Wednesday, October 3, 2007

About 8 or 9 days ago, I decided to try my hand at a seamless yoke sweater. I grabbed EZ's Knitting Without Tears and read that section through twice. What a smart woman! Her percentage system is so logical!

I grabbed some handspun I had on hand and some Filatura di Crosa 501, and I swatched. I got the same gauge on both, give or take just a smidge. Hurrah!

I'm not all that crazy about long sleeves and tend to push them up to my elbows when I do wear them so this sweater was going to have elbow length sleeves.

The percentage system recommended for sleeves seemed a little small so I cast on an extra 4 stitches. I did the increases as suggested and then knit straight up to 2" short of my underarm. I tried the sleeve on. It fit! So I knit the other sleeve.

The body from the bottom up is a breeze with the percentage system. When I had about 8", I decided to try the hem suggested in the book. I'd NEVER done this before so was a little fearful of messing it up. To my surprise, it was easy!
With a lot of careful attention, I picked up the back portion of all the cast on stitches, knit about 1 1/2" in my handspun, then ran the live stitches onto a length of yarn and basted down my hem. Then I carefully sewed each stitch into place. I steamed it a little with the iron and Voila, a wonderful flat hem.

I continued knitting on up the body, picking up the live sleeve stitches (minus those that were designated for the underarm), and incorporated a bit of handspun until it ran out.

I don't like a high neck line because it just irritates my neck so I knit the yoke an inch less in length than EZ suggests. Doing this I ended up with more neck stitches than she suggests so I had improvise just a little.

I tried doing the short row neck shaping....... 3 times. I frogged 3 times!! Grrrrrrrrrr.....

After studying what I had to do to make it look proper, I finally managed to knit a very nice, very fitting short row neckline.

I'm sooooo impressed! No, not with the sweater, although I do like it and it fits very well. I'm impressed with this super intelligent and logical percentage method of knitting sweaters. I know for a fact that I'll do it again. :o)