Recuperation and waiting projects

I’ve been pretty sick for the past two weeks. Actually the last three or four days or so I’ve been on the mend.  Earlier this week I came down with a bad bout of bronchitis. Which had me laid up in bed resting, taking antibiotics and drinking lots of “Breathe Easy” tea. I honestly think I can’t stomach the stuff anymore, and the smell of it makes me gag.

Yoke Sweater in Araucania Nature Wool

The Tweedy Aran cardigan was abandoned… and the project I remained anonymous to was a top down yoke cardigan out of Araucania Nature Wool (languishing in my stash) from Wendy Bernard’s wonderful book Custom Knits.  I really adore this book. Aside from the sweater I just finished I’ve already cued three patterns from it.  The instructions are very easy to follow and I like the fact that she give you permission and even instructions on how to adapt the patterns to your desires and needs. This is the kind of Knitting Designer I adore.

I was probably monogamous to this pattern during my illness because it was easy to knit, requiring very little mental strain. Eric joked that a week of sickbed time and I end up with a sweater.

I meant to post my latest raglan earlier but never got around to it. Here it is:

I made the yarn at Yarnia. It’s actually a blend of bamboo and wool.  I really did enjoy knitting this sweater. The think about stranded yarns is that you have to be very carful with your tension while your knitting. Adding a strand of sticky wool boucle to this yarn blend actually gave it more of a grip. Also, I have enough of the stuff left over to make a nice scarf or cowl for someone.

Yarnia Raglan Sweater - Wool & Bamboo

Close up of stockinette

Raglan Sweater Episode 3: Working up the body & armpit gussets

I’m sorry I’m extremely tardy in posting this. I’ve been incredibly distracted by among other things Norah Gaughn’s Tweedy Aran Cardigan. I swore I would do my best to avoid knitting sweaters that I would have to seam, but looks like I broke my oath :).

In the sweater I knit for Eric I didn’t do any waist shaping or decreasing. The body of the sweater was knit up as a straight tube. He likes his sweater hems to ride just below his hip, so I would make him try on the tube periodically to see how I was doing. Once I got about two inches from his armpits I started to knit the armpit or underarm gussets.

Now one might ask why even knit these gussets? Doesn’t it just create a strange little pouch near the armpit. Apparently the gussets are a feature designed for fishermen who wore their ganseys or guernseys (sweaters) while they were out at sea. All the work on a boat requires you to swing your arms around; therefore it makes a lot of sense that these folks would want their sweaters to have a bit of ‘give’ in that area.

Remember how I added those two purl stitches at each end of my sweater tube? I start building my armpit gusset on each side at these purl stitches.

Gussets:

Row 1: at the purl stitch knit front and back (kfb) twice so you have three stitches total in the gusset. Knit to the next purl stitch on the left side of your sweater and repeat the steps to create three stitches for the left gusset. Knit until the end of the round.

Row 2: and every even row purl the first and the last stitch in the gusset while you knit the rest. For example,row 2 you would p1, k1, p1. In row 4 you would p1, k3, p1 with five stitches total. As you can see after each odd row the gusset increases with 2 stitches. Knit to the purl stitch on the left side and repeat the steps for the gusset. Knit until the end of the round.

Row 3: At the gusset kfb1, k1 kfb1 (5 stitches). Knit to the left gusset and repeat. Knit to the end of the round.

Repeat rows 2 & 3. Until you have enough stitches on your gusset. For bulky weight yarn like the Cascade 109 I used in Eric’s raglan, I stopped at 11 stitches. For a worsted weight yarn I might stop at 15. For a DK weight yarn I’d stop at 17 stitches on each gusset.

Remember, you will repeat the gusset steps when you create your sleeve. In the next episode, I will review how to start and ‘execute’ the sleeves. Better yet, I’ll show you how to knit the sleeves two at a time using the “Magic Loop” method.

Previous Raglan Sweater Episodes:

• Episode 1:  Selecting Your Fiber
• Episode 2: Calculating Stitches and Casting On
• How this all got started