didn't block my swatch. So I don't know how the proportions will change after blocking/wearing etc. I'm afraid that the sleeves will grow longer, ending up like too-short-full-length-sleeves instead of 3/4. In which case I should unravel a bit of the sleeves before doing the I-cord edge.
What do you think?
@weirdsquid
There's a good chance it will grow: silk certainly does and mohair has little memory, so will go along with what the silk does.
So without having a swatch it's hard to determine how much it will change because how loose / tight your gauge is has a great influence on that.
Normally I'd suggest washing and drying the garment as it is - treating it like a giant swatch basically and then determining
- how much additional length your sleeves need
- how much you can take off the body
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@weirdsquid but mohair can be tricky to unravel at the best of times. Taking it through a washing / drying cycle can make that worse. So I'm careful here with that suggestion.
Can you get some of the yarn, even in a different color and make a swatch and go from there? Maybe someone (ravelry?) has a small leftover and is willing to part with that.
Thank you so much for your insight! I know first hand of the difficulties - I have already frogged this sweater once :/
Considering what you wrote, I'm thinking of unravelling a couple of centimetres of the sleeves, based only on a wild guess. If after the wash I want back the lost length, I'll only have to unravel the i-cord. Or even skip the i-cord, wash it holding the sleeves on a lifeline and finish it afterwards. This way, I wouldn't need to unravel anything after wash. Would that work?
(Making and blocking a swatch would definitely be the adult thing to do, but I'm really not keen on the prospect of looking for more yarn...)
@weirdsquid
Washing with live sts is definitely a good idea. If you have to continue, you can just start again and if you have to unravel there's at least no bind off to unpick. I'm generally using metal needles, which I just leave in, if I have to wash before something is finished.
And on the swatch - I feel you, I like to live dangerously myself ...
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