Donna Update Continued

Believe it or not, after going on and on about my Donna sweater the other day, there's actually something I forgot to talk about! The short-row shaping. First of all, the pattern tells you to wrap the first stitch inside the ribbing which runs up each side. On the next knit row, it has you "work to within 4 stitches of ribbing" and wrap the next stitch. This leaves 2 unwrapped stitches between the wrapped stitches. Then you are suppose to continue until 6 stitches are wrapped on each side. (For a C cup, more for larger sizes.) If you continue leaving 2 unwrapped stitches between each wrapped stitch, this ends up bringing the darts pretty far into the center of the garment. On the larger cup sizes, they'd end up meeting in the middle! I compromised by only leaving one unwrapped stitch between wraps. This turned out alright, but if I ever knit this top again, I'd put each wrap just inside the previous wrap.

The next thing I had to consider was how knitting in the round would affect the way I needed to go back, pick up the wraps, and work them with their stitches. Most references seem to assume that you are working flat and will work the right-slanting dart from the knit side and the left-slanting dart from the purl side. When you're knitting in the round, you approach both from the knit side. Luckily I remembered that Priscilla Gibson-Roberts discusses this in Knitting in the Old Way. She advises that when you're working the left-slanting dart from the knit side, you switch the orientation of the wrapped stitch, then pick up the wrap, and knit them together. In other words, slip the wrapped stitch to the right-hand needle as if to knit and then slip it back to the left-hand needle in this flipped orientation. (This is assuming your knit stitches normally sit with their leading legs on the front side of the needle.) I'm not sure why this works, but trusting Priscilla's advice on it seems to have turned out well for me.

Last night I took some graph paper and reworked the neckline shaping so that all my decreases are on RS rows. Beginning a little higher than the original pattern, I'll leave the center 2 stitches at the point of the V on hold (more advice from Knitting in the Old Way). Then I'll do about 2/3's of the decreases on every other row and do the remaining decreases every 4th row. Hopefully, what looks good on paper will look good knit up as well.

Finally, I found out the hard way another thing I need to take into account for knitting this pattern all in one piece. The raglan shaping needs to begin at the right-hand shoulder (as the garment is worn). Otherwise, once I split for the neckline and begin knitting back and forth, half of my decreases will fall on the purl side and half on the knit side. Looking at it another way, I'm basically switching what is considered the beginning of my round to the center front. That way, when I change from rounds to rows, my shaping rounds won't be split into 2 different rows.

That's all for now, folks, but don't be surprised if I remember something else or come across new dilemmas that need solving!

tags: knitting