If you own a bulky knitting machine, there is a pattern available at knitting any way.

Now, Cass (or anyone else) I challenge you to knit one of these puppies by hand!

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments
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If you’d like to join the machine knitters web ring, click “join” below.

1. The Knitting Fiend:Luxury Baby Clothes Haiku (Thu, 05 Apr 2007)
2. Knutty4Knitting:
   About Crystals and My Career (2007-02-25)
3. Fyberspates:Pot noodles.
4. Nurturing Needles: Feed Missing
5. Just Jussi:
   Good Friday round up (2007-04-06)
6. Once Upon a time: The Green Onion: Feed Missing
7. My Knitting Machines:Can You Speak Turkish? (2007-04-04)
8. Thoughts of TTD: Feed Missing
9. Machineknittingblog.net:
   What have I been doing? This is the question I hav… (Tue, 27 Jun 2006)
10. Dancing Barefoot:lace Opal scarf (2007-02-17)
11. Knit In Your Pants:Back in the saddle again…. (Thu, 22 Mar 2007)
12. Knitting Bare:
    Yes..I’m gonna rant again (2007-04-01)
13. Knitting on the Rogue River:Stitches West Update… ( Fri, 06 Apr 2007)
14. Roz’s Loft: Feed Missing
15. Knitsings:Be careful of what you promise (Mon, 2 Apr 2007)
16. Knitorious Amelia:
    I need knitting fuel to continue the sock! (2007-03-01)
17. The Stitchery:A Bit of a Hiatus, Perhaps…. ( Fri, 30 Mar 2007)
18. Zeepo’s Knitting Blog:
    A Good Day of Knitting & Cranking Exspected (2007-04-06)
19. The Threadmill:
    Not Yet Back in the Swing of Things! (2007-01-12)
20. Colin Knits: Westboro Baptist Church (2007-04-01)
21. Quail Knits:A Blue Dress (2007-04-05)
22. Needles of Steel:Disorganised? Me? (warning – long!) (2007-04-06)
23. Distant Knitter:
    Pickle Cardigan (2007-04-06)

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This is an automated linkfest that lets knitting bloggers to publicise their best articles. I’m hoping it will let help my readers andme, me, me find the best knitting articles without too much difficulty. If this works, I plan to run “The Carnival of Knitting” monthly and launch a second type of carnival (which I think will be fun!)

To enter your article “The First Carnival of Great Knitting”, pick the best knitting blog article you wrote in the pastyear, add link to this post. (That link to this : http://www.thedietdiary.com/blog/lucia/432. )

Then, send a trackback ping to http://www.thedietdiary.com/blog/lucia/432/trackback

When my blog receives the ping and finds the link to this article, your entry should automatically appear just my announcement. (If your blogging software does not have an automatic trackback feature, you can sign up to trackback using haloscan. )

I will moderate entries, to make sure: they are related to knitting, there is only 1 trackback per site, the articles include a link to my blog article and the articles don’t violate my standards on a variety of issues. I reserve the right to reject for any reason.

Now, enter your best knitting article! Or, encourage someone to enter their best knitting blog article.

Note to those who know about “no follow” tags, I installed the “DoFollow” plug in and trackback links on my site that are more one day old will be counted by Google and search engines that rank you based on links.

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I have made a couple of skirts with side seam shaping and encountered unsolvable problems, because the skirts started to have longer peaks hanging down on the side seams that could not easily be fixed with anything but ripping.

Since then I have not made a skirt following that or a similar pattern.

Any tricks you know?

The problem Angelika is describing is fairly common, and is noticeable when a person knits a long, flared skirts. I snapped a picture of a page from "mon tricot special: knit and crochet."¹ Notice the knitter is perplexed because the sides forms droopy downward facing points? Ick!

Why does this happen? One common theory you will find posted on web pages is the side seams stretch. The other is that the sides seams are too long in the first place. The best solution to the problem comes from understanding that both stretching and being too long in the first place contribute to the problem.

