Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Technical Question
So I'm having some issues with my Drops Swing Cardigan. The issue is that the sleeves are ginormous. Huge. And my gauge is correct. Well, maybe a tad off, but not enough that it's the problem. Let me explain. I'm making the worsted weight version of the sweater, and so I cast on 50 stitches for the sleeve, and then I'm supposed to do a total of seven increase rounds (one stitch per side each time), for a total of 64 stitches, and then I would do the armpit decreases, which I bet have a more technical name. From the get-go I thought my sleeves (since I'm knitting them together) seemed a bit on the wide side. As I started the increases I became more nervous, so last night, after four increase rounds (58 stitches total), I broke out the measuring tape and concluded that my sleeve is currently 13.6" in circumference, which is already larger than my upper arm, and if I continue increasing in this fashion I'm going to have a sleeve in the range of 15.5" around by the top, and that is just way too big. So, here is the dilemma. I've decided to just forgo the rest of the increases and proceed with my 13.6" sleeve all the way up. The problem, of course, is that this is a set-in sleeve, and it needs to match the armhole shaping on the front and back of the sweater. That shaping is done as follows on the sleeves. The first decrease round involves casting off three stitches on each side one time, then two stitches twice, etc. I figure, since I'm skipping three increases and thus six total stitches, I'll just not do the first three stitch bind-off. This will be hidden in the armpit and so I'm hoping it won't be too obvious. Please let me know if you think this is exceedingly ill-advised before I get too far into it. Dave suggested (bless him - he sat through 10 minutes of math and analysis of this last night) starting over (gasp) with smaller needles, but I think that would mess up my row gauge and create even bigger armhole/sleeve matching issues. Any ideas? From examining at the pattern photos it appears the sleeves are fairly wide on the model, but no one on Ravelry seems to have such huge sleeves, nor has anyone mentioned it being a problem...
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3 comments:
Actually, I advise casting off in the manner described but have few st at the top of the sleeve cap. You need the st under the arm to be an exact number or they won't fit under your arm at all. It will look really weird. Just have less sts in your final cast off. Then you will be maintaining the same curve. There is an article in knitty about this but I don't remember which issue.
Ooh, thanks for the heads-up on that. You think it will look okay at the top with fewer stitches? I was thinking that would be more obvious at the shoulder than at the underarm, but I see what you mean about it not fitting under the arm the way I was planning to do it...
If it were me, I would knit the whole darn thing and see how it looks. You know how I like to I like to knit the same thing over and over and over...
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