The Knitting Fiend

Jim’s Mystery Sweater is 13″ long now, which is long enough that I’m beginning to worry about whether or not I should start shaping steeks, and/or dividing for sleeves. While knitting, I decided that I would add gussets to provide a bit of room under the armpits. Adding these a big more complicated than a drop sleeve sweater, but not much.

I’ll be writing a calculator for this after I finish it. Meanwhile, I’ll explain how I do calculations as I go. Today’s main goal is to figure out when to stop knitting around and around without shaping and start increasing for gussets. To do this, I need to visualize the sweater, and figure out where the gussets start.

To illustrate the idea of what I’m doing, I snapped a photo of one of Jim’s old drop sleeve sweater. (I can’t use the one I’m making to illustrate because it’s just a tube!)

I’ve added a little triangle to represent the gussets I’m going to knit into Jim’s sweater. These gussets are just little diamonds of fabric created by increasing stiches every other row just before the underarm; I work them on the body and on the sleeves.

I need to start working these increases the length is shown with the blue line labeled “B” to the left. When I knit this sweater, I knit circular without shaping until I reach that length. After that, I increase 2 stitches under each underarm, every other row until I have “enough” underarm stitches. At that point, I want the sweater length to measure “C” as shown in the photo.

How do I figure out lengths “B” and “C”?

Well, if you look at the photo, you can see I need to know a) the final length I want for the sweater, b) how much shoulder shaping I plan to do, plus half the width of the top of the sleeve.

So, here are some values:

1. Final length of the sweater: Jim likes his sweaters 27″ long. This is shown using a vertical green line.
2. Shoulder drop: When I shape to drop the shoulder, I will make the outside shoulder 1″ lower that the final lenght of the sweater. I’ve shown this drop with a white vertical line in the photo to the left.
3. Sleeve Width: Not accounting for gusset stitches, I want the sleeves to be 40% as big around as the body of the sweater. If you recall, Jim’s sweater will have a 40″ wide chest. So, that means I want 16″ wide sleeves. That means when the sweater is laid down, the folded sleeve will be 8″ wide at the top

So, now I have enough information to figure out the two lengths. (Well, actually, I also need to know my stitch and row gauge. But we know that, right? I’m getting 5 stitches / inch and 8 rows/inch.)

Now, here goes:

1. Find Length “C”: Subtract the sum of the “shoulder drop” and half sleeve width from the total length of the sweater. For me that’s 27″ - ( 1″ + 8″) = 19 inches. That’s how long the work should be when I divide to work the back. But, I need to start the steeks a bit below that.
2. Find how many stitches we want under the armpits: I want to have 5% of the total body stitches. If your recall, to knit the body, I cast on 200 stitches (that’s equal to 40 inches * 5 st/inch). So, I want 5% 0f 200 stitches = 10 stitches under eacharmpit.
3. Figure out how many rows that’s going to take: I will be increasing 2 stitches at each underarm every other row. So, to increase 10 stitches will require 10 rows. (That was easy!)
4. Figure out how much length those 10 rows use up: Divide 10 rows by my row gauge: (10 rows) / (8 rows/ inch) = 1. 25 inches. This is the length added by the gusset increases.
5. Subtract that length from Length “C” to get Length “B”. Length B = 19″ - 1. 25″ = 17.75 inches.

Ok, I now know how long the work needs to be before I start working the gussets.

Directions for Jim’s sweater so far

1. With smaller diameter needles, cast on 180 stitches. Join, being careful not to twist. Working circular, knit 1 x 1 ribbing until the ribbing measures 2 1/2 inches.
2. Change to larger diameter needles. On next round, begin to work fancy stitch pattern, and also increase 20 stitches evenly — 200 stitches.
3. Place a stitch marker at the beginning of the round; work circular until body measures 17.75″ but stop knitting one stitch before stitch marker. (Note: if you are working a fancy stitch pattern, you will need to center the pattern to look attractive. )
4. Shift the stitch marker here! (Sort of pretend this is the beginning of the round now. The purpose is to make following direction easier.)
5. Round 1: Slip stitch marker: ** K1, M1, k3, M1, K1, place another stitch marker. Work 97 stitches in fancy stitch pattern. place marker. Repeat from *. (Note: M1 means “make 1– it’s an increase. You may increase however you like to obtain the effect you find prettiest.
6. Round 2: ** Slip marker, k5, slip marker, repeat from *.
7. Round 3: Slip marker, K1, M1, k3, M1, K1 slip marker. Work 97 stitches in fancy stitch pattern.
8. Round 4: ** Slip marker, k7, slip marker, repeat from *.
9. Increase in pattern established until you have worked 10 rounds. (Note: you will have increased 10 stitches under each underarm.
10. You will now divide the front, back and underarms. There are some options! I’ll let you know when I get further on Jim’s mystery sweater.