Let's start by examining a flat pattern of flared skirt designed by someone who insists it's important to "keep it simple" and not make things "too complicated." A typical design is shown to the left and outlined in black. Notice the skirt is a trapezoid; the top width should be a bit wider than than the wearer's actual waist. How much wider is a matter of preference; if it's too small to get over the hips, a zipper will be required. Also, if you make the waist very tailored, you should add interior darts for a good fit. If you do not use a zipper, the skirt must be wide enough to pass over the wearers hips; for a flared skirt, the lower portion continues to widen.

In a "keep it simple stupid" (K.I.S.S.) design, the hem forms a straight line.

Ok, so why might the edges droop on a skirt knit following the K.I.S.S. design rules? Let's look at the geometry.

I illustrated the length of the skirt along the center front with a green line, and the length along the side in black. Notice the length along the side greater than the length down the front. When the skirt flares a lot, the side length can be much greater than the center length. While the hem looks horizontal on paper, when worn, the skirt will drape down from the wearer's hips, and the length at the sides will be longer than the length down the center.

Ok, but sometimes the "keep it simple stupid" ( K.I.S.S. ) method works and there are no droopy point. Why?

Let's consider a straight skirt shaped above the hips, but unshaped below the hips. I illustrated that in red. It's pretty easy to see that the red line illustrating the length of the new side seam is longer than the green line; this is due to the shaping above the hips. However, that's ok.

Why is it ok? Well, if you were to put an elastic band around waist, and a second around your hips, and measured from the waist down to the hips, you'd find the distance measured along the hip is greater than the distance measured along the waist. (Well, you'd find this if you have a sufficiently trim figure to make your hips poke out more than your tummy.) And, quite often the difference in the body lengths is pretty close the different distances on the trapezoid. So, it works out ok-- or at least it's good enough for knitting.

Ok, so maybe you just rushed to the closet and measured these two distances. And maybe you thought: "Hmm.. I have a J. Lo butt; maybe I need the back to be longer than the front." If you were a dress maker working with woven fabrics, you'd do that. When pattern drafting for woven fabrics, you want to make sure the skirt length is "just right" along the front, back and sides, and you do a bunch of other complicated geometric things to make sure the grain hangs correctly etc.

We don't need to go that far with knitting because knit fabric stretches. When knitting a straight skirt, the K. I. S. S. ("keep it simple stupid" ) design shown in red works just fine for most figure types. Droopy sides usually only arise when the skirt is flared and fairly long.

What's the solution? See the purple diagonal lines on the bottom of the skirt? When you knit a flared skirt, you want to work short rows to lengthen the center while keeping the sides a bit short.

Now, I know you are all thinking: "Hey, I bet Lucia's going to write a calculator telling us how to chart this all in advance. I can just cast on knit the short rows, then work up toward the waist, and it will all work out."

No! I could do that, but it's not the best solution. Do you remembered the other theory for side droop I mentioned? The sides seams stretch more than the center? Well, they might. Or, the front might stretch more than the sides. Fabric does stretch under the weight of gravity. All fabric. And knit fabric stretches more than woven fabric. Heavy fabric usually stretches more than light fabric. Loosely knit or woven fabric stretches more than tightly knit or woven fabric.

So, we have no idea exactly how much the fabric will stretch under gravity until after we create it.

Luckily, that's not a problem. In fact, recognizing this makes the solution to the "problem" easier. Here's what you should do when charting. ( I will assume you knit this in two pieces, although it's even easier if you knit circular.): (Click "more" if it appears. )

1. Chart the skirt as though you are going to knit it using the "K.I.S.S" method. (Read the full directions before charting, because I'm going to give some warnings at the end.)
2. Start one piece, knitting from top down, but try it on occasionally to test the length.
3. When the side length as about 1" shorter than you want, stop knitting. Put the live stitches on a string and set that piece aside. Knit the other piece. (Note: If you'd been knitting circular, this would be easier, wouldn't it?)
4. Hang the skirt vertically over night. The skirt will stretch and lengthen hopefully less than an inch . It may also become more narrow. Baste the side seams together.
5. Now, test fit the skirt. Decide if you like the side length. If it's too long, you'll need to rip a few rows; that's why I suggested stopping when you thought it was a little too short! If it's too short, you'll need to knit a few more rows. But, don't do that yet. You'll need to take some measurements.
6. Have someone measure the length from the floor to the side seam. Call this H1. Now, have them measure the length from the floor to the center. Call this H2. The difference (H2-H1)= DH is the depth of the short rows. That would be the distance from the horizontal dashed purple line and the black hem line in the sketch above and to the left. Write this number down. You'll need it for the calculator I provide below.

