It’s been a bit of a crazy week since getting back to town last weekend – it was hard to find time to fit in a sweater photoshoot until this morning. But guys, this sweater is blocked. It fits. It’s everything I wanted it to be, and I feel like such a rockstar for making that happen.
The pattern – Plain and Simple – is very clear, but it doesn’t call for any shaping at all in the body, and I wanted to make something fitted. Fortunately, I decided to knit this for the indigodragonfly sweater knitalong, and so I ended up getting linked to some excellent blog entries on fit and shaping and making sweater patterns work.
It was not difficult at all, but it did involve patience and planning and a little bit of math, as well as a willingness to put aside my vanity and do a lot of measuring.
After I frogged this sweater the first time, I remeasured my swatch, and cast on enough stitches at the hips to fit my hip measurements with a half inch of positive ease. I placed my waist decreases in two “darts” at the back of the sweater, rather than along the sides, as that’s where my body changes size the most between my hips and waist (and also because I think it looks kind of cool.)
I decreased to 1″ of positive ease at my waist, and then increased for the bust at the traditional spots, creating false “side seams,” to zero ease at the bust.
Conveniently, that stitch count is very close to the stitch count for one of the pattern sizes, so I was able to follow the pattern directions almost exactly for the yoke.
I also knit the collar and button bands almost as written (they are still needing buttons, when I will take better photos of the sweater neckline), except for one major modification.
The pattern asks you to knit two left button bands, one for each side. Since I knew that I always wanted to have the left shoulder buttoned up, I decided to only knit one, with no buttonholes. To account for the fact that there needs to be a button band at each side on the collar, I cast on 11 extra stitches while picking up stitches for the collar, then worked everything as written.
The math and the modifications ended up making this project a lot more work than other ones I’ve done, but I’m so happy with the end product that I think it was probably worth it.
