We Have Connection - a knitting post

Now that gift knitting is completed I am free to pick up Brica - which I have been spelling wrong for weeks. eh. I hate spelling. "Oh - learn phonics" I used to be told. Huh. So why is a short "i" sometimes followed by double consonants and sometimes not? grrrr.

But this is not a spelling post - that would be disastrous! This is a knitting post with a few photos and some explanations.

I decided to make the sweater about 24 inches long so when it was 13 inches long I threw in an inch of short rows on the front - as I always do - and then knit that final inch. Then it was 8% of stitches at the underarm seam loaded onto stitch holders - I chose to go with 14 stitches at each side, on sleeves and sweater body. 

I am going to make knitted in set-in sleeves with this one, though its plain stockinette shoulder area would be fine with a yoke type treatment. I'm confident I can knit this type of shoulder treatment ... I have done it at least 3 times already ... but it's been a while. Not since I made the Kipfee back in 2007 have I done this type of sleeve/shoulder math. I've always just winged it - fiddling and fudging till it suddenly falls into place, but I know there is a systematic way to go about this - a way to codify it, write it, explain it ... to teach it to others. One of these days I'll master it and then you, my faithful readers, will know how to do it too! 

At this point, though, I'm just eating up sweater body stitches till I get to the shoulder width I want . This comes to 4 decreases every round, placed where the sleeves join the body. Then the decreases begin to eat up the sleeves at a slower pace - every other round I believe. The trick is that as you get to the very top of the sweater you have to do some short row magic on flat knitting, doing each front shoulder and the back shoulder area separately before  making one final connecting row and two short 3-needle bind-offs.

And yes. Doing this top-down is easier - but there are some stitch patterns that just don't work when knit top down - and this Cathedral pattern is one of them. The neckline will be a wide crew neck with a stand-up collar done in one repeat of that Cathedral pattern. My goal is to finish this by January 1 or by the end of my vacation ... which is January 2 ... and then I'm going to cast on the oatmeal tweed Aran sweater. At the same time I'm going to pick up stitches around the bottom of Irene, on the inside, right where the garter part of the leaf edging attaches to the sweater, knit down a few inches and put another leaf border on the bottom. This should lengthen the sweater and make it look better on me. And yes. I intend to be knitting on both projects at the same time. Doesn't everybody have an upstairs project and a downstairs one? 

But before I do any of that I am going with a friend to Fredericksburg to check out Old Town Yarnery. Yes! A New Yarn Shop! Because in spite of what MsHoroscope says ... Knitting still floats my boat.

So. Happy Knitting to all my knitting buddies - and o