I updated my garment chart with the body increases so that I could count how many stitches I would need to make with each colorway, just for some assurance that I wouldn’t be playing yarn chicken with any of them. I also updated the sleeves to show the two stitches I’d need to increase to accommodate the 2×2 ribbing on the cuffs. I used blank table rows between each group of colorway rows to make it easy to select the table cells containing the stitch symbols for each colorway.
Tag Archives: CotLin U-Neck
Working: Body Shaping
Since I’m using less yarn than I estimated from the weights and stitch counts of my swatches, I am definitely going to do some increases down the body as I work the final three colors. With the five-inch difference between chest and hips, it’s asking a lot of an unshaped sweater to make that large an accommodation.
Working: The Sleeves
Because I’m working a fade, there was really no point in waiting to do the sleeves until I finished the body, which might be the usual way to work when a top-down sweater is all one color.
Both sets of sleeve stitches were still on ribbons from working the body, so working with one sleeve at a time, I had to get the held stitches and the stitches from the PCO on two circs.
Working: Splitting the Sleeves from the Body
Round 87 is the biggest moment of the entire project, where I split the sleeve and body stitches and do the underarm cast-ons.
I had decided to duplicate my techniques from bottom-up seamless sweaters as much as possible in this top-down project, and when working bottom-up, I leave the underarm stitches of body and sleeves live for later grafting (weaving, Kitchener stitch), which completes the seamlessness of the FO. On this particular garment, worked with zero ease and in a non-resilient yarn, having seamless underarms should help me put it on and take it off in addition to being much more comfortable in the actual wearing.
Shaping: Finishing the Front Neck
What is the one piece of advice we all hear and even give—yet ourselves ignore—as we knit?
Check your gauge before you begin, and check it as you work, changing needle size as necessary.
Yeah. I only did the swatching part. I forgot to check as I went. My initial stitch gauge was good, but about an inch and a half in, it tightened up considerably. When I put all the stitches on ribbon to do a test fit, it seemed awfully narrow and short. Now, the narrowness will relax out a bit with the first laundering, and as for the shortness, well, I swatched and accounted for the number of rows/rounds I’d need to get from the back neck to the underarm. I decided I was just going to trust the numbers, almost in spite of the evidence that was before me in the mirror.
Working: Casting On
FINALLY!!!
Now that I know I have plenty of yarn, even to do some A-line shaping on the body, and that the places where I’ll change colorways are set, I am ready to cast on.
As soon as I learned the crochet CO, it became my go-to for all projects, even those that start with ribbing. Apparently I Goldilocks my crochet CO (not too loose, not too tight, but just right), because it is as nearly stretchy as the fabric that springs from it. Well, stretchy enough, even when the initial fabric is ribbing.