Monday, August 27, 2007

Holey Increases!



I'm designing a baby sweater and figured I'd try to save time by knitting the sleeves in the round. I don't know if I was doing something wrong but I noticed that all the stitches that were increased were looking stretched out. For some unknown reason I just kept on going deciding I was being too critical of myself and, if anything, the uneven stitches would smooth out with blocking. Keep in mind I was also trying to be fancy by doing the sleeves 2 at a time on 2 circs.



I was off work one day and had gotten several inches done before JF came home and gave me a reality check. These sleeves just weren't up to par with my usual work. Part of the problem was the ladders that were created where the 1st needle left off and the 2nd needle began. Sticking increases in the same area didn't help things any. I did try periodically to move the stitches around on my needles so the join wasn't always in the same place. However, since I was doing both sleeves at the same time one sleeve became trapped in the middle and I was only able to move the stitches from one needle to the other if I removed it completely from the needle and put it back on in another spot.

I finally gave up on my experiment and admitted I just needed to do the sleeves flat and probably one at a time. The concept of doing both sleeves at the same time is so that you are certain you have done the same number of rows on each sleeve. This is more exact than simply measuring 8 inches or however long your sleeve is. I tend to get confused with this method and end up increasing where I shouldn't or continuing to knit Sleeve #1 when I should be on Sleeve #2.

Anyone out there in blogland have similar problems? If you have any tips on how to deal with this problem I'd love to hear them. I hate having to sew sleeve seams!!

3 comments:

Annie said...

Yo, I am so sorry I forgot to email you back about Cashew and her modeling career. yes, we are available, let me know what day is good for you, should you still need her.

I always mark which sleeve is the first sleeve, make sure I know where the beginning of the round is and count rows to make sure I am doing it right. It's a crap shoot really, either take good notes when knitting one at a time or be very careful as you knit 2 at the same time. Oye!

Penelope said...

What kind of increses are you making because I found some kinds of increases are more invisible than others. And are you doing the increases along an imaginary 'seam' so that they become kinds of a design feature? I'm also all about the two sleeves in the round at the same time, so I'd be interested in working out these little issues....

Penelope said...

Okay--got your e-mail. Try this: Do the "Grandma" increases on either side of one or two 'seam stitches" I think this kind of increase is more invisible than the back-front increase or the lift and twist the loop increase. I also do the grandma increase a little differently than in this video because I lift the loop in the direction I want the increase to kinda slant. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4YaoBxkS1U