The Knitting Fiend

At Knittalk, Betsy mentions she doesn’t like lots of seaming, but also doesn’t want the whole sweater sitting on her lap while she knits a sleeve top down. She asks:

So…can I just cast on the number of stitches that the pattern wants me to pick up and knit down and then seam/set in the sleeve? Am I missing some important ingredient here that someone that has gone on before me can clue me into???

I don’t see any problem. I’m doing exactly that; looky here:

I cast on with waste yarn because the body of my sweater has a saddle; so I’m going to graft the top seam. I’ll be removing that scraggly white waste yarn later this weekend, and I’ll show off one attached sleeve. (Notice, I am using my yarn trick to help me count rows between decreases.

Anyway, the principle for getting the sleeve cap to fit in the armhole is: If the shape fits the hole, it doesn’t matter if you knit bottom up, or top down. It doesn’t matter if you pick up the stitches from the body and knit down or just cast them on. The shape will still fit the whole.

There are advantages to knitting to down: You can pin baste the sleeve cap into the hole and check!

Plus, there are advantages to casting on instead of picking up stitches. If you mall distribute the stitches as you pick them up, some parts of the sleeve cap will stretch the body armhole and other parts will crunch up the armhole. In you cast on and knit down, you can always redistribute as you seam.

So, Betty, you’ve got the right idea!

And, by the way, I love this particular email list. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a new list, but right now, people are posting a wealth of “thinking” questions.