New Top Down Sweater
Now that the Old Fashioned Cardigan is finished I've cast on several new projects. I will post about each one separately, I think.
I want to make a top-down yoke sweater using EZ's percentages method and some marvelous hand dyed 100% alpaca. However, because I am prone to bungling things I thought maybe I'd make one from something else first, something I wouldn't cry over if it was a disaster. So I dug out some Mission Falls 1824 super wash mill ends I bought last fall and got started. The yarn calls for 6mm needles but I know superwash has a habit of relaxing (almost melting) after the first wash so I'm using 5mm for the main part and 4.5mm for collar & cuffs.
I got out a pencil, a calculator and a good eraser (good thing, as I used it quite a bit!). I swatched and measured and multiplied & divided. I also got out my favorite sweater and charted the design off it. I've wanted to reproduce it for quite some time now and as my calculations work for multiples of 4 the design fit perfectly. It was almost eerie how my increase rows coincided with the decrease rows in the sweater (it was knit bottom-up) .... enough to make me think it was knit by a fan of EZ???
Anyways, I want to share with you how I made the collar. I prefer a folded collar on yoke sweaters. It just looks right. Nice and crisp and tidy.
I cast on using a crochet hook to make a provisional cast on. You'll see why in a moment! Since I was working top-down I knit in K2 P2 rib until the collar was the length I wanted it to be when finished. Then made one round all-knit and continued on in K2 P2 until it was double the length I wanted.
In this (poor) pic you can see the all-knit round. The 'bump' will be folded inside. The all-knit round leaves a faint dip in the outside of the ribbing and helps your folded edge to lie nicely. The first round after the collar is an increase round in which you double your stitch count. To kill the proverbial 2 birds with one stone, I knit one 'live stitch' and then knit one stitch through both crochet loops of my provisional cast-on. This means I 'sewed' my collar and increased at the same time.
Here you can see both edges of the collar joined and they match perfectly. In the darker shot I realized I should be doing my increase with 5mm needles not the 4.5mm I knit the collar with - duh! Only about 15% of the stitches were made on the 4.5mm needles fortunately. There is still lots of 'give' around the neck and it will fit fine (just a close call, not a full-blown bungle!).
Away I go on the color pattern! This all-dark round is my first pattern-increase round and I found it a bit tedious. Nevertheless, I love knitting in the round and this project will go much faster than the cardigan did - for SURE!
Now for the record, this is NOT another terra-cotta colored sweater - really! It is a nice brown, even though my camera can't seem to decide what color it really is. Yes, the contrast color is a dark plum but it looks like dark brown in real life. Only my camera sees it as purple!
I want to make a top-down yoke sweater using EZ's percentages method and some marvelous hand dyed 100% alpaca. However, because I am prone to bungling things I thought maybe I'd make one from something else first, something I wouldn't cry over if it was a disaster. So I dug out some Mission Falls 1824 super wash mill ends I bought last fall and got started. The yarn calls for 6mm needles but I know superwash has a habit of relaxing (almost melting) after the first wash so I'm using 5mm for the main part and 4.5mm for collar & cuffs.
I got out a pencil, a calculator and a good eraser (good thing, as I used it quite a bit!). I swatched and measured and multiplied & divided. I also got out my favorite sweater and charted the design off it. I've wanted to reproduce it for quite some time now and as my calculations work for multiples of 4 the design fit perfectly. It was almost eerie how my increase rows coincided with the decrease rows in the sweater (it was knit bottom-up) .... enough to make me think it was knit by a fan of EZ???
Anyways, I want to share with you how I made the collar. I prefer a folded collar on yoke sweaters. It just looks right. Nice and crisp and tidy.
I cast on using a crochet hook to make a provisional cast on. You'll see why in a moment! Since I was working top-down I knit in K2 P2 rib until the collar was the length I wanted it to be when finished. Then made one round all-knit and continued on in K2 P2 until it was double the length I wanted.
In this (poor) pic you can see the all-knit round. The 'bump' will be folded inside. The all-knit round leaves a faint dip in the outside of the ribbing and helps your folded edge to lie nicely. The first round after the collar is an increase round in which you double your stitch count. To kill the proverbial 2 birds with one stone, I knit one 'live stitch' and then knit one stitch through both crochet loops of my provisional cast-on. This means I 'sewed' my collar and increased at the same time.
Here you can see both edges of the collar joined and they match perfectly. In the darker shot I realized I should be doing my increase with 5mm needles not the 4.5mm I knit the collar with - duh! Only about 15% of the stitches were made on the 4.5mm needles fortunately. There is still lots of 'give' around the neck and it will fit fine (just a close call, not a full-blown bungle!).
Away I go on the color pattern! This all-dark round is my first pattern-increase round and I found it a bit tedious. Nevertheless, I love knitting in the round and this project will go much faster than the cardigan did - for SURE!
Now for the record, this is NOT another terra-cotta colored sweater - really! It is a nice brown, even though my camera can't seem to decide what color it really is. Yes, the contrast color is a dark plum but it looks like dark brown in real life. Only my camera sees it as purple!
This is very interesting. Have never made something like it. I would love to try it some day, but I could not stand the colar like that. I can't breath with something tight around my throat/neck. I had some issues with my camera too. Can't get red objects right. Oh well. :o)
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I have lost count of how many yoked sweaters I've done, top down and bottom up. I like the folded ribbing to, and sewing down live sts. leaves lots of "give". And not once have I thought of doing that knit row! I learn something new in knitting all the time. Thanks for the great tip.
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Nice cardi....I'm trying to talk myself into knitting a sweater...
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Very nice blog. Welcome to the Knitting Blogs webring!
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