If you want to knit a top down sweater, where do you start? Have you ever tried a percentage sweater with top down knitting? You can create your own top down sweater patterns if you know three things: your knitting gauge, what size you want your finished sweater to be and your neck measurement. Can it be that easy? [...]
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Did you ever design a sweater? How about a complicated Aran sweater full of cables? Here’s my inspiration: celebrating this year’s one-hundredth anniversary of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s birth. Here’s some desperation: knitting a sleeve that would fit Popeye the Sailor Man or Alley Oop. Have you seen their forearms? Yikes! [...] Did you ever design a sweater using Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Percentage System? Her knitting system combines your yarn, your favorite sweater’s measurements and your gauge into a sweater that will fit you just right. Before knitting your sweater, you knit a swatch hat as proof your sweater will work as designed. Want to see my swatch hat results? Warning: I chose the most complicated pattern on the planet. [...] Once upon a time (a week or two ago) when I took a wee knitting break, I saw a video of the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, knitting like the wind. Have you seen it? She tucks a straight knitting needle under her right arm, slides stitches onto it with her left needle held crosswise and flips yarn stitch after stitch like a sewing machine. On speed. Her hands almost blur. [...] Unfortunately for some of us, how to gauge knitting involves making a nice big gauge swatch. For best results, you bind it off, then wash and dry it as you would your knitted item. When you measure across two or four inches in the middle you discover the exact number of stitches you get per inch. If the very idea of a gauge swatch gives you the willies, you may just cast on in hopes anything close to gauge is good enough. Hello, math fudge. [...] If you’re a knitter who’s math phobic, you have the ruined sweaters to prove it. One was the wrong size, another was the wrong fit, yet another ran out of yarn before completion. Sound familiar? What you need is a math monkey who’ll help you do the math. Or a way to make knitting math simple. [...] Have you found a pattern you like and delicious yarn for it, but dread knitting yet another sweater that fits somebody else better than it fits you? End that pain. Here’s how. [...] |
Helpful Links
Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Cast On Video Tutorial Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off Photo Tutorial TECHknitting Sweater Knitting Pattern Generator Meg Swansen explains Elizabeth's Percentage System on Math4Knitters podcast Knitmore Girls podcast on ratios #78 Knitmore Girls podcast on sizing, fit and ease Brass Needles podcast Episode 48 with Gail Carriger's segment on sweater sleeves (about 7 minutes in) Brass Needles podcast Episode 49 with Gail Carriger's segment on sweater necklines (almost 9 minutes in) Fabulous Crochet Designer Vashti Braha Start Knitting Socks for Soldiers  
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