The Knitting Fiend

This article is sort of a continuation from yesterday’s article where I discussed how I decreased at the neck edge when I ran into the decorative shoulder cable. Phew, that’s a long sentence! Anyway, today, I’m going to discuss some more things you need to think about if you decide to add a decorative cable to your raglan. I figure some people might want to add these to my pattern; some may want to add them to other people’s patterns.

Or, maybe, some people just want to know that you can add stuff and “solve” the problem of fully working it in toward the end of the whole design. If I winged this, so can you! Just remember: It’s almost always easier to do than to describe. That’s why so many patterns end up saying “decrease in pattern established” instead of trying to describe what you should do!

Now, a picture: To the left you should be able to see a detail illustrating the top of the raglan sleeve which is the part that ends up worn on your shoulder. To photograph the sweater, I placed a white paper towel under the neckline. Since it’s still difficult to identify parts of the sweater which is folded on the floor, I drew a white line to illustrate the neckline bind off, and showed the location of the stitch marker in yellow. I drew a red line to emphasize the decrease lines formed on the shoulder side of two cables.

If you recall from one of the previous articles, I’d been doing this for row 1, purling all stitches on row 2 & 4, and. Row 3 was like Row 1a, but with a cable cross:

• Row 1b: Knit until 5 stitches remain before stitch marker, k2tog, [purl 1, k2, slip marker, k2, purl 1] ssk, repeat for all 4 shoulders, work to end of the row

The stuff in []’s is the cable detail. In today’s article, I’ve underlined the k2tog, and the ssk on either side of the cable. Now, when I took this photo, the yarn was on the right neck edge, and I had not yet knit the row. If you squint and count, you’ll notice on this row, if I followed the instructions up to the SSK, there would now only be 3 stitches left before the stitch marker! It’s not possible to work an ssk and then “Knit until 5 stitches remain before stitch marker”.

As the sleeve gets narrow, you can see the cables get closer and closer together. Eventually, the run into each other.

Anyway, what do you do? Well, remember, when I decribed knitting the neck, I said there were many things you could do? What I did was this:

• Row 1c: Knit until 5 stitches remain before stitch marker, ssk, [purl 1, k2, slip marker, k2, purl 1] k2tog, repeat for all 4 shoulders, work to end of the row

The strike out shows the part I “edited out” when fiddling as I knit. That purl stitch is gone, gone, gone!

Ok, so you ask me “How did I decide to do this?” Believe it or not, I fiddled.

I tried a couple things and ripped back 6 stitches a few times. Then, I decided I liked this solution. Why? Because it resulted in those “ridges” formed by the ssk or k2tog decreases to stay nice and smooth, it decreased near the shoulder at the same rate (a stitch on each side of the cable) and most of all: I could do it.

So, after I figured out what to do, I wrote it down! Otherwise, how could I ever remember. (Now, you know why it’s harder to describe things in patterns than to say “decrease in pattern!”)

Since this is getting really near the final few rows of the neck, I only needed to work this fiddle one more time.

And you know what else? When you see the final sweater, you’re going to say: “But, Lucia, you didn’t even need to worry how that looked at the neck. You hid it under a fold down collar, no one can see it! ”

That will be true. But, what if Jim sees it and decides he wants a crew neck? And anyway, what if someone visiting the site wants a crew neck. Don’t you think they want to know it’s possible to make the shaping look perfectly smooth and beautiful? Those cables are a decorative treatment after all.