   (Yes. I know what you are thinking. "I have a rounded J. Lo butt, and flat J. Lo abs." Yes, you can take separate measurements for the front and back. But calculate them one at a time. )

7. Now, fill out some numbers in the calculator below, and I'll give you directions to finish your hem.

That's what you do to work your hem and get it to hang level.

But, do you remember I warned you to read the whole thing before charting? There's a potential problem when knitting skirts. When you test fit the skirt, it's possible the skirt got a lot narrower. (Or you got fatter, but that's not a knitting issue.)

Hopefully, the skirt hasn't gotten too narrow in the hips. Machine knitters who make lots of these things learn to leave plenty of ease in the seat and waist; you should too. How much? Beats me. It depends on how much you expect the fabric to stretch! Some designers knit unshaped yardage the length of the skirt and then determine the gauge after hanging the fabric vertically over night. This is worth it if you make 200 skirts by machine! You could try to estimate how much your fabric will lengthen or narrow by knitting a swatch and letting it hang with some light weights attached overnight. Unfortunately, it's difficult to be precise, but you can at least see if it narrows 2% or 20%. If it narrows down only a little, you only need to add a little extra width through the hips. If it narrows down a lot, you'll need to add a lot or there is some risk the skirt will be way too snug around your hips.

Anyway, Angelika, I suspect this is more than you needed to know. But, good luck with your skirt.

1. My copy of the "mon tricot special: knit and crochet" workbook includes the number 0 D17. I've searched for the copyright date, but I can't find it. I probably bought my English language version in 1980 or 81; I definitely bought my French language version between September of 1979 and May of 1980. I also searched for "Mon Tricot" on Amazon.com. I discovered three copies of their out of print stitch pattern book were available, but nothing else came up. They were great books; it's a shame!

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2005. | Permalink | One comment
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• donating craft items for sale. These will be sold and the proceeds will be sent to The Red Cross.
• Buying craft items: The proceeds from your purchase will be sent to The Red Cross.

To learn more, visit Etsy stores or Crafter’s United.

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In principle, designing a any type of fitted sleeve cap to fit into an armhole opening is simple. In practice, designing fitted caps to fit in the armhole involve pesky calculations. Clearly, this is the job for another knitting calculator!

Today, I'm going to describe how to calculate a simplified set in sleeve cap and also provide the calculator. Before going further, I want to briefly describe the principle. It's pretty easy.

Examine the schematic to the left. At the top, the schematic shows the right hand side of sweater front joined together at the shoulder and turned on their side. Below, a sleeve is placed near the armhole. One half of the sleeve cap is outlined in red as is the armhole opening on the front piece.

The general principle for cap design, which applies to sleeve cap/armhole variations is this:

These two curved red lines should be approximately the same length.

That's it. That's the principle. The idea underlying the principle is this: You need to sew that sleeve into the hole, and you don't want it to pucker. So, the length of the two seams need to match.

While this is the general principle, I must admit two things. First, some violations are permitted to achieve style variations. For example, if you actually want a puff sleeves, you do make the length of the red curved line on the sleeve cap longer. Second, some designers like to make the length of the red line on a very fitted caps up to 10% longer than the armhole. The extra length permits the cap to be eased into the hole and can be useful if the cap is curved. When sewing with woven garments, the extra length becomes essential and some precision is required to determine the best correct length to permit easing without resulting in gathering. However, knit fabric stretches and forgives a certain degree of mismatch; the knitter does not need to fret they are 2% off on their calculation.

Now, I'll proceed to illustrate this principle on a simplified cap that looks fairly fitted, but which results in simple knitting directions. The knitted cap will look like the one in the schematic. True fitted sleeve caps have a bell shaped cap; this simplified one will use "straight line" shaping. When knit from the bottom up, this type of cap is shaped by binding off a few stitches under the arm; I've illustrated these in violet. Afterwards, stitches are eliminated at a rate of one stitch every two rows. Finally, all remaining stitches are bound off, resulting in a wide flat region at the top of the sleeve.

