The Knitting Fiend

See the big fat neck opening? I finally finished the body of Jim’s sweater.

He wanted a “Henley” sort of neck opening– it’s his favorite. He also doesn’t like the placket too deep, the depth is about 2 1/2″. (I’ve seen plackets as shallow as 1″ and as deep as 4″ on commercial sweaters, so the depth is really a matter of preference.)

Henley’s are one of the easiest necklines too design. So, as you can see, I knit the front up to the point where I wanted the neck split to start. I wanted the placket to be about 1 1/2″, so I left 7 stitches on a holder. At that point, I also put the stitches for the left side on a string and worked the right side only. Doing a few calculations, which require anticipating when sweater will actually need to finish up, the other involved figuring out how many stitches I needed for the full neck width– this happened to be 35 stitches. I figured out the row to start shaping the rest of the neck (this will be discussed in detail later).

I then decreased at a rate as follows.

Place a marker 14 stitches from neck edge (this is one half of 35 stitches- 7 stitches.) Starting at neck edge:

1. Row 1: Bind off 3 stitches, work in pattern to end of row.
2. Row 2 & all even rows: work all stitches in pattern.
3. Row 3: Bind off 2 stitches, work in pattern to end of row.
4. Row 5: Bind off 2 stitches, work in pattern to end of row.
5. Row 7: Bind off 1 stitch, work in pattern to end of row.

Repeat row 1 until you have bound off all 14 neck stitches.

Then, I worked the left side to match the right side.

I worked the back to match– only without the slit and no neck shaping. (Neck shaping is permitted on the back neck, but honestly, I often skip it.) I sewed the shoulders together using mattress stitch.

Are there any tips for shaping a neck?

For a well fitted neck, you will be nearly finished with the front side when you have completed the neck shaping. Unless your gauge is very fine, there should be no more than 4 rows before the final bind-off. (If you have more rows to knit, it’s likely the designer made the neck a bit deep either a) to simplify pattern writing, b) to cope with the fact that knitters frequently don’t hit the row gauge or c) the sweater style calls for a deep neckline.)

Note, also, as you work this neck shaping, if you are using a pattern that results in a sweater that fits both your neck and shoulders well, you will almost certainly begin to shape the shoulders before you have bound off all 14 neck stitches. To do this, you will decrease stitches at the beginning of even rows– generally, you’ll bind off roughly 5 stitches every other row. (Beginner pattern sometimes skip shoulder shaping and have you bind everything off all shoulder stitches at once. )

Obviously, you need to finish the neck shaping before you finish the shoulder shaping–but remember: you don’t want it to end way too soon. Understanding that you want to finish the neck and shoulder shaping at on almost the same row is key to understanding how to calculate a neck. For this reason, I’m defering discussing the calculation for a bit– and I’ll be creating charts and the bit of the sweater calculator that lets you calculate the neck shortly.

Bye for now!

See this gauge calculator?

It doesn’t look very exciting, does it? But, it’s actually a breakthrough! I’ve figured out how to write knitting calculator so knitters who blog using Wordpress can easily install a plugin at their knitting blog. Then they will be able to insert calculators like these in their posts.

Yep, I’m going to start writing things like sockulators, hat pattern in a way that lets you post them at your blog, where you can easily find them. ( I will be asking for a link back from anyone who uses it. Or maybe I’ll auto insert one in a footnote in the post? I need to decide what seems fair. )

Anyway, right now, this runs. It’s hardly full features, after all, it’s just calculates gauge. I’m going to be turning it into a drop sleeve sweater pattern which I’m writing as knit Jim’s mystery sweater.

Then, if you want to imitate his sweater, you’ll be able to enter values here at the knitting fiend, or port the calculations over to your blog and describe what you did there.

Of course, if you just want a gauge calculator, I can make this available. I just like to wait a few days to make sure I didn’t do anything weird that causes problems to blogs. Usually, these plugins run run fine, but I like to look at the formatting to see if I should tweak it.

Running it at my own for a while always seems prudent!

PS. I’m looking into the typo with the Barbara shawl at knitting group tonight.

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.