In Newsletter #1 in EZ’s The Opinionated Knitter, she has instructions to work the short rows starting with the entire back half of the neckline, 48 of 96 total stitches. At the end of each row, she works 2 more stitches past the last turning point, working a total of 6 short rows before finishing the neck ribbing in the round. Since that sweater is done in fingering, there’s not much back neck depth added, probably only three-quarters of an inch or so, since the designed stitch gauge is 6 spi (there’s no row gauge given).

But I want about a full inch’s worth of back neck shaping, so at my laundered gauge of 8.5–9 rpi, I need to work 10 short rows. The next questions are, How many stitches do I start with, and How many more do I work at the end of each row?

Going by EZ’s instructions, I need to work half, so 71, of the 141 sts on the needle. When I turn and work on the private side, I need to work some number of additional stitches before turning back to the public side. She adds 2 sts (out of 96 total) each time, which is 2 percent. Two percent of 141 is 2.8 sts, so I can work either 2 or 3 sts extra at the end of each of my short rows.

• If I work 2 extra, then over 9 rows, I’ll work an additional 9 times 2, or 18 stitches, plus the original 71. That’s 89 total stitches involved in the back neck shaping, or slightly less than two-thirds of the neck circumference.
• If I work 3 extra each time, then I’ll work an additional 9 times 3, or 27 sts, plus the 71, for a total of 98. That’s 70 percent of the circumference.

Either option would probably be fine, but the second option would make shallower “slopes” on the edges of the short-row “wedge.” So at every turning point, I’ll work 3 sts past the previous turning point. When I finish the last short row, I’ll turn to the public side, then continue working in the round.

Needle Size?

Since I hope to work in the round for at least two rounds, then do the short rows, then resume in the round before the first increase round, do I need to change needle sizes when I switch from ITR to flat and back to ITR? At this point, I’m tempted to not bother, because the short rows will be such a small area of fabric relative to the rest of the yoke.

This situation is very different from what I had with the CotLin U-Neck, whose uppermost 64, er, whatevers were all actually rows before I finally finished the front neck shaping and could switch to working ITR. Here, there are only going to be 10 actual worked-flat rows in the entire sweater, and they’ll be on the back neck, which most people won’t pay any attention to. I certainly won’t!

What do you know? I just made the decision! I’ll work the entire sweater on 3.00 mm needles.

Technique, Not Needle, Swatching

However, even though I don’t need to swatch to find the best needle size for this yarn, I feel like there’s so much going on right at the very beginning of this project that I’m going to try out the first quarter or even half of the yoke depth on a colorway that won’t be used in this sweater.

So the Polar Blue skein, one of the three solid colors in the Reflections value pack, is going to get sacrificed to testing out this crazy plan at the top of the yoke. I may even remove the PCO and see how things play out when I work the ribbing, including its decrease round and BO.

It should be interesting, to say the least.