Slowly But Surely

I've finally got the body done and cut a couple of the steeks so I could try it on. I did a three needle bind off at the shoulders. That was my first time, I really like the method. Although I did one half with a ridge, and then tore it out and did the opposite. I've got a few things to deal with, like on button hole that is a stitch off from the others.



I'm fairly happy. It's the right short length, but I'm not sure about the shoulders. It's just so bulky to be a drop-shoulder (it's turned under in this photo). I'm trying figure out if I can cut a bit out of the sleeve holes and make the sleeves correspondingly larger at the top to fit. Right now the upper sleeve circumference is about 19", so another inch would be good.

I did my measurements on a thin cotton Norwegian sweater of mine. I didn't take into account the very different drape this one would have, so I'm having to change some things.

Meanwhile, I started on the first sleeve, which I will hold on until I decide about the upper sleeve.


Taking stock, I have so much left to do. Make the sleeves; bind all the opening edges with fabric on the inside and trim on the outside; reinforce the buttonholes after the fabric goes on the back; cut open and put trim on cuffs; put on buttons; sew on the sleeves.

Plugging Away

Hi, All. Not much more progress, but enough to post and let you know I'm still at it.



This is the back. I'm about 7 inches into the armhole. 5 more inches to go.



I'm pretty happy with it. The pattern is starting to really come out now. I've got 15 more rows to finish this particular motif and the I THINK I will do another row of trees. Not positive, yet. I really like this "off the cuff" knitting. You just never know where it will end up.

Hope the rest of you are still progressing. Take care. Tracy J

Sweater finished...sort of

Tuesday Morning
The sweater looks finished, but the sleeves are too long!!!! I'm wearing it to work today, but tomorrow will see it back on the needles. It's worth it to get it right.

Wednesday
It took all day, but the sleeve surgery is successful. The whole story is on my blog.

Thursday
Finished and wearable. Of course, the dog had to get into the picture.

Neck and front bands

I have finished the "Cut and Sew" neckline and front bands. I have a step by step narrative on my blog. Pictures of the finished sweater will follow after its bath.

My sweater's almost finished

I am working the buttonhole band on my sweater. The neckband is done. Pictures on my blog when I get time. maybe Sunday. I'll let you know. I took pictures of the whole cut and sew process. I also finished the button band.

I understand being tired of lice Tracy. I had less trouble on the second sleeve. Perhaps it's like coming home from a trip. The distance is the same, but it seems shorter.

Getting There....

Hi, All.

I've just finished the underarm gussets and I'm starting on the chest.

I am pretty sick of lice. Can't wait for the sleeves :p

Here's the patterns that I have put together for the chest and shoulder area.

This will fill the 70 rows and then I will have 2 inches to play with at the top. Not sure what I will do there. I'm just making this thing up as I go along. It's fun.

So, how are the rest of you doing?

Take care....Tracy J

armhole steeks

I thought L'Tanya's question was important enough for everyone to hear about, so I'm making a main post instead of answering in the comments.

L'Tanya, you are right. In the scenario you describe, you will lose body stitches. That shaping is for a modified drop shoulder, or what I like to call a square armhole. You don't lose any fit, though, because you add that back into the top of the sleeves, making the sleeves a couple of inches longer. In this scenario, the shoulders fall higher and closer to your actual shoulder line than in a true drop shoulder, and you have a slightly snugger fit in the shoulders, but by no-means constricting. This is actually the shaping that I used on the Andean sweater in Ethnic Knitting Discovery. It's perfectly acceptable to use this in a Norwegian sweater, but it's not traditional. You just want to align your pattern stitches so they center nicely around the armhole steeks and look balanced after you cut.

Here's the schematic of an Andean sweater, showing the armhole shaping.



If you want a true drop shoulder, where you keep the same number of stitches all the way to the shoulder seams, you don't need to do anything for a steek, or you can BO1 stitch and CO5-7 if you want to have the extra fabric to cut and fold back as a facing. In the Norwegian sweaters in Ethnic Knitting Discovery, I went with the old-fashioned technique of doing nothing in advance. You just knit a straight tube all the way up to the shoulders, then you make slits where you want the armholes. In this scenario, the shoulders drop down and sit on the upper arm, and you make the sleeves shorter to compensate.

