When knitting stockinette and making a set-in sleeve with shaped shoulders, here’s my tip-of-the-day - add a second row of stockinette after the shortrows. This will get rid of the wobbly line in the seam!
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| wonky seam |
Normally when doing a shaped shoulder, it’s likely that you’re shaping on the last inch of the shoulder to create the slope, so let’s say there are 30 stitches and 6 rows to make the slope. Doing the math, I divide the 30 sts by 4 instead of 3 ( hold 8 sts, 3X = 24 with 6 remaining in work) because there will be nothing left to hold on the last row if you divide by 3. Then when the carriage is back on the appropriate side, cancel hold and knit a row over all to get rid of the wraps before taking the shoulder off on waste yarn - it will be a lot easier to rehang when there is a clean row of stitches on the last row. But, even with switching up the second shoulder and changing where the wraps are, the join or seam line will be wonky. So, I’ve been experimenting on my last few projects and I decided that adding the second row of stockinette hides the shortrows on each side and makes the shoulder line much nicer.
So, do the shortrows, stagger them on the second shoulder if you remember (or not), and now add a second row of plain (on both shoulders) before removing on waste. Then to join, rehang, putting right sides together. Pull the front set of stitches through the back ones to make the join and do your cast-off. Nice straight seam line!!
BTW, this only applies to stockinette - don’t do it with a pattern stitch.
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| nice! |
For fairisle, shape the shoulder as above and at the end, knit the plain row in the background colour and remove on waste - do both front and back the same. When rehanging, the first shoulder will be knit side facing; hang the last row of stockinette. On the second shoulder, hang the last row of stockinette - it will be much easier than hanging fairisle and then rip out that last row - it will be purl side facing , so this is easy. Now, the last row will be fairisle - it gets pulled through the plain row on the first shoulder and eliminates the stripe - now, cast off... Same thing for tuck or any purl side facing fabric, knit the last row plain and rip out the row on the first side because it will be purl side...
at happens when you don’t swatch? I have the same yarn and it’s my pattern - using the same machine...what can go wrong? Why did I get a ginormous sleeve? So, okay, let’s analyze this. The original yarn was 2.2 Softball cotton and the pattern ‘Opposite Attraction’ was in No 39 KNITWORDS Winter 2006 - the garment is a favourite of mine and I’ve worn the original continuously over the past several years, washing and drying it often. I had a cone of poppy red on my shelf that I’ve been meaning to use and pulled it out yesterday - looked over the pattern, checked my original notes and figured I was ready to go. 
Took my own advice and made a sleeve to start - got it finished and think, wow, it looks huge, but the pattern does say that this yarn will shrink a lot and it recommends machine wash and dry, but whoa, this is a really BIG sleeve...since I have no deadlines anymore, I say what the hey? and toss the huge sleeve in the washer/dryer - gosh, it’s still humongous!!! The original called for 29 sts and 50 rows to the 10 cm square and from my ‘cheating at swatches’ yarn marks, this one measures 27 sts and 38 rows after the machine-wash and dry. 
I look a little more - the only other time I used this yarn was in the same issue - a tunic top called ‘Hip’ - same tension on this one says the gauge for stockinette is 31 sts and 45 rows - that was a big difference, but this is more... 
