The Knitting Fiend

You know what’s wrong with most yoke sweaters? The back and front neck are the same depth. What’s wrong with that? Well, it looks ok in photos, but either the front is so high it chokes me or the back neck is low and I fell a breeze on down my back. Luckily, if you knit from the bottom up, it’s easy to fix this– and it’s even pretty easy to describe how to fix it!

Remember I’d finished my sweater up to the neck. I picked up all the neck stitches then laid the sweater on the floor and took a photo. If you examine the figure below you’ll see the front and back are at exactly the same level. In fact, they are so totally identical that the sweater is reversible. There is no “backwards” vs “forwards” right now.

To raise the back neck, I placed a marker over the left shoulder and a marker on the right shoulder. Then, I attached yarn at the right shoulder with the knit side facing, and knit across until I reached the marker on the left shoulder. I wrapped and turned the next stitch, then purl back to the right shoulder markers. I wrapped and turned, then knit until two stitches before the wrap were left to be knit. I then wrapped and turned, and purled until I was two stitches ahead of the marker on the right shoulder.

I repeated the two row operation — a total of 5 times– to work a total of 10 short rows. Since it’s best to think of this in percentage terms, I should mention that I stopped working short rows when I was working only 1/2 the total number of stitches on a purl row.

For complete truth in advertising, I should also mention that I reduced 4 stitches on the back neck the when I worked the 4th short row; this keeps the back neck snug. I probably should have worked decreases on the 8th short row, but I have to admit I forgot.

I laid the sweater flat and took another photo. Below, you can see the back neck is now higher than the front neck. After taking a photo, I worked another round in stockinette, picking up wraps as I knit. Then I knit 2 x 2 ribbing for an inch and bound off.

“Work short rows over the back neck stitches, knitting 2 fewer stitches each row. Decrease 4 stitches spaced evenly every 4 short rows. Continue until you are working over only 1/2 the back neck stitches.”

If you like this idea, you adapt to any yoke sweater when knitting from the top. Fudging may be required if the sweater has some sort of intricate stitch pattern near the neck. Still, generally, an intermediate knitter can figure out how to fudge at this point provided the neck is knit bottom to top because the intricate pattern is already established, and you can decide what type of fudging looks good. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to figure out what to do when you knit front the top down.

Of course, even though I’ve described the rule, you probably know the real rule: Do something to fill in the back neck. Try the sweater on. If it didn’t work, rip back. It’s not that many rows, and it does make a difference to the final fit. Yes, I tried it on, then I knit

In case you’re wondering: Yes, I have finished my sweater. I wet it and it’s laying out to dry! Baring some sort of cat related catastrophe, I’ll model it tonight or tomorrow.