I'm still working on the cotton sweater. Its midway down the bottom, right about where I like to insert some short rows to better fit my backside. I have in fact just finished the short rows. You could say it is all downhill from here. I have a few more increases to my optimal width and then just a few rows for length. Not far at all. I will have the main part of it done on the weekend.
As I have been knitting, I've been thinking about stockinette. How often have you heard people say that its just miles and miles of boring stockinette? I am never going to believe you because in my world, it does not happen.
I start at a woman's large to get a nice fit at my shoulders and at my underarms. After that I have to rapidly increase because everything below is a whole other kettle of fish. It is, in fact, far beyond the kettle, rather more like a rather large lake beyond a kettle. Suffice it to say, when I knit a sweater for myself, I have a lot of knitting to do. And yet, I am seldom bored by the volume of stockinette.
It is more like a challenge. There are all sorts of things to consider, even in the simplest of shapes. There are the increases needed to make the hips fit. There is the how and when and how often.
The first shaping I need is at the underarms. I need to get a lot of inches in a very short space so that it fits nicely at the bust.I usually do a split increase. I do one increase just as I come to the under arm (the flat part where you cast on or off stitches through the underarm) and one as I get to the end of it. If you do all the increasing so close together as I have to, you can occasionally get a little bit of a wing thing on the side and this helps to mitigate that. It is a little bit of divide and conquer, but it keeps the silhouette more gently sloped outwards. The other thing is that it gives me the option, if I need a few more fast increases somewhere along the way (as in I miscalculated), to put them where a side seam normally would be. Its kind of interesting watching all that shaping happen.
Then on the fronts there are short rows so that it fits my bustline correctly. That takes some planning. Too high up and it looks just a little odd, and too long forgotten and oh dear, bad, bad, bad - The sweater wants to do an outie, where I am shaped as a in-y. Then there is the previously mentioned backside shaping for the shelf butt thing I have going on. That has to happen in the right place too, plus too many short rows and it hangs low in the back, too few and it looks like its pulling up.
When you consider my height, and that the very bottom 3-4 inches of a sweater should not have any increases, it means that there is a lot going on in those acres and acres of stockinette.
Not boring at all. For me.
It's a little like anything else. Perspective and context make a huge difference.
The first shaping I need is at the underarms. I need to get a lot of inches in a very short space so that it fits nicely at the bust.I usually do a split increase. I do one increase just as I come to the under arm (the flat part where you cast on or off stitches through the underarm) and one as I get to the end of it. If you do all the increasing so close together as I have to, you can occasionally get a little bit of a wing thing on the side and this helps to mitigate that. It is a little bit of divide and conquer, but it keeps the silhouette more gently sloped outwards. The other thing is that it gives me the option, if I need a few more fast increases somewhere along the way (as in I miscalculated), to put them where a side seam normally would be. Its kind of interesting watching all that shaping happen.
Then on the fronts there are short rows so that it fits my bustline correctly. That takes some planning. Too high up and it looks just a little odd, and too long forgotten and oh dear, bad, bad, bad - The sweater wants to do an outie, where I am shaped as a in-y. Then there is the previously mentioned backside shaping for the shelf butt thing I have going on. That has to happen in the right place too, plus too many short rows and it hangs low in the back, too few and it looks like its pulling up.
When you consider my height, and that the very bottom 3-4 inches of a sweater should not have any increases, it means that there is a lot going on in those acres and acres of stockinette.
Not boring at all. For me.
It's a little like anything else. Perspective and context make a huge difference.
1 comment:
I don't mind miles of stockinette, even without increases. I keep that for tv watching or chatting with other people knitting. It's my "I don't have to pay attention to it" knitting. That's why I knit plain vanilla socks - I gets socks out of found time that would otherwise be wasted.
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