The Knitting Fiend

I’m shaping the yoke. Finally!

Last night, I bound off the underarm stitches, placed the body and sleeve stitches onto one long, long circular needle and began shaping the raglan slants. Notice the bit of blue yarn to mark the shoulder? Stitches that were on the body are to the right; those that were on the sleeve are to the left. The bound off underarm stitches are below; I’ll sew that opening shut when I finish the whole sweater.

I work the raglan decreases between the body and sleeves like this:

• Decrease round: **Work in pattern stitch across body (or sleeve) until there are 3 stitches remaining before the marker, (k2tog, k1, slip marker, k1, ssk), ** repeat instruction between **s until you’ve worked the four raglan decreases in that round.
• Plain round: **Work in pattern stitch until there are 2 stitches remaining before marker. (k2, slip marker, k2)** repeat four times.

Working those two knit stitches between the k2tog and the ssk forms a bold 4 stitch wide diagonal line, which I hope will be flattering on a man’s sweater. If someone wanted their slanting raglan decreases to be less bold, they could change the stuff in brackets to (k2 tog, slip marker, ssk) in the decrease round, and to (k1, slip maker, k1) in the plain round.

Pretty easy huh? Hey, I never follow other people patterns without changing them. Why would I expect you to follow mine exactly. I’d rather explain and give tips for modifying.

When I make it available, the pattern generator will calculate the number of plain rounds between decrease rounds for any individual pattern in your size at your gauge. For Jim’s sweater, I begin by working 1 decrease round followed by 3 plain rounds. I quickly switch to 1 decrease followed by 1 plain round. That’s how it will work out for most cases. Really deep armholes will have a larger portion of the shaping at the slower rate. Shallow rounds will have fewer. (Other things could happen, but less frequently.)

I hope to have the generator available Thursday. It will have two neck choices: polo and crew. Naturally, it will have a bunch of sizes and a couple of other mystery choices I will need to explain here at the blog. I do hope someone gets brave, knits the sweater and sends me a photo! I like when visitors send me photos.