I’m using the “Timeless Adult Raglan Cardigan” project from Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English to determine the raglan shaping. Mathematically, doing the raglan shaping every other row doesn’t always work nicely, so she came up with a system where you do EOR shaping just above the underarm and at the last bit approaching the neck. But the area in between has the shaping occur every fourth row. I’m not going into all the details here, but I will summarize the results.
Swatching: Finding the Needle Size
From long experience, I know that I’m a loose knitter. Uh, let me rephrase that. I know that I knit fairly loosely, because I pull on the yarn with hardly any force at all as I form each stitch. For worsted weight, I typically use a size 4/3.50 mm needle to get the typical 5 spi.
Designing: Fitted Garments in Plant Fibers
One other issue that I ran across in my re-reading of Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English is that the lack of resiliency in plant fibers (along with certain animal fibers, like silk) means that garments must have zero or even negative ease (top of page 62).
Designing: Picking a Silhouette
Because I have very square shoulders, I long ago learned that I look best in raglan and circular yokes. One bottom-up seamless sweater had three different sleeve/shoulder shapings before it was done, the winner being a raglan.
Swatching: General Considerations
Yes, the s-word. Most of us don’t like swatching, because it feels like a waste of time. In some cases, it probably is. There are plenty of projects that don’t need swatching, as long as we’re willing to live with the consequences. Shawls and scarves don’t need swatching, unless we’re concerned about yarn chicken or really want the FOs to be a particular size or have a particular drape. Even hats, gloves, and mittens don’t need swatching, if we’re willing to find heads or hands that will fit in them—and if we’re not super-concerned about the warmth of the items if our fabric is a little looser that it ought to be.
Sweater Adventures
Having read that people loved sweaters made from two yarns I had never used, I took advantage of some sales and bought value packs of both. I’ll post details of each step of the process from swatching to the finished objects.