The Knitting Fiend

Having neglected the blog for something like 15 months, I suspect I now have no readers. But, I did finish Jim’s sweater … a year late. I then picked up the crochet hook. I figured: I might as well start posting projects again! I plan to start posting– but probably once a week.

Anyway, during the superbowl, I made “Moose Towels”– more commonly knows as crocheted towel toppers. I finished the crocheting for 10 of these, but I don’t have buttons!

Figure 1: Moose towels. (Aka crocheted towel toppers.)

Next week, I plan to show my method for creating the first row which causes the towels to fold “just so” rather than rippling across the front. For many designs it doesn’t matter if the front ripples, but rippling would be a negative with these. The trick step to flat fronts that automatically fold at the sides involves masking tape, a ruler and a pen! Other than that, these are just normal crocheted towel toppers.

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.