In the beginning, all sweaters are the same. Well… that is if you knit bottom up. Today, I’ll explain how I came to cast on a mystery sweater, and how you can too! Once you master this, you won’t need to decide what the armholes and neckline are until you have knit about 1/4 to 1/3 your sweater!

The stitch pattern

Remember I said I was going to knit Jim a drop sleeve sweater using two particular stitch patterns? Notice this stitch pattern doesn’t look like either of these? Well… on Thursday, at knitting club, I showed the swatch to my Heather. We decided I should elongate “Welted Leaves”. Then, after finishing one repeat, I decided I liked it so much, I decided to just forget all about Crosses and Diamonds or whatever that stitch pattern in Barbara Walker’s book was!

I bet you are wondering: Didn’t you need to knit another swatch? I know that nearly all knit-purl combinations will have similar stitch gauges, so the swatch I already knit would do. Plus, this is a fairly loose style, 1″ or 2″ off in the chest won’t matter much.

So, now, I’m using a knit stitch pattern of my own making. On the needles it looks a bit rumply, but this will smooth out some.

Will it be a drop sleeve sweater

Oh… and I don’t know whether this will be a drop sleeve sweater. Over the weekend I was glancing at a book about knitting ganseys by Beth Brown Reinsel, and I thought: “Hhmm… this could be a gansey… Or at least, sort of a gansey. After all, underarm gussets do make hand knit sweaters more comfortable.”

Lucky for me, I know that drop sleeve sweaters are shaped just like Ganseys until I’ve knit to within 2″ of the underarms before I decide whether or not to add the underarm gussets. So, for now it’s either a drop sleeve sweater or a “sort of” gansey ! What will it be like? Beats me.

How to start a mystery sweater in the round.

If you like to not know what you are making when you start, you follow these steps:

• Figure out the number of stitches for the body. You need the sweater to fit the guys chest. Jim likes his sweaters t 40″ around. Mutiply by the stitch gauge: I had 5 stitches /inch– and round if required for your stitch pattern. So, I get 40 * 5 = 200 stitches. This will be the number of stitches for the body.
• Figure out the number of stitches for the ribbing: If your guy has a fat butt or a gut, this should be the same as for the body. If your guy has a slim butt, subtract 10% of those; 10% is 20 stitches. I get 200-20=180 stitches. Round to a multiple of 2. This is the number of stitches for your ribbing.

Using circular needles one size smaller than cast on 180; join being careful not to twist. Work knit 1, purl 1 ribbing for 1″ to 3″ (depending on how much you like.)

• Knit the ribbing: Change to larger needles. On next round, change to main needles, and increase to the number of stitches for the body (that’s 200 stitches in this example.) If necessary, do a bit of thinking to center your stitch pattern, and begin to work. Knit circular until you are about 2″ from where the underarms start.
• Think about the rest of the design as you knit: If you knit slowly — like I do you’ll have about a week to decide what to do at the underarms. But, you do need to stop and decide when you get near the underarms. (No, that’s a lie. You can put the body on a holder, start a sleeve and work to the elbow! )

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Blog Tip:
The blog- about -blogging blogs are on fire about “BlogRush”. It’s supposed to be a method to get yourself more traffic to our blogs. It will probably even work at your knitting blog if you join quickly.

The reason joining quickly is important is that the blogs displayed by this admittedly ugly widget depend on a) how many times it displays on your blog, b) how often it displays on your recruits’ blogs and c) how many times it display on their recruits’ blogs down to the 10th generation of recruits.

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I joined. I checked “hobby” — because “knitting” isn’t a choice . . . yet. Give it a try by clicking join Blog Rush.

X-and-Diamond is a simple knit purl combination suitable for ganseys. If you are working on your first design project, this would like nice placed across the chest of a man’s sweater, or as border just after the ribbing.

I’ll be alternating this pattern with “Welted Leaf Pattern” when knitting Jim’s sweater.

I was supposed to cast on last night, but we got too rowdy with the inlaws. Maybe today? The family is threatening to make me watch a Bears game; I can get a lot of knitting done during that!

The knitting chart for this stitch pattern is shown to the right.

I bet you’re wondering how I’m creating these nice clear charts? I bought “Stitch Visualizer ” yesterday. The program is available for both Mac and PC from Knit Foundry. I’m finding it very easy to use, but also joined the Knit Visualizer Users Group, which is run by Nancy Walsh who wrote Stitch Visualizer. I’m sure if I run into any problems, she can answer them!