Here's the schematic of a Norwedigan sweater, showing the lack of armhole shaping.



The total sleeve length, from center back neck to wrist, has to remain the same for both situations, so you add the part you remove from the armhole to the top of the sleeve to compensate. See how the top of the sleeve fills in the cut out body area on that first drawing? In both of these styles, I make the armhole depth the same. For a 40 or 44 inch sweater that I make for myself, I like a 10 inch deep armhole, so it's nice and loose. Probably going down to 9 would still be OK without causing the sweater to pinch at the underarm. But for me, that makes the sweater feel a little too snug, especially if I'm wearing it over a heavy winter turtleneck.

Does all that make sense?

How's everyone else doing on their knitting? Pictures, pictures, I want to see more pictures! :-)

Steek Question

I'm trying to figure out what patterns would work well on the yoke of my sweater. I realized that if I BO say 7 sts for each armhole, then CO 7, those 14 sts will then be my steek stitches. So I'll "lose" those stitches. In my case, my 204 sts will turn into 190 sts. Right?

Does it matter that those stitches are "lost" (in terms of fit)? Or should I CO 28 sts to make up for the 14 steek sts?

My KAL sweater turned into ...

... a really cool bag!

Steek Tutorial is finished.

I have sewn in the first sleeve, and worked up a tutorial explaining how I did it.

It is on my blog.

Coming tomorrow

I'm working on a steek tutorial. I'll publish it tomorrow. I can publish this on my blog and link to it here. I finished one sleeve and used that to measure armhole depth. I'll also do a "Cut and Sew" neckline tutorial. I'm still thinking about how I want to finish the neckline.

Swatch

I finally have a swatch to show. As you can see, my gauge in the lower portion is different from the upper. I'm making this sweater for my 3-yo son and used the weaving method to prevent longer floats (floats and wild 3-yos don't go together). I wonder whether or not that makes the difference in gauge or if it would be that way regardless. In either case, I suppose I'll just go up in needle size when I get to the motif. And I'll probably do a zig-zag pattern along the bottom. Anyway, I love my colors (except the brown) and the yarn I'm using, which is JaggerSpun Maine Line fingering.

I also played around with a crocheted steek. This was my first time steeking so I've got a few questions:

1. What steeking method are you all using? Does it matter in this case?
   
2. When I get to the point where I do my checkerboard border stitches (is that what they're called?), do I bind off a certain number of stitches and then start them?
3. Do I do the sleeves first, measure and then determine the length of the steek? Or is there some way to calculate how long the steeked section should be ahead of time?

The attack of the gauge grinch

My sweater sleeve grows slowly. Many of you know the feeling. Knit, knit, knit, measure. No change! Knit, knit, knit. measure again. I have done all the increases that I calculated. The sleeve is still too narrow and shorter than expected. Check the gauge on the sweater body in the lice section. I wish I had measured the gauge on the swatch before its bath. I think it relaxed. Refigure using the new figures. I've almost finished the "extra" increases and the sleeve width looks good. I'm at 16" long and close to the 20" circumference that I aimed for. Lice will continue until 19" and then the zigzag pattern like the yoke peerie. The sleeve will be worked straight after I finish the increases. I'll count the rows of lice to make the other sleeve match.

No Knitting, But a Sketch

Okay, I've decided to start working back and forth from the underarms up. I'm just waiting to be in the right frame of mind to check my gauge and perhaps do a bit of decreasing for the upper body, and figure out what that means for the sleeves.

In the meantime, here's a rough sketch of my sweater. The red in the drawing represents the trim and the red hatching that only shows at centerback is the fabric facing.


The two bits of trim are samples from Norway. I'm leaning toward the one on the right with a bit of green in it, although I like the handwoven look and feel of the other. I found a source for buttons here in the U.S.

Crossroads

Here is a photo of how far along I am - almost to the armpits. I have no idea why I did the steek all in white, I planned stripes.


