Neglected Rosalind, whom I began last summer and then jilted in favor of other projects, is back on the needles. In fact, I’ve knit both her fronts and one of her sleeves (twice, because I bodged it the first time). I thought I was so clever, placing my decreases two stitches in so I’d have clean edges for seaming. But that sleeve has been causing a mighty array of problems. First it was obviously too long for its armhole. I lopped off the top of it and tried again to seam it into place. Nothing doing. It’s just a really whacky shape. Observe (and forgive the lack of light in this photograph):

See how the armpit wanks out at the back, to use Harlot terminology? It does that in the front, too, except that the presence of my lady parts lessens the effect somewhat:

I was rather cast down. I’d originally intended to omit the sleeves and just let this top be a vest, but I had plenty of interesting French yarn (courtesy of Becky), and they were such little sleeves that I up and knat one anyway. Now I’m going to rip it right back out again because the side without the sleeve looks so much better. Besides, I’ve already done the most engaging part of the pattern, the nifty interlocking front, and I’m pretty much out of patience with Rosalind at this point. I need to seam her up, slap some crochet edging on her (I know, more crochet!), and call it good. Let’s take one last look at the whack sleeve before I do away with it forever:

Goodbye, Whack Sleeve, and good riddance. I don’t know what the editors at Vogue Knitting were thinking, letting anything so oddly shaped into their otherwise estimable publication. For the love of Pete, is a little geometric accuracy in our patterns too much to ask? When I lived in the Bahamas, one of my favorite local phrases was “with sense”, as in, when ordering conch fritters and wishing them properly prepared, “Fry it with sense, boy!” Knit it with sense will be my new maxim, I think. I shall trust my instincts.