Summer Knits: 4. Bust Shaping

You may have noticed that as I've been making more clothes for myself of late I've been paying a little more attention to how they might actually fit rather than blindly following the pattern. My current knitting project is no exception.

Reading around on the internet I recently came across the concept of bust shaping when knitting jumpers. The theory is that if you knit the front and the back of the jumper the same then the front will look too short because it has further to travel than the back thanks to the bust. If you have a bust larger than a B cup then it's sometimes recommended to add little extra length to the front of the jumper to compensate for this. You do this by adding some short rows across the front, which gives the same effect as adding a dart when sewing a top.

Short rows are a simple concept - you simply turn your work round before you reach the end of the row and start working back the other way. This means that you have two rows over that part of your knitting, and only one row over the remainder.

Theory aside, I thought I might give this a go, but because I'm a coward I've only adding a little bit extra - not the full amount - so that I could see how it works without going crazy. I started knitting the patterned part 2cm later than the pattern suggested and then added 6 short rows, starting just before the pattern reaches its widest point. With the cardigan I had to knit the short rows on the right front part, finish the row and then do short rows to match on the left hand side.

It turns out this is a very hard thing to photograph - it disappears!
Just to the right of my index finger the stitches change angle, this is the extra
rows being put in.

and the same on the left front.

I think its gone well. The bit I'm least satisfied with was how to do the final turn which happened to fall just at the edge of my lacy pattern. On the right hand front the turns happened on the right side of the knitting which I adapted by skipping the last bit of the pattern and starting it again on the next row which seems to have left a knobbly bit. On the left hand front the turns happened on the wrong side of the knitting (a simple purl row) which was much easier to adapt and has left a neater finish I think. Sorry if that made no sense at all!

Having done this once I'm pretty sure I'd do this again, and maybe with a bit more confidence on my next jumper. Lets face it - this isn't going to make much difference to the way the cardigan fits.

Either way, that's now done - on with the pattern!

Previously: 3. A long weekend of progress
Next: 5. Must there be two?

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Summer Knits: 2. Oh Bother

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I decided to do a sanity check on measurements, gauge and size of my cardigan after knitting around 10cm of the bottom. The bad news is that I needed to start again!

Firstly, because I didn't have the 3mm needle the pattern recommended, but did have a 3.25mm needle I decided not to both with a gauge square - there was no way it could be too small if I'm using bigger than suggested needles. Wrong. The gauge was still a tiny bit too small. Clearly the wool I've chosen is rather different from the one the pattern recommended. However, this isn't so far out that a little gentle stretching while blocking won't sort it. Fortunately for me I was on the larger needle to start with.

So why, I asked myself, can I not wrap the material around my hips and have it fit?
Cue waving a tape measure and the pattern at Joe to see if he could see where I was going wrong - the answer came back loud and clear - you're making the wrong size!

I then spent a while looking at the pattern trying to work out where the mistake had come from as I hadn't just picked a size at random! Turns out I looked at the bust measurements at the top of the pattern and chose the size accordingly to match my bra size. Uh-uh (imagine loud buzzy noise). The bust measurements listed are the full bust size - not the under bust size. That would explain it then! Rather frustratingly I have now unravelled it and started again. I'm glad I checked everything was working before it had gone too far, and now that I'm making progress again I'm much happier than I was for the five days the whole thing sat in my knitting bag and couldn't be worked on, but its still very annoying.

Anyway, lesson learnt - a little less enthusiasm to get started, and a little more time checking the pattern doesn't go amiss. Maybe one day this lesson might sink in?!

Progress take two - slowly getting there!

Previously: 1: Casting On
Next: 3. A long weekend of progress

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A Matter of Correction

When I was learning to knit I decided that I didn't want to knit a scarf or granny squares or any of those other beginners items: I wanted to knit a jumper - and one with lots of pattern to it. I picked this one and set off with enthusiasm.

I followed the pattern to the letter and the result was a jumper that I never felt comfortable wearing because the body and the sleeves were shorter than I'd normally go for. I tend to like my tops to come down well below my waist and, to put it bluntly, this didn't.

Three years on and a with a little more experience I dug it out wondering if I could modify it. I had plenty of the wool left over so I decided to try picking up the stitches around the body and add a few inches of chunky rib - and then to do the same to the sleeves. I knew this wouldn't look as seamless as if it has been ribbed from the word go - but I figured I wasn't wearing it as it was so I might as well give it a chance.

A quick search on Google suggested that I'm by no means the first person to have done this and that the solution is not to just pick up the stitches as you would for a border, but to unravel the bottom edge completely.

Doing so for a cast on edge is more complicated that you'd think. You can't just detach an end and pull - it simply won't unravel. Instead you have to cut a stitch just below where you want to unravel to, and then unweave this loose end manually, picking up each stitch as its revealed.

The jumper had a hefty lump of pattern in it with stitches added, subtracted and switching places regularly; needless to say I found the process of identifying which bits to pick up as stitches hard work. A considerable amount of time later though and I had 95 stitches sitting on my needle and a completely loose piece of knitting that had been removed. Success!

I put in one row of knit and then started on a 2/2 rib.

With six inches of ribbed knitting added to the bottom I started to get quite excited. The whole jumper felt so much better for it. However, I did spot one potential problem. I couldn't just take a jumper that finishes at my waist, extend it straight down and expect it to fit over my hips - my body doesn't work like that. So I planned out a little triangular section to put over each hip so that it didn't have to stretch too much. Here was my plan:

I finished off the second half of the body quite quickly (becoming a pro at picking up thoses stitches!), and then added one inch of ribbing to each sleeve just to complete the job, and ta-da - one jumper that fits and is comfortable. Maybe next time its cold and wet this will be my jumper of choice.  

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