Working EPS top-down means I have to do increase rather than decrease rounds for the yoke shaping. I will also finish all the shaping very quickly: by the time I’ve worked the upper half of the yoke depth. It’s really kind of crazy when you think about it, and it can be a little intimidating working an EPS bottom-up the first time or three. Nevertheless, her design works wonderfully. Now I just need to work it in the opposite direction.

Locating the Yoke Shaping’s Increase Rounds

While I’ll work top-down, it’s easier to plan which are the yoke shaping rounds from the underarm upward.

With a new total back-neck row/round count of 84, the second increase round, which is halfway between the neck and underarm, will be round 43. The first increase round, which is one-quarter of the total yoke depth before the second increase round, will be round 22. The first seven rounds of the sweater will—eventually—be the neck ribbing. That leaves me 15 rounds of stockinette at the back neck in which to work the 10 planned short rows.

Well, that is certainly convenient! (And no, I’ll neither comment on nor even think about what I would have done if the numbers were not so favorable!)

Working the Yoke

My waste-yarn PCO will have 141 stitches, one more than the 140 I’ll actually need to set up what will initially be 2×3 neck ribbing in the finishing. That’s to account for the fact that when you take out a PCO, you have one less stitch than you CO initially. Since I’ll work the 7 rounds of neck ribbing in the opposite direction from the rest of the sweater, the PCO is essentially round 8.

Rounds 9 and 10 will be worked evenly in stockinette, to provide the much-desired buffer between the short rows and the ribbing, in case I botch capturing the live sts as I remove the PCO.

Rows (since I’ll now be working flat) 11–20 will be the short rows needed to raise the back neck. Centering the short rows’ initial 71 stitches on the BOR, which will be at the center of the back neck, I work 10 short rows, each one worked 3 sts beyond the previous turning point. This close-up chart of the back-neck short rows should make all these points clear.

On round 21, I resume working in the round.

Round 22 is the first increase round, which I’ll work as “K2, inc” around for a 50 percent increase to 211 sts.

I work rounds 23–42 evenly in stockinette stitch.

Round 43 is the second shaping round, this time of “K3, inc,” a 33 percent increase, from 211 to 282 sts.

Believe it or not, the yoke shaping is now done, so I work evenly straight to the yoke depth, through round 84, then on round 85 split the sleeves and body exactly as I did with the CotLin U-Neck.

When I make that division, I will have worked only 77 rows/rounds as counted from the back neck. The last 7 rounds of back neck length will be added when I remove the PCO and work the ribbing in the opposite direction.

The Increase Method

As with the CotLin U-Neck (see the section “Picking the Increase Method”), I’ll use some variety of yarnover for my increases. In that sweater, I used both regular and reverse yarnovers on either side of the 4 raglan points, working them through their trailing legs on the subsequent rows/rounds to twist them shut. Laundering the sweater helped close them a bit more, enough that I’m again going to consider as design features the slight holes that sometimes remain.

I suppose the round after the increase round could be purled or worked as seed stitch to hide the slight holes, but I don’t want the resulting texture. Knitting is often about trade-offs (just like the trade-offs in making sweaters either working flat in pieces to be sewn together or working seamlessly in the round). I’d rather see the slight evidence of yarnovers twisted shut than a couple of purl ridges or rounds of seed stitch. At least on this project. Should I ever make another top-down circular yoke sweater, I might well work a tall band of seed stitch between the two increase rounds, partly for the design element, partly to further disguise the yarnover holes (assuming I use twisted-shut yarnovers rather than some other type of increase).

Since increase symmetry in this circular yoke isn’t an issue like it was for the U-Neck’s raglan shaping, I’ll just do regular yarnovers.