Knitting in the round is pretty dang fun. You don’t have to adjust or turn your work, you can pick up a pretty good speed with making your stitches, and the best part is NO PURLS!!  With color work, carrying two yarns and alternating them behind your knitting, it is important to knit in the round with consistency.

Now with small circumference knitting, like sleeves you have to be extra mindful of how your stitches are looking.  When blocked, uneven stitches in most color work even out.  The tension of the stitches sort of self balances with the float, or unused yarn that goes between worked stitches of alternating colors.   The floats are key to having nice even work.  You want to keep them loose, but not droopy.  With a smaller circumference I like to use a few extra steps to make sure this happens.

My first suggestion is to go ahead a grab double pointed needles.  Even though they can be awkward, you have a more even surface of the face or public side of your knitting.  The circular shape is less distorted on double pointed needles. This can be a big life saver and make your knitting smoother.

Second, if the thought of double pointed needles and color work makes you feel sickly then skip them!! There are no rules, you have to do what you feel comfortable with.

If Magic Loop is best for you, then do that. Not only will you be less likely to have a stitch escape your needle, you will feel more comfortable and that leads to looser stitches and more even tension too.  If you still feel like you are not meeting the tension or gauge you desire take one extra step: ( my third suggestion)  is to work your rounds with your sleeve turned inside out.  The face, or public side of your knitting is on the inside of your needles.  It is still the part of the work you are looking while knitting at but you are carrying your yarns around the outside of your work.  This is a minor change that can have major impact because your floats are just a smidge longer. Longer floats mean more even surface stitches!!

 

You can see above, with my sleeve turned inside out I am still looking at the public side of my knitting while working stitches.  They are sitting on the back needle instead of the front needle as I work. Nothing else changes.

Fourth tip for small circumference knitting and really any magic loop knitting:  Place your beginning of the round marker and them adjust where your excess cable come through your work. By changing the placement of the cable, moving it over a few stitches every couple of rounds you distribute the “disruption” of the cable and can prevent a ladder or unintended looseness in your fabric.   You can move this between pattern repeats pretty easily in color work and once you are done knitting your work will be nice and even.  I do this ALL. THE. TIME.

Lastly – and might I say as a last resort – use a different needle size than you intend to work your sweater.  The Spark pattern suggests this, but many years ago and while working on a different project that also recommended  changing needle size for a specific section of knitting  a knitting guru that I know said she hated that this suggestion was made in writing.  Her views were that knitters would take it as gospel and utilize this technique weather they needed it or not.  I though over this statement and I whole heartedly agree.

Now armed with these tricks for sleeve knitting, (Ha!) you can execute your sleeve knitting with great success!