The Knitting Fiend

When I first started charting my own sweaters, I was puzzled by yoke sweaters. I read widely different instructions in Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “Knitting Without Tears” and Barbara Walker’s “Knitting from the Top”. I dug up a bunch of patterns and noticed each used apparently different charting rules.

Why did they all seem so different? Well, it turns out there is a sort of rule for charting these sweaters, and, had I known it, I would have recognized the entirely different sounding rules were really all the same. The reason they look different is the rule are very flexible!

Very flexible. And that’s a good thing — it means a designer can vary the rate of shaping to fit in a large variety of fair-isle stitch patterns.

In this article, I’ll reveal “the shaping rules” for shaping a sweater; I’ll discuss the first rule at some length. Still, to simplify, I’ll limit my discussion to stitch types similar to stockinette and fair-isle. (This means if you want to use some fancy stitch type — like garter stitch, weird ribbing cables etc., you may need to ask me more questions.)

When knitting a sweater from the neck down in stockinette or fair-isle, you can create a good shoulder fit rule one says: increase stitches at a rate equivalent to 8 stitches every 2 rounds in the region between the neck and shoulders.¹ (You can and will change this increase rate below the shoulders — most people will increase stitches more slowly below the shoulders.)
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Believe it or not, I’ve actually been knitting along on my yoke-u-lator sweater. I’ve finished the basic programming, for the sweater shape, but I always leave adding the yardage estimate until last. So, I’m currently programming that.

I’ve knit most the sweater, test fitting as I went along. Since I’ve only got one cuff to finish, this means I’ve actually put on the sweater and made sure it fits the way I wanted it too. (Mind you, I wanted an oversized sweater this time, so you will say, “Wow, big!” I knit a size 16 adjusting lengths down a bit to fit my 5′4″ frame; I normally knit an 8 or 10 depending on what I want to wear.)

Based on a comments, I know there are at least a few people anxiously awaiting the program to create the pattern for circular yoke sweater. So, you are all probably wondering, “Why the delay?”. Well, I had intended to get it out fairly quickly, but I’m afraid catastrophe struck.

I was sitting next to Jim, knitting away. I heard the dryer buzz, jumped, plopped my knitting on the coffee table and dashed to the basement to deal with the laundry. While fluffing and folding, I heard a far off voice shouting, “Lucia! I think the Piewacket is ‘blessing’ your sweater!”

Did the body attached to that voice grab the cat and try to save my sweater? No. (Not that I really blame him.; who wants to pick up a cat who is in the middle of blessing a sweater?)

When I arrived upstairs, I found the sweater was fully blessed. I wrapped it in a towel, carried it downstairs and washed the work on the needles. It’s difficult to wring out the excess water while it’s on the needles, so it took some time to dry. (The body that did not rescue the sweater did clean the coffee table.)

Fortunately, simple washing seemed to fix “the problem”; when the sweater was dry, I continued to knit.

For those wondering about the yoke-u-lator itself: I’m incorporating the yardage estimator. Because the yardage estimate bits of the code use information from the shaping code, I find it’s best to do that after I test knit the sweater shape.