February Lady Sweater : Modifications, Tips, and Ideas
· Fit Wisdom
· Sleeve Mods
· Yoke
· Miscellaneous Mods
Taken from http://www.flintknits.com/blog/?page_id=183 and reproduced here so that people can add their edits.
Please feel free to edit this page!
Fit Wisdom
· When in doubt, size down! When choosing a size to knit go with the size that is closest to your own measurements without going over. This is important because (1) the sweater will grow, and (2) the yoke looks best with a bit of negative ease, so as long as your bust is bigger than your waist, a smaller size is going to fit & flatter you best.
· Stop the garter section above your breasts. If you’re a busty lass, your first instinct might be to lengthen the garter section to cover your breasts. Before you do this, you might check out the project photos and see which look you prefer (garter stitch stopping above or below the bust).
· Measure your arms. If the finished sleeve measurements are too big for your arms, see sleeve mods below.
· Swatch. And stretch out your swatch a bit when blocking, to give you an idea of how the sweater will grow with washing, weight and time.
Sleeve Mods
The sleeves, as written, are pretty wide, and will flare a bit below the elbow. On some people, the combination of increase row + wide sleeves will create a bubble of fabric at the underarm. Lots of knitters have figured out ways to narrow the sleeves, both at the top and below the elbow.
To decrease overall circumference of sleeves, you can do one or more of the following:
· Omit eyelet increases on sleeve stitches — only do them on the fronts and back.
· Omit additional cast-on stitches at underarm.
· Decrease the cast-on stitches at underarm over first few rounds of the sleeve (Round 1 and odd rounds: SSK first 2 cast-on sts, K to last 2 cast-on sts, K2TOG; Round 2 and even rounds: K) until you are out of cast-on stitches. NOTE: this will create a small stockinette triangle under each arm.
· go down 1 needle size, to knit sleeves at a smaller gauge.
To eliminate belling/flare, you can do one or more of the following:
· Below the elbow, decrease 2 stitches for each pattern repeat. So every time you knit Round 1 of the gull lace pattern, begin the round with a SSK, and end the round with a K2TOG.
· Go down 1-2 needle sizes for the garter cuff.
Yoke
· Increase evenly over a row: Lucia (The Knitting Fiend) has a million fantastic calculators on her web site. This one will calculate how far apart to place your eyelet increases.
· Change the fit of the yoke: Omit eyelet increases and instead continue raglan increases until you reach the correct number of stitches. For a more fitted sweater, omit the eyelet increases and do raglan increases until you reach the number of stitches for the next smallest size. (Or just knit Amy’s February Fitted Pullover instead, which has lovely shaping and looks loads better as a fitted garment.)
· Switch up your increase methods: On the raglan yoke, replace EZ’s M1 increases with KFB (knit in front and back of the stitch). Many knitters find the KFB increase easier to do, and prefer the way it blends into garter stitch. On the eyelet increase row, eliminate the eyelets by replacing YOs with KFB or M1 increases.
· Raise the back of the neck: Add a couple of short rows to raise the back of the neck and lower the front. (Elizabeth Zimmermann’s indispensable Knitting Without Tears explains how to do this on a sweater knit in the round.)
· Customize the neck opening: If you’re concerned that the neck opening will be too big, use a provisional cast-on. Once you’ve finished the yoke, you can try it on, then pick up the cast-on stitches and either bind them off or knit the neckline up a bit further.
· Add buttonband overlap: The pattern is written to open up/fly away a little bit below the buttons. If you’d like it to overlap all the way down the front, you can add a few extra stitches to the fronts.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/february-lady-sweater/wiki
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here it is! done, finally. the last slog took me over a week to complete. i actually blocked this last weekend but i was torn on what kind of collar to put on it. it really NEEDED a collar as far as i was concerned so i did some research and ended up with what you see here. i’ll explain more further down this post.
February Lady Sweater by pamela wynne (ravelry)
Needle
US 7 / 4.5 mm
Yarn
Brooks Farm Four Play
How much?
3.2 skeins = 864.0 yards (790.0m)
Colorway
light grey
i still have a lot of my 4th skein of four play left in three different balls so i’m not sure what i’ll do with it. it’ll go into the stash for now. verdict? I LOVE THIS SWEATER! in fact, i loved knitting it so much that i totally didn’t mind when i had to rip out part of one sleeve and redo the collar three times before getting it right.
the length is perfect finally! i won’t feel like i’m always pulling it down. the sleeves are also pretty perfect too. christ, i was lucky with this sweater!
brooks farm four play is also one of the best yarns i have ever worked with. next time i’m at rhinebeck, i’m totally buying more. i have three skeins in the stash of a darker colorway and i’m thinking about making a sweater with it now!! the buttons were bought around the corner at my local trimmings shop. thankfully, it doesn’t get much easier than this. if only the weather had been warmer, i could have taken pictures outside.
there are a few more images on flickr in my 2008 completed projects set.
as for the collar, my basic formula was to:
1. with RS facing, pick up around the cast on edge the same number that i cast on. i picked up the stitches in the first knit row so that the collar would look seamless.
2. knit 4 rows.
3. on WS, knit 6, place marker, knit till 6 stitches from end, place marker, knit till end.
4. RS: knit across to marker, slip marker, wrap next stitch, turn.
5. WS: knit across to marker, slip marker, wrap next stitch, turn.
6. RS: knit across to wrapped stitch, pick up wrap and knit with stitch, wrap next stitch and turn.
7. WS: knit across to wrapped stitch, pick up wrap and knit THROUGH THE BACK LOOP with stitch, wrap next stitch and turn.
8. continue doing this till all the stitches are knit BUT, on the last WS row, BO, picking up the last wrapped stitch when you BO.
http://www.gleek.net/blog/category/february-lady-sweater/
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