Project Sprig: The yoke is in!
Jan. 21st, 2021 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzLast weekend I was ready to dive into some raglan increases after joining in the round and I mentioned some short rows as well. There's been a ton of progress!
The pattern starts off with only 22 stitches and then increases each round in a weird and interesting new way of doing short rows. This accounts for the lopsided or a-symmetrical shoulder yoke, so that after the yoke is in and the work has been joined in the round, you've managed to knit a straight line across the body and you've suddenly got a 'normal' project again.
I knit a couple of raglan increases and then looked up the instructions for Boden, the jumper I made when Donald Trump was elected president and knitting a big pullover to hide away from this world I didn't recognise seemed like a good idea. Just yesterday Joe Biden was inaugurated and he started off undoing most of the shit the previous president had fucked up. A good start!
Boden started out with ten short rows in the back and went on for a bit after that, and I considered this number. Boden was initially meant to be a turtleneck jumper and needed its back neckline raised considerably in order to not have the turtleneck sag in the back.
So I did ten short rows (5 knit rows, 5 purl rows), each time adding a stitch before making the next wrap & turn. I started turning the work just 1 stitch past the back raglan markers (on the sleeve side) and added 2 stitches each time I came back to a previous W&T, going steadily farther into the two sleeve heads. There were plenty of stitches in the sleeves to make the wraps less noticable and the wrap & turns all neatly picked up means you can't really tell where the turning point was if you start looking for them now.
The only thing is that this does add extra rows in the back, including the raglan increases on the right side rows, so as I continue down the body my back will reach its desired number of stitches sooner than the front and the sleeves will, because of those extra rows with their increases. That's something to look out for.
I considered if I should frog and cast on fewer stitches for the back to compensate for the short rows, but that would throw my yoke stitches off by quite a bit - and that's not something I could easily compensate for!
As soon as I finished my short rows I did another round or two just to make sure none of the wrap & turns would be forgotten or stretched out as I was working on the next bit, and then it was time to start focusing on the yoke. There was no way I could fit this if I didn't add the yoke to the neckline, and knitting something without fitting is a definite no-no for my wonky, weird body.
First I had to pick up stitches around the cast-on edge so I would have something to connect the yoke to. These stitches were picked up with a tail of yarn from a fresh skein and the tail was cut. Then with the new skein, a few stitches were cast on a small double pointed needle so that I could knit the yoke sideways to the rest of the body, with an i-cord edge at the top row and ssk or sssk to attach it to the stitches that were picked up on the cast-on edge. I had the stitches on an old KnitPro needle, and worked back and forth on a set of bamboo DPNs to create the yoke.
About halfway through, it suddenly made a lot of sense most of these were sssk, as only one in two rows were connected to the cast-on edge, so it makes sense to grab two stiches to connect to.
The chart was easy enough to follow, except for the leaves it was mostly "knit as you find", so if you had a purl stitch, it will be purled again. There was hardly any counting involved. I also learned a new way to increase to 3 stitches from a single stitch. Fun!
I finished the yoke last night and decided to bring the project to work so I could test it on a mannequin now that there were fewer skeins dangling from the work. I fell in love with this project all over again. It's *so* pretty!
Better still, the short rows seem to have lifted up the back neckline to very acceptable levels. Of course, I can't be sure of this until the work is joined (and anchored) under the arm and I can test it on my body, but it looks really fine so far.
Next up: I still need to connect the cast-on edge and the binding-off edge of the yoke on the left-hand shoulder, they are still loose and leaving a gap, but I may need to figure out how to best do this invisibly.
Then it's raglan increases until the underarm and keeping an eye on the number of stitches, because the back will reach that point far sooner (10 rows) than the rest of the body.
I am so excited about this project! No regerts (sic).
(Also, the Vitamin D supplement seems to be working really well. )
The pattern starts off with only 22 stitches and then increases each round in a weird and interesting new way of doing short rows. This accounts for the lopsided or a-symmetrical shoulder yoke, so that after the yoke is in and the work has been joined in the round, you've managed to knit a straight line across the body and you've suddenly got a 'normal' project again.
I knit a couple of raglan increases and then looked up the instructions for Boden, the jumper I made when Donald Trump was elected president and knitting a big pullover to hide away from this world I didn't recognise seemed like a good idea. Just yesterday Joe Biden was inaugurated and he started off undoing most of the shit the previous president had fucked up. A good start!
Boden started out with ten short rows in the back and went on for a bit after that, and I considered this number. Boden was initially meant to be a turtleneck jumper and needed its back neckline raised considerably in order to not have the turtleneck sag in the back.
So I did ten short rows (5 knit rows, 5 purl rows), each time adding a stitch before making the next wrap & turn. I started turning the work just 1 stitch past the back raglan markers (on the sleeve side) and added 2 stitches each time I came back to a previous W&T, going steadily farther into the two sleeve heads. There were plenty of stitches in the sleeves to make the wraps less noticable and the wrap & turns all neatly picked up means you can't really tell where the turning point was if you start looking for them now.
The only thing is that this does add extra rows in the back, including the raglan increases on the right side rows, so as I continue down the body my back will reach its desired number of stitches sooner than the front and the sleeves will, because of those extra rows with their increases. That's something to look out for.
I considered if I should frog and cast on fewer stitches for the back to compensate for the short rows, but that would throw my yoke stitches off by quite a bit - and that's not something I could easily compensate for!
As soon as I finished my short rows I did another round or two just to make sure none of the wrap & turns would be forgotten or stretched out as I was working on the next bit, and then it was time to start focusing on the yoke. There was no way I could fit this if I didn't add the yoke to the neckline, and knitting something without fitting is a definite no-no for my wonky, weird body.
First I had to pick up stitches around the cast-on edge so I would have something to connect the yoke to. These stitches were picked up with a tail of yarn from a fresh skein and the tail was cut. Then with the new skein, a few stitches were cast on a small double pointed needle so that I could knit the yoke sideways to the rest of the body, with an i-cord edge at the top row and ssk or sssk to attach it to the stitches that were picked up on the cast-on edge. I had the stitches on an old KnitPro needle, and worked back and forth on a set of bamboo DPNs to create the yoke.
About halfway through, it suddenly made a lot of sense most of these were sssk, as only one in two rows were connected to the cast-on edge, so it makes sense to grab two stiches to connect to.
The chart was easy enough to follow, except for the leaves it was mostly "knit as you find", so if you had a purl stitch, it will be purled again. There was hardly any counting involved. I also learned a new way to increase to 3 stitches from a single stitch. Fun!
I finished the yoke last night and decided to bring the project to work so I could test it on a mannequin now that there were fewer skeins dangling from the work. I fell in love with this project all over again. It's *so* pretty!
Better still, the short rows seem to have lifted up the back neckline to very acceptable levels. Of course, I can't be sure of this until the work is joined (and anchored) under the arm and I can test it on my body, but it looks really fine so far.
Next up: I still need to connect the cast-on edge and the binding-off edge of the yoke on the left-hand shoulder, they are still loose and leaving a gap, but I may need to figure out how to best do this invisibly.
Then it's raglan increases until the underarm and keeping an eye on the number of stitches, because the back will reach that point far sooner (10 rows) than the rest of the body.
I am so excited about this project! No regerts (sic).
(Also, the Vitamin D supplement seems to be working really well. )
