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janestarzAfter finishing the hem of the sweater, it was time to make a decision: to I knit the sleeves or the cowl first?
Anemoona had suggested I start with the cowl, as the tightness of the neckline can have an impact on how long the sleeves have to be. On Valentine's day I carefully took out the crochet provisional cast on, making sure to catch the stitches onto my needles:
The provisional cast-on is pretty nifty, but I find it tricky to pick up the stitches. The trick is to crochet a chain, and then use a very particular bump to pick stitches up. You can see in the above picture that I go one stitch at a time: the dark blue is the live crochet stitch, to the left is the rest of the chain with the live stitches still caught in there.
If you've picked stitches up through the right bump, you can just rip the crochet chain out later and end up with live stitches! The tricky part is that because they're live, if you don't pick them up the right way, you can end up with a ladder or a hole.
I also noticed that at some part near the sleeve increases the stitches looked to be lying a bit odd, but I ignored it and assumed that they would disappear under the huge cowl of this sweater. And they behaved quite nicely after all, so nothing to worry about.
The first row after picking up the stitches, I knit a round without any increases or difficulties, but I had switched to 4 mm needles. This was a tip by Marja, who said that by changing to smaller needles would prevent the neckline from stretching. All you need is a couple of rows with the smaller needle size. And you hardly see the difference in size.
I did 5 rows with the 4mm needle and then switched back to my trusty 5mm ones.
The cowl was a simple 1x1 rib, and it would stand 30 centimeters tall before using the pretty nifty tubular bind-off method. Before starting on (the preparations for) the bind-off I did another fitting and it was immediately clear that such a big cowl needs a good blocking to keep it loose. The rib is so stretchy it tends to want to close in around my neck. This is very warm, but not as pretty as the wide cowl that graces the front of the pattern.
Next up: the sleeves!
Anemoona had suggested I start with the cowl, as the tightness of the neckline can have an impact on how long the sleeves have to be. On Valentine's day I carefully took out the crochet provisional cast on, making sure to catch the stitches onto my needles:
The provisional cast-on is pretty nifty, but I find it tricky to pick up the stitches. The trick is to crochet a chain, and then use a very particular bump to pick stitches up. You can see in the above picture that I go one stitch at a time: the dark blue is the live crochet stitch, to the left is the rest of the chain with the live stitches still caught in there.
If you've picked stitches up through the right bump, you can just rip the crochet chain out later and end up with live stitches! The tricky part is that because they're live, if you don't pick them up the right way, you can end up with a ladder or a hole.
I also noticed that at some part near the sleeve increases the stitches looked to be lying a bit odd, but I ignored it and assumed that they would disappear under the huge cowl of this sweater. And they behaved quite nicely after all, so nothing to worry about.
The first row after picking up the stitches, I knit a round without any increases or difficulties, but I had switched to 4 mm needles. This was a tip by Marja, who said that by changing to smaller needles would prevent the neckline from stretching. All you need is a couple of rows with the smaller needle size. And you hardly see the difference in size.
I did 5 rows with the 4mm needle and then switched back to my trusty 5mm ones.
The cowl was a simple 1x1 rib, and it would stand 30 centimeters tall before using the pretty nifty tubular bind-off method. Before starting on (the preparations for) the bind-off I did another fitting and it was immediately clear that such a big cowl needs a good blocking to keep it loose. The rib is so stretchy it tends to want to close in around my neck. This is very warm, but not as pretty as the wide cowl that graces the front of the pattern.
Next up: the sleeves!
