Now that I knew how wide my edgings would be, I converted my garment measurements into stitch and row counts using the postwashed gauges of my third two-stranded swatch, which had been worked on 3.00 mm needles.

But how, exactly, was I going to get to the underarm as I worked top-down, at which point I’d be working front–back–front seamlessly?

I wanted to have Mistake-Stitch Rib on the back neck, but also have it wide enough so the front bands flowed straight down out of it. And I really wanted the Mistake-Stitch Rib’s decided vertical appearance to be running vertically down the edges of the armholes, rather than knitting up stitches around the armhole and working perpendicular to the grain of the main fabric.

I could do a provisional CO just above the underarm on the back, work upward toward the shoulders with Mistake-Stitch Rib at both armhole edges, start the Mistake-Stitch Rib for the back neck at the appropriate place, work to the back neck height, then work each front shoulder separately downward to the underarm while being able to continue both the front band’s edging continuously with the back neck’s, as well as the front’s armhole edgings with the back’s. Then I would work across one front, cast on for the underarm, work across the back, cast on for the second underarm, and work across the second front. I’d have to be careful to leave the back and the first front at the proper point so that when I turned at the end of the second front, I was working the same row, either right side or wrong side, on all three pieces as I joined them into a single piece of knitting.

Or I could do the same thing but omit the edging along the armholes, then in the finishing I could knit up along the bottom of the UA, work back and forth for the proper depth, then work the front and back armhole edges separately to the top of the shoulder, connecting the end of each row via a decrease to the edge of the front/back armhole, and finally grafting the live stitches together at the top of the shoulder.

But! Doing the armhole edges at the same time as the main fabric meant I wouldn’t have to reserve yarn—always fraught with the danger of yarn chicken—to work them at the end in the finishing.

Neither of these solutions appealed. So I slept on it.

The Key to the Design

My issue was the half-stitch offset that happens when you take out a PCO. That was complicating the way I would work the armhole edges at the same time I was working up the back yoke over the tops of the shoulders and down the two separate fronts.

Then I remembered something I had only briefly seen but never done before when working in opposite directions from a central starting point: knitting up in the “in-between” spots from a regular CO rather than using live stitches after removing a provisional CO.

This technique would allow me to start right at the top of the shoulder, work the back down to the underarm, go back and knit up stitches for each front shoulder and again work down to the UA, then join the fronts and back to work them seamlessly as described previously.

I could easily work the armhole edgings at the same time as the main fabric, eliminating one source of yarn chicken since I wouldn’t have to reserve yarn for working the edgings at the end.

Swatching the Technique

So I swatched the shoulder situation, splitting up the stitches into Mistake-Stitch Rib sections and stockinette sections, though not using the full stitch counts I’ll have in the actual vest. The first part of the swatch, in pink, represents the back shoulders and neck.

Then I went back to the CO edge and used red to knit up sts for the right shoulder in the “in-between” spots, which actually was greatly simplified because of my go-to crochet CO. I simply pulled the working yarn through each chain loop. I then realized I’d have to work a WS row as the first row, so I frogged the knitted-up sts and, well, purled up sts instead, starting at the point where the front band connects to the back neck rather than at the armhole. So with the wrong side facing me, I purled through each chain loop.

Then when I turned, the working yarn was in the correct spot to start with row 1 of the right front.

While I was working with the red yarn, I decided to try out different increase types and placements for shaping the V-neck. I didn’t like my first attempts, which were yarnovers between the stockinette and the front band, even with twisting them closed on the next row. I also tried the kind of increase where you knit in the right leg of the stitch below the next stitch (or the left leg of the “grandparent” of the stitch you just worked), but it looked so bad on its own that I didn’t even leave it to see how it would look with another row worked above it.

Then I started using a reverse yarnover one stitch away from the band. That looked better, but it still didn’t quite please me.

Since I had the other “shoulder” available on the swatch, I decided to follow through with what I started with the red: knitting up sts and starting with a WS row. So I used gray, starting at the point where the front band meets the back neck, then continued working down the left front. For the V-neck shaping on this side, I did reverse yarnovers two stitches away from the front band, twisting them shut on the next row. I like this placement the best, but I need to do the reverse yarnovers on the right front and regular yarnovers on the left front, so that their tops legs point at the diagonal lines that are being formed.

There is a slight ditch along the knit-up (or purl-up!) line, but shoulder seams often have some kind of minor—or major—indicator that two pieces of flat knitting have been joined. I choose to regard the ditch as a design feature rather than a negative element.

Unshaped Armholes

Since I intended to work the edgings at the same time as the main fabric, and because the edging stitch pattern has such a strong vertical component, I decided I would make the armholes unshaped at the underarm. That is, there would be no “underarm curve” to ease the transition from yoke width to body width.

If you imagine working a sweater bottom-up in pieces, you bind off a certain number of sts at the underarm, then over the next umpteen rows, you decrease a stitch every row for several rows, then every other row for several more rows—or maybe just EOR for the entire “curve.” Typically about half the sts are bound off all at once, then the other half are decreased away over however many rows at whatever rate(s).

In this garment, I decided I would simply have square corners at the bottom of the armholes, exactly as if, when I was working bottom-up, I BO all on one row the entire set of sts to decrease from chest width to yoke width.

Edging the Bottoms of the Armholes

One issue I immediately recognized was that I wanted the vertical armhole edgings to merge smoothly into the edging that would be along the horizontal part of the underarms, where I would need to cast on stitches to make the full chest circumference.

I was pretty sure that outcome would be possible, as long as I CO the correct number of UA sts. I could easily fiddle with the stitch counts in a chart to see how many sts I would need to keep the pattern intact where the vertical edges joined the horizontal edge. After working the underarm edging to the correct depth, I simply switch to stockinette.