Frowsery

Noro striped hat with lining, right side out

Originally uploaded by aruzin

I finished the lining for the Noro Striped Hat. It felt like I knit eons on that liner, endless rows of stockinette on size 2 needles, but I got there eventually!

The lining and the hat are exactly the same size — that’s one good thing about knitting the lining directly from the hat — and I’m told it’s much better at keeping the wind out and looks extremely professional.

Lesson learned from this project: if you’re adding a lining to a hat after the fact, and said hat has been worn for a few months, you might want to wash the hat before knitting on the lining. Once the lining is in place, you’re probably going to want to steam block the whole thing to smooth out the decreases, and it turns out that hot steam really activates any odors that may have accumulated in the garment from normal wear. Just a suggestion, folks.

I’ll be spending next week in rural Minnesota.  There’ll be plenty of time for reading, sitting at the beach, general relaxation, and, of course,  knitting.

I expect that I’ll finish Rusted Root while I’m up there; I’ve got about an inch left of knitting straight before starting the other side of the waist shaping, and that won’t require a lot of thought save keeping track of the increases and trying it on every once in a while.  I’m more than 50% complete with the sweater as a whole; it will be finished by the time I return from Minnesota.  This knowledge leads to a Very Important Question: What should I knit next?

My criteria are:

• The pattern should be easy to intermediate difficulty.  I plan to be knitting lakeside, and should I decide to throw down the knitting and jump in the lake, I want to be able to pick it up and figure where I am in the pattern with minimal hair-pulling.
• The yarn should be from my stash.  I have enough yarn that I could knit almost anything, but if the perfect pattern were to emerge I might consider buying yarn.
• I’d love to be able to use whatever I make as soon as I finish it.  Cotton or linen blends, tank tops and market bags are good suggestions.

Har, har.  Pun not intended.

I want my Rusted Root to fit the contours of my body in a flattering way and be neither a frumpy sack nor too tight. I hope to achieve this through measured waist shaping by decreasing after the widest part of my bust, knitting straight for my waist, and then increasing again for my hips.

I’m going to say this plainly: it’s important to do the math. I’d like to claim that I’ve merely seen poorly shaped garments on other people, but I’m speaking from experience. If you don’t do the math, sooner or later you’re going to end up with an ill-fitting garment with strange lumps and pockets. I had to learn from my own mistake because I assumed that figuring out the math was going to be more trouble than it was worth.   Not true!

Question 1: How much to decrease?

I used a measuring tape and verified the difference between the distance around the widest part of my bust and the distance around my rib cage right under my bust is 5 inches. I’m knitting 5.5 stitches per inch. I multiplied those two numbers together to get 27.5. I rounded up, so I’m going to decrease 28 stitches.

Question 2: How quickly to decrease?

I used the measuring tape to find the vertical distance between the widest part of my bust and just beneath it. Following the contour of my body, that measurement is 4 inches. I’m knitting 7 rows per inch. I multiplied those two numbers together to get 28, meaning I’ve got to do all of my decreases over 28 rows.

Question 3: What pattern of decreases?

Conveniently, I’ve got 28 rows to decrease 28 stitches. I’ve got markers on either side of my sweater and plan on decreasing on each side of each marker. Two decreases and two markers means that for each decrease round, I’ll be decreasing by 4 stitches.

This means my decreases will look something like this:

Row 1: decrease on either side of both side markers
Rows 2 – 4: k around

Repeat 6 more times, following rest of pattern as written.

See?  That’s not so hard, is it?

Quick fix

Originally uploaded by aruzin

I think that this fix is a good compromise. I don’t need to rip back, but I did do something to try and make it look better.  Here are the steps I took to correct the problem.

1. I dropped the extra stitch all the way to where it was accidentally created.
2. Then I worried the bars between the stitches all the way up to the ribbing to make a little extra room.
3. Next I created a stitch out of the neck ribbing and used a crochet hook to recreate stitches all the way down to the needles.
4. Lastly I tried to manipulate the knitted fabric to try and even out the stitches.

The inch or so where I created a new row of  stitches has a tighter gauge than the surrounding stitches and there are a few loose stitches in there, but I’m confident that I can even some of the tension problems out during blocking.  Even if the tight rows are still tight after blocking, I’m going to be a lot happier with the way that it looks than I would be had I left the mistake as it was before.

Mistake!

Originally uploaded by aruzin

I’m not sure how I could possibly have missed this mistake. It’s an accidental increase practically smack dab in the middle of the sweater, within 2 stitches of the lace panel, and an inch and a half above where I split off the sleeves.

Short of ripping back, there’s nothing I can do to make it look better. The stitch is split, so there’s no good way to ladder it up to the ribbing. Dropping a stitch now and laddering it up to the mistake would leave an obvious ladder right up the front of the sweater. If I do decide to rip back, I’ll lose about 4 inches plus I’ll have to re-do the sleeves.

Rusted root w/ sleeves

Originally uploaded by aruzin

So. Do I rip it all out and fix the mistake, or do I accept it and move on? It is entirely possible that this mistake is going to drive me crazy until the end of time, but that is a lot of work to redo. I’m trying to be more laid back and accepting of imperfections these days; would ignoring a flaw in a sweater be a good step? Will anyone other than me ever notice the mistake? Are there any other good rationalizations for being lazy that I can use?

