My first WIP Wednesday post on the new blog! Very exciting!! :D
My currently-being-worked-on WIP is Sweet Jane by AmyMiller. It’s a mostly plain top-down
set-in-sleeve sweater, but the bottom hem is assymetric and angled down the
hips. I saw it pop up in the recently
added patterns on ravelry, and immediately had to make it :)
There have been a couple of snafus with this WIP so
far. The pattern suggested about 2” of
positive ease on the bust, so I cast on the appropriate size and went for
it. All was fine till after the
shoulders, where it said to cast on a massive amount of stitches, compared to
any other sweater I’ve made. But I cast
them all on, and went ahead and knitted a few inches. Then I tried it on and it was MASSIVE. So, rip rip rip back to the armholes and I
cast on 6 sts instead of the large amount it said.
After that, the knitting was plain and smooth sailing and
fun. Then I got to the bottom bit where
you pick up short rows. I’d apparently
done all my purl short rows wrong, and my stitches were completely
strangled. There was no way to pick them
up without having massive holes in the fabric.
I didn’t want to, but I had to rip back 9” of work because I had been
too lazy to look up how to do short rows properly.
I re-knit the short row section, but I think I did something
wrong actually picking up the stitches.
The side where I had purled the short rows just doesn’t look as smooth
as the knit side. But I figured that it’s
on the hem – noone will notice, and in 6 months I’ll have completely forgotten
(unless I look back here lol). So I just
went with it.
I changed the actual hem as well because I’m using acrylic
yarn (stylecraft special 4-ply) and with a small rib section, it would just
flip over and annoy me (I have a sweater that does this already). So I went down 1.5mm in needle size and did a
few rows of garter stitch. I like how it
looks!
Now I’m at the stage of picking up for the arms, then
knitting down. But I’m having another
problem. The pattern says to pick up a
teeny amount of stitches (especially considering how many I was supposed to
cast on at the armpit). I tried, but it
was less than one stitch for every two rows – it just didn’t look good. The way the pattern is written, you need to
pick up that specific amount of stitches and work short rows because that will
influence the circumference of the sleeves.
With the amount of stitches I can comfortably pick up, I’ll have 15”
circumference sleeves. About 3” larger
than the pattern says, and it would probably be far too baggy. So I’m going to have to think about where to
incorporate a lot of decreases. I’m
wondering if I can fit them in the actual short rows, but that will require
some focused attention and maths.
Apart from the problems I’ve had, I’m really looking forward
to having this sweater, I think it’s going to look really cute! :D
