I committed a cardinal sin of knitting…I didn’t try on my sweater (Hazel Sweater by Petite Knit)as I knit the sleeve. I have been slowly knitting this sweater off and on for the entire year.
The note for the sleeve is to decrease by one stitch every 6th row after joining in the round upon finishing short row shaping.
However, I’m using a tighter gauge than the pattern and the first few times I tried it on while knitting the sleeve, I found that it was adequately tight and I didn’t need to decrease.
And then - life happened. And I’ve been putting down and picking up this same sleeve for 6 months making very little progress each time - so I could never bother to try on the sweater to check the fit. I know. I know.
From the front with my arm down - I think the sweater looks fine. I can’t tell if with my arm bent, the excess fabric looks terrible. What do you guys think? I’m going to sleep on it before deciding if I need to rip back to my elbow 
but I’d like to know your opinions.
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Lovely knitting, it looks great on you.
It’s hard making these decisions isn’t it? I frustrate myself with every project, I know how to knit to an exact size… if only I knew what size I wanted.
What I’ve discovered which helps me is that the decision doesn’t have to be made right now. You want to get on with knitting so it feels important to decide immediately but another option is to put this sleeve onto a thread and just leave it on hold. Work the other sleeve.
This way you don’t have to stop knitting, you don’t have to decide today, you don’t have to frog half a sleeve and wonder if you’ll regret the frogging. It can wait.
Second sleeve you can work smaller from the elbow to the wrist and have another try on.
You will like one of those two sleeves more than the other and the decision will be much easier, possibly obvious. It will feel less of a chore to frog half a sleeve because instead of frogging in a state of ‘not sure’ and feeling like you’re losing your knitting, the frogging will be in a state of ‘I know what I want, I know how to get it, I’m only half a sleeve away’.
Either way it’s half a sleeve frogged, either sleeve one to make smaller or sleeve two to make bigger. 2.5 sleeves total is pretty successful in my view. I have been known to make 6 sleeves for 1 sweater.
Otherwise, personal opinion, yours has not got more excess fabric than the pattern pictures on ravelry (there are a couple of bent arm shots to compare) so there is not too much sleeve unless you didn’t like the fit in the pattern pictures. Overall your sweater has less ease than the pattern pics and i think that looks good on you. I have similar shop bought sweaters which i always wished the sleeves fitted better (smaller) I do find them kind of baggy.
Do you know how the rib responds when washed? In my experience with ribbed tops the yarn relaxes and gives a looser result, if you feel the sleeve is a bit big now you might be even less happy with the size after a wash or steam.
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Love this sweater and especially your version. The sleeve seems appropriate for the design and in line with the photos on Ravelry. It’s a loose fitting sleeve according to the designer photos as far as that goes. Even though you are knitting more tightly the look of the sleeve without the decreases is fine.
The wonderful thing about knitting is that you can adjust patterns as you like. If you would prefer a tighter fit then go ahead and rip back a bit and taper the sleeve. (Is is a decrease of one or of two sts per round every 6th?) If not then the sleeve looks well with the rest of the sweater. Yes, it’s going to fold a bit when you bend your elbow but that’s going to happen to some degree anyway.
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I think @Creations has a great idea, to put this sleeve on hold and knit the other with more decreases, so you can determine which you like better.
ALL sleeves crumple like that at the elbow…it’s just less noticeable when they fit more loosely, because the folds have more room to spread out.
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I wonder how changing to a smaller needle just above the elbow might change the circumference of the sleeve and would it be too obvious. Maybe go down one size for an inch or so then to another size smaller. It might taper the sleeve enough to satisfy you without altering the overall effect too much. I’ve done similar on sleeves and other places where interrupting a pattern with decreases was less than optimal.
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