Now that the second sleeve for my Rusted Root is complete, I think I can say that I like them. That might sound strange, but I really did think I was going to hate them. I went from planning 3/4 length sleeves without the puffed sleeve cap to short sleeves with the sleeve cap, I varied significantly from the pattern, and I kinda just winged it. I should hate them. I like them.

Of course, there’s plenty left to go wrong. I am not yet to the widest point of my bust, and the back seems a little loose and the front seems a little tight. I suspect that trying the sweater on while spanning 2 cables caused the differential between the front and the back and that the negative ease plus the lace panel will work that problem out. I have about an inch and a half to go in the front before I hit the widest point, but I’m considering putting the whole darn thing on waste yarn so I can try it on without the cables getting in the way. If I need to start decreasing on the back panel, now is the time to do it.

I also need to remember that this is going to stretch vertically due to the weight of the cotton. I’m hoping this will be a good thing; the upper chest should even out with blocking and lower the neckline just a bit.

I’m done with the first sleeve on my Rusted Root, hooray!

For the record: the sleeves were really big.  If you have thin arms, you will definitely not want to work your sleeves in the same way I did.  This just barely passed my tolerance test, and I may change my mind once I block!

When I worked the sleeves, I did equal raglan increases on front, back and sleeves after the initial increases for the puffy sleeve cap.  Because of my large chest, by the time I joined in the round, I had 92 stitches on each sleeve.  That is a lot of stitches.  I picked up an additional 10 stitches from the body under the arm to prevent gapping.  The additional stitches were great for the chest measurement, but potentially troubling for the sleeves.  This was going to take some thought.  I decided that I’d do the decreases as written in the pattern and then 5 rows of 2×1 ribbing, which I thought would end the sleeve at a flattering place on my arm.

Once I picked up the 10 stitches from the body, I put a marker on either side.  My instructions below do not include those stitches, and when I got to them, I just knit straight across.

The pattern calls for six decreases spaced out by 3 stitches. I wanted to make sure that the decreases were centered and aligned with the increases at the top of the sleeve, so I did something like this:

k33, (K2tog, K3) 5 times, K2tog, k32
k around
k33, (K2tog, K2) 5 times, K2tog, k32
k around
k33, (K2tog, K1) 5 times, K2tog, k32
k around
start 2×1 ribbing

I did the ribbing on size 4 needles, which is also what I did for the neck ribbing.  When I bound off, I didn’t bother going up a needle size or binding off loosely; this sleeve is very generously cut.  Again, If you have thin arms, I’d recommend starting the decreases earlier, continuing the decreases longer, or using even smaller needles on the ribbing.  Otherwise you’re going to feel like you’re wearing hats on your shoulders!

I bought enough yarn to make a long-sleeved sweater.  I bet I’ll have enough left over for a lacy Cotton Fleece tank!

Joined!

Originally uploaded by aruzin

Before I knit much further down the body I think I’m going to finish the sleeves. I decided to do the puffy sleeve-cap and need to figure out how I’m going to do the decreases on the sleeve before the ribbing.

I know I want a longer sleeve than what I’ve got right now, though it doesn’t need to be that much longer. I don’t particularly like the way that the original decreases look on the Rusted Root; I’ve already strayed pretty far from the pattern as written, so if I do go that route it might be hard to replicate. I’m thinking of doing triple decreases spaced out directly below the increases in the cap and then transitioning directly into ribbing, but that fabric might be too floppy, unless I do the decreases now and have longer ribbing to extend the length of the sleeve.

I just put the sleeves on holders and joined my Rusted Root under the arms, hooray!

At this point, most top-down raglan patterns recommend knitting straight for several inches, until the fullest part of the bust, before starting decreases.   I’m not entirely sure why this is, but on my favorite shirts, the sleeves join well above the fullest part of my chest.  I know from personal experience that if I continued knitting as the sweater is right now, that I would get unflattering pulling across the chest, but had I continued with the raglan increases the arm holes would have been saggy.

I would have preferred to do short row bust shaping, but the lace panel would have made that a bit sticky.  Instead I cast on a few extra stitches under each arm as I joined in the round.  The extra stitches plus the built-in stretchiness of the lace panel should take care of it.  I’ve got a few inches before I need to figure out the decreases, thank goodness, so now I’ll just enjoy the mostly-mindless knitting.

Rusted Root before end of raglan increases

Originally uploaded by aruzin

I know that all words and no pictures gets old fast — especially for something that’s shaping up to be mostly a knitting blog — so here’s some color!

I’m less than an inch away from joining under the arms. Because I don’t have a long enough cable, I need to transfer at least half the stitches to a second needle in order to try it on. In fact, in order to really get a sense of how the arms will fall, I need to transfer the arms to separate needles.

All this needle switching is time consuming, but worth the effort; I don’t want to risk joining too soon (and suffering too-tight arm holes) or too late (and sporting saggy sleeves.)