The Knitting Fiend

“Blue Sky Cotton”, worsted weight, 100 grams = 150 yards. Really, really soft. I saw the hot pink and I knew it was perfect for the halter Jim is begging me to make. For me, of course.

I’ve been surfing for patterns, mostly to gain inspiration. I haven’t found many true halters; some hits on “knit halter pattern” resulted in what I consider to be triangle bikini tops. I know I want a halter that’s flat across the top, and and just widens to the bust. I found a few.

I liked the one pictured to the right best; the pattern for that is available from Yarn Market.com. It’s knit in in super chunky Rowan “Big Wool” yarn.

Still, it’s not exactly what I want. It’s simple, and can be paired easily with jeans. I’d feel comfortable sunning in the back yard. But, I know I don’t want to knit my halter out of super chunky Rowan “Big Wool” yarn! I prefer ultra soft, cool, finer gauge cotton.

I also want mine to be, well, skimpier! I want it to end just under the bust. To prevent the halter from riding up and revealing that which must not be revealed, I’m going add darts under the bust. That will be more flattering anyway.

Obviously, I will be coming up with my own pattern. But, I always do, don’t I?

I can promise one thing. My halter will not look like Knitty’s shagadelic Faux Fur Halter pictured to the left.

I’m off to swatch and then code up that pattern!

“How To Use the Magic Formula” (or How to Shape a Knitted Sleeve.)

The knitters on the knitting machines email list are discussing the “magic formula”. The topic comes up frequently, so I decided to write a “How to shape a sleeve” calculator. You can visit that web page and use its calculator whenever you are redesigning the lower portion of a sleeve. (Strangely enough, the sleeve shaping theory is can be applied when designing a halter top, and I’m knitting one right now! But, we’ll just pretend the formula is only used for sleeves.)

If you don’t want to understand, that’s ok. Once a calculator exists, it’s not absolutely necessary to understand. For today, don’t cross the line below. Just remember this discussion exists; return later if you ever decide you need to understand how to calculate shaping without using a program.

Those who want to cross the line, do so at your own risk!

Suppose I want to increase from 20 stitches to 44 stitches over 30 rows, and the piece is shaped like sleeve similar to the one illustrated to the right. Here’s how I would calculate the shaping:

• First, I’m an engineer by training, so I always draw a sketch before doing math. See the schematic.
• I want increase from 20 stitches at the cuff to 34 stitches at the bicep. That is a total of (34-20)=14 stitches, or 7 stitches on each side. I put a “7″ on either side of the schematic.
• I want the stitch increases to occur over 30 rows. To simplify shaping, I also want to make sure I only increase when the right side is facing (if I hand knit) or when the carriage is on the right (if I machine knit.) To force the decreases to occur only on odd numbered rows, I divide the number of rows by two and determine that 30 row / 2 = 15 pairs of rows. I labeled those values on the right hand side of the figure.
• Now, remember I want 7 increases? Notice, how I placed 7 red dots for the increases. Because this is a sleeve, I want to knit a few rows before the first increase and a few after the last one. So, I sprinkled the dots
  away from the edges. Examining the figure, I notice I have 8 =7+1 “regions” around the
  increases. I labeled the “8″ regions in green.
• Now, I’m going to figure out how many pairs of rows must be in each of those 8 regions.; To figure that out, I first divide 15 pairs/8 regions and round down. That results in 1 pairs of rows in each region. This means each region has at least 1 pair of rows in it, but some may need 2 (that’s one more than 1.).
• How many of the eight regions need 2 pairs of rows? Well, when I divided 15/8, I found 15/8= 1 plus 7 left over. So, 7 of the 8 regions need an extra pair of rows. Meanwhile 1 region (= 8-7) has only one pair
• That’s as far as the magic formula gets me. At this point, I, as the all powerful designer, must decide which 7 regions will have 2 pairs of rows and which has only 1 pair. I could sprinkle around the 7 regions and 1 region however you wanted. I decided to make the very first increase region have 1 pair of rows (that’s 2 rows), and all the rest have 2 pairs of rows (that’s 4 rows) . You’ll find the instructions below.
• Now, why don’t you repeat this exercise with the values you are going to
  knit? Compare your result to the one this page suggests. Notice that, since this is a program, I always put the regions with fewer rows first, and the ones with more rows
  later. You don’t need to do that. However, it has the advantage of making sure the sleeve is always at least as wide as necessary.

As an exercise, figure out how you would word my instructions. Then, visit the page with the geeky knitting calculator and see if you worded it the same way I did. (You probably didn’t. I word things to simplify slapping numbers into boxes, and avoid causing a program to say “do this, then repeat -1″ times, which people really, really don’t like.)

Of course, if you just remember the program exists, you can use it when you decide to redesign that sweater in Vogue Knitting. (Yes. I mean you Bevin; I just know you are a line crosser! )

I love the fit!

My raglan sweater is hand knit from two strands of Lion Brand Kitchen Cotton. I knew it was going to shrink in length, so I designed the pattern to account for that. After I knit it, I tried it on. Even though I knew it was going to shrink, the deep armholes were unsettling.

I threw the sweater in the wash, set the cycle to hot, let it run, and later threw it in the wash to tumble dry. It shrunk at exactly the same rate as the swatch. Perfect fit!

I now have a great sweater to use on cool spring evenings at the ball game. It feels nice and fluffy, but somehow sturdy and indestructible, and I know I’ll use it a lot.

I read the care label for this cotton; Lion Brand says not to bleach. If I spill mustard on this, let me tell you, I’ll bleach it. It only cost $20 to knit; I know cotton is tough. I don’t like mustard stains. And let’s face it, this is dishcloth cotton; my mother in law has been giving her dishcloths some pretty tough work outs for years, and I figure the sweater will survive.

Anyway, I can always test out any cleaning method on the swatch. That’s one of the functions of swatches!

If you want to knit yourself, your husband or your kid, a raglan from the bottom up, visit my take me out to the ball game sweater pattern generator. If you already visited the “Husband Sweater” you’ll notice some additional options. These include functioning toggles for kids sizes, and a toggle to give directions for garter stitch borders, which I used here.

Even more importantly, I added a toggle to use if you know your yarn is going to shrink, like this cotton. The directions will tell you to knit “X” directions, measured while knitting, and then tell you how long that bit will be after you wash and shrink the sweater. That is, it will tell you this if you wash, dry and shrink your swatch and enter those values.

If you knit with cotton, please, please, shrink your swatch and enter both gauge values. Ok?