The first Ithilien sleeve has started to take shape:

Progress on the first sleeve – “public” side.

Both cuffs are done, and I picked up 73 stitches and started knitting upward in the leaf pattern. It took a while before the pattern started to appear, so I felt overly dependent on the charts for the first inch or so. Actually, this is my second effort – I got about this far the first time before I ripped it back to the picked-up stitches.

I had originally planned to do a lot more catching of the floats across the back, to minimize the chances of hooking a ring or fingernail on the inside of the sleeve when putting it on, but the front of the fabric looked just enough different that I decided I couldn’t live with it. This time, as with the body of the sweater, the floats are no longer than 4 stitches… but at a gauge of 9 stitches to the inch, that’s still only about 1/2 inch!

The “private” side. Lots of ends to weave in!

Here’s the inside… when I need to change colors (every 3 rows), I do the purl ‘seam’ stitch in both colors, then weave the outgoing color along for a few stitches before dropping it. I’m hoping that will cut down on lumpiness! I should be able to just trim those ends, so will only have half as many ends to thread onto a needle and weave in.

You can see the semi-felted loose ends on the cuff cable. They will be further protected by the hem, which is currently un-stitched, and stays neatly rolled at the hand side of the cuff.

I hope expect that the yarns are just hairy enough to do a little bonding on the inside, so the multitude of ends will be stabilized.

And here are a couple of detail shots; the fake seam, indicated by the stitch marker, and the rolled hem.

The hem, still unstitched, makes a tidy roll.