more notes....

Needle set-up for A-line shaped side

 I like the A-line shape, similar to Pocket Change and Lipstick and Smoke, so have gone back to that – the side seams will be decreased evenly from hemline to underarm but did not add shortrowing at the centre bottom to even out the hemline, so the hemline/side seam will dip slightly.

3-prong tool decrease to rib stitch

Decreasing in rib with an uneven needle arrangement like this – what to do:

. . . l l l . l l l . l l l . ~  l l l . l l l . l l l . l l l . . .

   . . . .  l . . . l . . . l .~  . . l . . . l . . . l . . . .

transfer rib stitch up, 6 sts on MB

When setting up the needle arrangement, add an extra needle at the right side and select from the centre so that you have the same thing at each edge. For the Back and Fronts, which will be decreased at the side seams, I had my edges with three stitches on the main bed at the ends and these remained constant throughout, meaning that the three edge stitches were moved in one space, putting the decrease on the now third needle from the edge. If there was a rib stitch within that, then, transfer it up to the main bed (knit the tuck stitch through before transferring up) and put the empty needle out of work. After getting rid of the rib stitch, there will be five stitches on the main bed. Continue decreasing with the 3-prong tool on the main bed, moving the three edge stitches in one space and only transferring the rib stitch up as it occurs within the main bed decrease. Remember to put the empty needle out of work.

For the Centre Front edge (and the armhole, after the underarm shaping, straight part up to the shoulder, seaming will look better with a 2-stitch main bed edge from the tuck rib line – hope you know what I mean – I’ll reference this later in another blogpost when I’m putting together.
By the way, these increase and decrease methods apply for both knit side and purl side fabrics

pocket opening for later

marker row for pocket opening

Pocket in rib fabric (this will be an inside patch with ribbed pocket top, added after); on row before the pocket opening, transfer rib stitches to main bed and put rib needle out of work – mark the needle numbers so the next one will be same, and you know where it should be. Knit one row – this makes a plain stockinette row on the bottom side of the pocket opening (to be picked up later). Now, manually knit a plain row of ravel cord on the needles for the width of the pocket only, aiming for the same stitch size as you have with the main yarn. Pull the ends of the ravel cord down between the beds in front of the work, out of the way. Knit a row with the pattern yarn – this makes the stockinette row on the top side of the opening. Now, transfer the stitches back down to rib bed following set needle arrangement. Finish knitting Front. Pocket will be completed later, and I’ll tell you more then!
I forgot to mention, just in case you didn’t know, I am using the yarn double stranded and that means each strand  is threaded  up into each side of the tension mast separately and they are only joined together as they feed into the arm on the carriage – that way, you don’t get loops of one strand travelling up on the other and causing trouble. Just saying…

how many sleeves does it take to make a sweater?

yikes...I’m knitting and knitting and getting nowhere fast...yesterday I swatched and swatched and swatched and because I’m working with cotton, I had to make a couple of swatches of my final stitch arrangement at different stitch sizes to compensate for the shrinkage factor. I do keep really good notes of my practises because if you don’t know what you did and what stitch size was used, there’s not much point in swatching - you may as well go for the ‘whoever it fits’ theory.

Okay, so everything was washed and dried and I made my choice of the final stitch and needle arrangement, ready to get knitting on the real thing this morning. I sat down and rather quickly knocked off the first sleeve - I did have to stop and make notes, because I’m going to be using all of this for the hands-on ribber class that I’m teaching at Lea-Ann’s do in Indiana at the end of July - check out http://www.knittingtoday.com/ if you want more details - she's having some beginner classes running at teh same time as my 2 days and then finishing up with Susan Guagliumi  doind 2 days of her hand manupulated stitches, hands-on too!- so, an hour for a double bed tuck rib sleeve, that’s not bad. Do the final cast-off and take it off the machine - hummm...feels a little stiff...(4LW) I used the wrong tension!! I wanted T8/6, not T7/5. Oh well, what’s an hour...

I did make what I think is an important break-through. As I said, I’m doing a tuck rib, where I have all needles in work on the main bed and a tuck stitch happening and I made up an irregular needle arrangement on the rib bed that breaks up the tuck to add vertical lines on the front of the fabric with the ribber stitches. Oh, and yes, I started with the sleeve because I find that it’s a smaller piece, goes more quickly and if things go wrong while you’re getting used to new techniques, it’s not as bad as making the entire back and then finding out that you went wrong....also, on the sleeve you can work out all the details of increasing and then decreasing and shaping for the sleeve cap.

Getting the correct needle arrangement on the rib bed is key here - screw it up and it won’t look right and it has to correspond with the tuck pattern on the main bed and each piece needs to be the same. On the first sleeve, it’s only 50 stitches wide, so after the hem, I took the time to look at the tuck pattern and figure out the ribber arrangement, but another problem occurs as you’re increasing to make sure that you’re continuing the proper sequence - I had a brainwave and got a piece of card stock, held it up to the existing needle arrangement and marked two repeats (this one is a 15 st repeat) so I could simply move the card along to match up with the next 15 needles to see what would next be brought into work. You could use this idea for anything requiring an odd needle arrangement, like tuck lace...

So, now, I double check my notes and get going with the right tension this time. Finish up and as I’m casting off, look down and see this solid line running up the centre...(several 4LW’s!!) I can see where, on the first row of patterning, I didn’t bother to re-check and an empty needle came up into work, spoiling my pattern....

I hope I haven’t scared you off if you were thinking of taking the ribber class - I’ll have ironed out all the kinks by then! And we’ll use an easier stitch pattern.