I want to pause to provide and answer to this question: Why decrease one stitch every two rows? This is an arbitrary choice. In fact, this is "the "simplification compared to a fully fitted fitted sleeve which would have a bell shaped cap.

Now, examine the sweater body and its armhole opening. At chest level, a front or back has enough stitches to create the desired body width at the bottom of the armhole. At shoulder level, the front and back have enough stitches to create the desired shoulder width . The precise method of shaping to vary the sweater width depends on the style chosen by the designer. I'll describe the shaping as knit from the bottom to the top.

If knit from the bottom, the armhole is shaped by first binding off a few stitches under the arm. As a general rule, the number of stitches bound off should match the number bound off for the sleeve. This makes it easy to sew those two flat parts together. Afterwards, stitches are bound off at a rate of 1 stitch every 2 rows until the shoulder width is achieved. Notice this is the same rate of binding off as on the cap. Choosing the same bind off rate for both pieces isn't necessary, but it makes it easy to match rows on the garment and sleeves in this area, and simplifies seaming. I then knit without shaping until the armhole depth is achieved. Afterwards I shape the shoulders, but this detail is not shown in the figure.

Now, for the knitty gritty: creating knitting directions that result in the correct sleeve cap. Almost anyone can figure out the directions to shape the armhole based on the verbal description above. However, to design this cap we need to figure out

• How many stitches are in the biceps.
• How many stitches do we bind off at the underarm.
• How times do we decrease at a rate or 1 stitch every two rows and
• How many stitches will remain at the top of the cap.

However, to figure the answers to the last three bullets, we must first design the armhole. So, I'll explain by way of example. The example will be in the form of a calculator, so if you want, you can change the number to match your sweater design.

That's how you calculate.

But, before I finish, I mustn't forget I promised to explain the minimum and maximum sleeve widths for this design. Examine the little chart showing the final cap shaping. Consider first that L must be positive; If you asked for too wide a cap, the calculated value of L will be negative. If you asked for too narrow a cap, the number of stitches bound off at the top will be negative. (Actually, I code so the top is never an actual point! )

I know this was long. But I also know there are lots of people out there who want to figure out how to get their sleeve caps to fit into the hole. Plus, I need the calculator. In fact, I waited too long to code it. I'm knitting Jim's sweater from the top down, and I knit the armhole past the upper armhole depth. Yes, I knit, then actually wrote the calculator afterwards. Now, I'll rip because I didn't calculate first!

I'm an idjit!

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To simplify determining the gauge, I added vertical ribbing to the sides, then knit one repeat up in Plymouth Galway. It measures about 5″ or 5.5″ across. (Yes, I admit it, those who are familiar with this pattern will recognize I made a mistake when I began the motif. . . ¹)

A chart for this cable can be found in Barbara Walker’s Charted Knitting: Third Treasury Of Knitting Stitches.

I didn’t like the suggested method for creating 5 stitches out of one at the bottom of that loopy part because I found it difficult to work. So, I “unvented” a method which I found easier to do. I don’t quite like the appearance of my method; it has a sort of “gap” at the bottom that doesn’t match the appearance at the top.

I will continue to fiddle.

Anyway, tiny gap or no tiny gap, I love the cable. It’s going to appear on Jim’s sweater.

I’ll finish with a yarn & LYS plug. This swatch is knit Plymouth Galway which normally works up at 5 st/inch in stockinette. It’s 100% wool, and comes in 100 gram balls. I purchased one ball on Saturday at Zora’s Yarn in Naperville. Knitche in Downer’s Grove also carries Plymouth Galway, but they were out of this color on Friday when I visited.²

I’d say the cables are popping nicely, and the yarn has a pleasant feel. However, this yarn doesn’t have the “true Aran” feel you find in tightly knit, authentic fisherman sweaters. (It feels nicer. Authentic fisherman sweaters are knit very densely out of hardwearing yarn with lots of lanolin. They are terrific, but not “comfy”. Jim who is not planning to fish in the North Atlantic, or the Irish Sea, and will not be ice fishing with his brothers next winter, prefers the cozier feel of this yarn! )

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