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arguchiki have started a new knitting project (no pics yet--i'll post some when it's done). i'm making it with some cream yarn (lamb's pride again) that i bought a long, long, long time ago--it was marked down to half price, and they had 10 skeins left in the same dye lot, so i bought all of it. i have always been meaning to do something with it, and now i am. finally. after moving it 2-3 times in vermont, then out to seattle, then 3 times in seattle (4 if you count the move to a storage area in april 2006).
so the thing i'm knitting is another sweater, but this time it's my own design, and i'm knitting it in the round from the bottom up, rather than back-and forth and in pieces (you can also knit in the round from the top down, which i'll probably try someday). the way this works is that you knit the body and the sleeves separately, as tubes, until they are the length you want them to be to the underarm, then you join the sleeves to the body, knit the yoke, and finally graft the underarm stitches together. the result is a raglan sleeved sweater, which for some reason i have always preferred. i have finished the body (to the underarm), and i've been working on the first sleeve for a few days now. i had it completed to the elbow but then i decided i didn't like it, for a few reasons:
1. the wrist was a little tighter than i wanted.
2. i had done some of the increases every 6th round, and some of them every 8th round, and i didn't like the effect. (a sleeve starts with a small-ish number of stitches, and then you increase by two stitches every inch or so until you have the number of stitches you need to fit around the upper arm.)
3. i had to add 4 stitches to my target number for the upper arm in order to make the pattern work out evenly--it's a 4 stitch repeat, and the way i had figured things out on paper, before casting on, i was planning to increase by 20 stitches. unfortunately, 20 is an odd multiple of 4. i realized halfway up the sleeve that i need this number to be an even multiple of 4, so i tried just adding 4 stitches and didn't like the effect.
so the upshot is that the sleeve ended up being narrower at the wrist than i wanted and wider at the upper arm than i wanted, with the increases spaced unevenly up the length. i was going to just go with it, but then i was like, "no, this is an experimental sweater. it's ok to rip out a failed piece* and go back to the drawing board." that's what i did. this time, i cast on 40 stitches at the wrist (rather than 36), and i'm increasing to 56 stitches, which means i'm increasing by 16 stitches, an even multiple of 4, and i'm spacing the increases every 8 rounds. i already like it better.
the cool thing about knitting in the round is that i can check the fit by simply donning the tube i'm working on--i did this with the body piece, to check that it was going to hit right where i want it to; and i'm doing it with the sleeve, too, and i'll do it as i knit up the yoke so i can test the position of the neckline. i'm planning it as a boat neck, but i might change my mind about that. i love that i can make that decision when i get there--i'm not stuck with a pattern someone else wrote, a style someone else designed. :-)
the best thing is how much i'm learning from this project. i think i'll be able to make any kind of sweater i want to, after this. i'm already imagining different ways of configuring the raglan decreases so that i can fine tune the shape of the shoulders. at some point i want to just buy a bunch of yarn (i'll probably do it with an interesting shade of this lamb's pride yarn, actually) and knit up a weird, improvisational sweater completely on the fly.
*i just ripped out the stitches and rolled the yarn back up into a ball. because it's cream yarn and might have gotten slightly soiled from being handled, i'm only going to use it in the sweater as a last resort. i have plenty of this yarn, so i'll be able to knit the whole thing with fresh yarn, and then i can use this ripped out skein to make a hat or something. (i used one skein to knit up a bunch of swatches to test stitch patterns, and there's one skein that got stained at some point with a little bit of this brown yucky stuff i can't identify. so that leaves me with 7 good skeins for the sweater.)
so the thing i'm knitting is another sweater, but this time it's my own design, and i'm knitting it in the round from the bottom up, rather than back-and forth and in pieces (you can also knit in the round from the top down, which i'll probably try someday). the way this works is that you knit the body and the sleeves separately, as tubes, until they are the length you want them to be to the underarm, then you join the sleeves to the body, knit the yoke, and finally graft the underarm stitches together. the result is a raglan sleeved sweater, which for some reason i have always preferred. i have finished the body (to the underarm), and i've been working on the first sleeve for a few days now. i had it completed to the elbow but then i decided i didn't like it, for a few reasons:
1. the wrist was a little tighter than i wanted.
2. i had done some of the increases every 6th round, and some of them every 8th round, and i didn't like the effect. (a sleeve starts with a small-ish number of stitches, and then you increase by two stitches every inch or so until you have the number of stitches you need to fit around the upper arm.)
3. i had to add 4 stitches to my target number for the upper arm in order to make the pattern work out evenly--it's a 4 stitch repeat, and the way i had figured things out on paper, before casting on, i was planning to increase by 20 stitches. unfortunately, 20 is an odd multiple of 4. i realized halfway up the sleeve that i need this number to be an even multiple of 4, so i tried just adding 4 stitches and didn't like the effect.
so the upshot is that the sleeve ended up being narrower at the wrist than i wanted and wider at the upper arm than i wanted, with the increases spaced unevenly up the length. i was going to just go with it, but then i was like, "no, this is an experimental sweater. it's ok to rip out a failed piece* and go back to the drawing board." that's what i did. this time, i cast on 40 stitches at the wrist (rather than 36), and i'm increasing to 56 stitches, which means i'm increasing by 16 stitches, an even multiple of 4, and i'm spacing the increases every 8 rounds. i already like it better.
the cool thing about knitting in the round is that i can check the fit by simply donning the tube i'm working on--i did this with the body piece, to check that it was going to hit right where i want it to; and i'm doing it with the sleeve, too, and i'll do it as i knit up the yoke so i can test the position of the neckline. i'm planning it as a boat neck, but i might change my mind about that. i love that i can make that decision when i get there--i'm not stuck with a pattern someone else wrote, a style someone else designed. :-)
the best thing is how much i'm learning from this project. i think i'll be able to make any kind of sweater i want to, after this. i'm already imagining different ways of configuring the raglan decreases so that i can fine tune the shape of the shoulders. at some point i want to just buy a bunch of yarn (i'll probably do it with an interesting shade of this lamb's pride yarn, actually) and knit up a weird, improvisational sweater completely on the fly.
*i just ripped out the stitches and rolled the yarn back up into a ball. because it's cream yarn and might have gotten slightly soiled from being handled, i'm only going to use it in the sweater as a last resort. i have plenty of this yarn, so i'll be able to knit the whole thing with fresh yarn, and then i can use this ripped out skein to make a hat or something. (i used one skein to knit up a bunch of swatches to test stitch patterns, and there's one skein that got stained at some point with a little bit of this brown yucky stuff i can't identify. so that leaves me with 7 good skeins for the sweater.)
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