I needed a quick knit. When I was in my hometown over Christmas, I went to the local yarn store (it's fairly new, and has been there just a couple years) and found some beautiful dark purple Lamb's Pride on sale. The owner keeps an eye on Brown Sheep Co. for yarns discounted because of botched dye jobs, and this eggplant color was just such a find. I picked up a couple skeins of the red to go with it, and I've been working on a fitted jacket with garter stitch edging from Knitter's Magazine:
(I usually brave the cold to get a nice outside shot with natural light, but dudes, it's 2 degrees out there. I have my limits. Didn't stop my husband from biking to work, though.)
The instructions say to do everything in pieces and then assemble, but it's a raglan sweater with equal decreases on the body and sleeves, so I thought it would be a simple thing to avoid seaming by doing the sleeves in the round and the body in one piece, then join everything at the armholes and finish it all at once. I'm up to the armholes on everything but the second sleeve, and I've run into a tiny snag: I eliminated four stitches in the main body because those are stitches that would have been lost in seaming, and I didn't want any extra width. I didn't, however, allow for this in the sleeves because I wasn't thinking about it when I started. In addition to this, for the first time I noticed my gauge is ever so slightly tighter in the round (sleeves) than back-and-forth (main body)...I'm sure this will block out, as I think it's better to be a little tight to begin with since knitting will stretch over time, but because my gauge is a teensy bit off on the sleeves, I'm not sure I want to eliminate stitches. So how to handle the decreases? The wrong number of stitches might end up in some kind of weirdness as I approach the shoulder. Maybe I'll just do a row of decreases on the sleeves only after everything's joined up, and then I'll be on track with the whole thing. Or, I could just rip out the sleeve a couple inches and just eliminate the last increase in order to adjust before I join at the armholes.
Bored yet? Me, too.
(I usually brave the cold to get a nice outside shot with natural light, but dudes, it's 2 degrees out there. I have my limits. Didn't stop my husband from biking to work, though.)
The instructions say to do everything in pieces and then assemble, but it's a raglan sweater with equal decreases on the body and sleeves, so I thought it would be a simple thing to avoid seaming by doing the sleeves in the round and the body in one piece, then join everything at the armholes and finish it all at once. I'm up to the armholes on everything but the second sleeve, and I've run into a tiny snag: I eliminated four stitches in the main body because those are stitches that would have been lost in seaming, and I didn't want any extra width. I didn't, however, allow for this in the sleeves because I wasn't thinking about it when I started. In addition to this, for the first time I noticed my gauge is ever so slightly tighter in the round (sleeves) than back-and-forth (main body)...I'm sure this will block out, as I think it's better to be a little tight to begin with since knitting will stretch over time, but because my gauge is a teensy bit off on the sleeves, I'm not sure I want to eliminate stitches. So how to handle the decreases? The wrong number of stitches might end up in some kind of weirdness as I approach the shoulder. Maybe I'll just do a row of decreases on the sleeves only after everything's joined up, and then I'll be on track with the whole thing. Or, I could just rip out the sleeve a couple inches and just eliminate the last increase in order to adjust before I join at the armholes.
Bored yet? Me, too.
Comments
Also, it is quite common for people to knit more loosely flat than in the round because people tend to make their purl stitches a bit looser.
But I wouldn't say it, since I've never swatched separately for round knitting myself. I'll just say, "what Shelly said."