This gives a better idea of how it will look. The buttonholes will be bound in red, and hopefully the edge will lay down when blocked.















Now I have to decide how to proceed. I originally was planning on doing the whole thing in the round, with steeks at the armholes, and cutting out the neckline. But the Fana book says to work the front and back separately from the underarms. This makes sense because the neck isn't a "V", it is actually a very large "U", which I like, but I would end up cutting out a lot of knitting. However, it will mean purling, which I try to avoid (and not sure if my knitting will "match"). It will give a nice bound off edge to graft the sleeves onto, though.

Also, I wanted to do some shaping because the sweater that fits me well is 46" at the bottom, and 42" at the chest. I have to figure out how that will affect my sleeves. I've been studying Ethnic Knitting Discovery, Knitting in the Old Way, and Fanatroyer to decide my next steps.

I guess I can start a sleeve while I think about all this. The cuffs are worked flat because there is a slit and button effect, not sure why one wouldn't just steek, though. At least that will be some practice on working the shoulder star motif flat.

Sleeve progress

The body of the sweater is ready for steeking. I just need to finish a sleeve to know how long to make the sleeve steek. The sleeve is about 10" now, but each row gets longer for a while. The finished sleeve will be about 20 1/2" long. A long way to go, and lice pattern is not as interesting as the other patterns. The upside is that 3/4 of the rows are just knit in one color. This is working well for the sleeve increases. I'm increasing every 4 rows and the lice pattern is an 8 row pattern. I am putting the increases in the row before the lice. It's a lot easier than increasing in the pattern at the wrist. When the sleeve reaches the target width, I'll work straight up to the shoulder seam.

What is all that stuff on the top of the sleeve? The sleeve is too big around for the dp needles, so I added a circular. There are 3 dps and one circular on the sleeve right now. I really need a 2nd circular, which is on order from KnitPicks. The side marker is where I started on Sunday morning. It helps to know how much progress I've made. It is on a circular earring finding. The other marker is at the start of the increases and makes it easy for me to count how many I've done.

The light is even closer

I know the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train!!I have 5 rows to go on the body and 3 of them are knit plain. What you don't see here is more zigzag pattern. I had to rip out 3 rows because I wanted it to mirror what is below the yoke. Next up is sleeves. After I knit one sleeve, I'll probably sew the steeks. At that time, I'll know exactly how wide the sleeve top is. I'm doing a round neck, as I don't look good in boat necks and this is a cardigan. The top of the sweater looks like it pulls in, but it is still on the needles. My shoulders are narrower than my hips anyway. I have a better picture of the yoke pattern, but don't look too closely at the zigzags. They are mirrored now.

Moving ahead. Finally!

Hi, All. I finally am moving forwards instead of backwards. Sheesh. I got my gauge with the headband and worked out the math quite easily. Then I start knitting totally wonky...either too loose or too tight. ARGH! I had to tear it out 5 times. That's bad when you are a wide body using not so heavy yarn. The yarn was beginning to look pretty frazzled. Anyway, I've got my gauge correct and am finishing up the bottom pattern. Then I'll start the lice. I think I will be putting in gussets at the under arm. I have no idea what I'll be doing for the chest patterning. I'm just winging it. I've got 10 inches or so before I have to decide.

No way will I be ready to steek at the end of the month. I'll just hide and watch while I'm slowly knitting away.

Body Progress - near the end

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I finally got the yoke pattern centered (It took 3 tries, requiring frogging 10 rows each time). I have the peerie pattern lined up with the other pattern so that the diamond ponts match with the zigzags. I'm using a 30 row pattern which I will repeat once and then add the peerie pattern again. The body measures 16".

A bit done

Okay, so far my work is looking a little wonky. I've started the lice there at the top but you can't see it very well in this picture.
There are several issues going on:
1. I decided to have my large motif on the bottom and I'm still not sure what I'm doing on the top.
2. The hem facing is out of a yarn with a slightly different gauge and I'll have to re-do that later.
3. Clearly, I need of lot of blocking, but I think it should even things out.
4. I have 16" knitted and have 14" more to go so we'll just see....