So here’s where we left off:

And so far, the cardigan had taken me four days: two for the main body, and two for these little sleeve nubbins. The remainder of the sleeves took me another day and a half of steady knitting, and then I connected them to the body.

If you haven’t knit a bottom-up sweater, be forewarned, the five or ten rows after you connect sleeves to a body are a pain in the butt. You have to keep the sleeves very bunched up and all on the needles at once, because you’re essentially asking what was flat to become round. Technically, the sleeves being knit in the round, this isn’t actually what you’re doing, but the spots where body meets sleeve are very stubborn and don’t like their new place in life, so they take it out on you for a while.

Here we are, some measure into the rest. With three balls wound, I used one to do the body, and one for each sleeve. Then when I connected the body, I went back to the one I’d been using there. It ran out right about the time of this picture, so I attached one of the sleeve balls and continued on. That second ball was enough to finish the sweater, so I used a total of 2.5 balls, meaning the whole sweater cost under $50, including enough extra yarn to make a pair of short socks or a hat or something.

I’ll note here that the sweater was written by someone whose first language isn’t English, so there was one point in the pattern I was concerned people might be confused by: Once she says to start the raglan increases, you continue them for the rest of the sweater until you get to the neck. When she goes to the explanation of how to increase for the sleeve puffs, you continue the raglan decreases as you have been every other row, even though the pattern is a little vague about that part.

The sleeve puffs? Are fabulous. Honestly, they make me want to knit another one, because I just love the construction of them, I’ll definitely be knitting more patterns by the designer, because this one is lovely and elegant in its finished version.

Oh, you actually wanted to see the whole sweater?

I guess. Well, fair warning, I haven’t sewn the buttons on yet, because like every knitter, finishing eludes me sometimes. I did the knitting, why is there more work? But yeah, here’s Minerva:

It’s a little tight, but that’s probably back to my slightly-small gauge rather than the pattern. It’s also not too tight, I’m mostly worried about the buttons pulling a little when I finish and put it on. Maybe in another five pounds or so.

All together, Minerva took me about six or seven days of knitting, and a lot of them were just the sleeves. Those sleeves’ll get you every time. But don’t get trapped on sleeve island. The sweater’s worth finishing. It totaled about 1200 yards of yarn for my size 2x behind, so it’s a tiny amount of yarn, for a full sleeve sweater.