Oh crap.

I love knitting sweaters. I really do. But I hate knitting sleeves. Especially the second sleeve. It's like making mittens or socks but worse. Not only do I have to make two of them, I have to make two of them after making all the fun bits of the rest of the sweater. I know this is irrational. I could very easily make the sleeves first or separate them by making the sweater in between or make them two at a time. But it'll never happen. The sleeves must be made after the sweater. In my mind, that is the only logical possibility. So, I am left with the dreaded second sleeve. Which sometimes can mean that a sweater languishes in no man's land far longer than necessary.

This time, however, I have a more challenging problem. I am running out of yarn. I had 3 skeins of the stuff, which is plenty to knit a pullover in my size. It should have been fine. But for some reason (ahem, Honey) I decided to change my plans for the collar of the thing. I put on a shawl collar rather than my planned henley. It looks adorable but now I have this much sleeve:

And this much yarn:

(For reference, the Swiss Franc is about the size of the American quarter- definitely not enough yarn!)

Clearly I'm going to have to rip the collar for there to be enough yarn to finish the sleeve. But I don't want to believe this. In fact, it simply isn't true. If I knit faster, the yarn won't know what hit it and will magically stretch to the needed amount. It's a scientific fact. This is the converse black hole knitting effect. You know how you can knit for hours and hours and have no noticeable change in either the size of the ball of yarn or the sweater? This is the opposite. Knit at top speed, don't get discouraged and the sweater will grow, regardless of the amount of yarn left in the ball. This might be denial. But it's very well thought out and therefore must work.