Fitted Knits Along

Sizing issues with the BTS vest

After haunting this KAL for a while, I finally have the book and have been added. Yay me. LOL  I'm currently working on the Back To School Vest, and I have some questions.  First, how much ease is this supposed to have?  I'm figuring on 2" of ease, and to get that on the top and bottom I have to use two different sizes.  The bottom is the 44" size and the top is the 35 1/2" size.  I guess I have big hips or spare tire. *blushes*  I had this almost done in the 35 1/2" size and the ribbing was waaaay too tight. 

Thanks for your help!  All of you have such beautiful FO's.  I actually bought the book after I found this KAL, because of your amazing FO's. :)

Guage Question

I have never done anything like this, but wanted to get some feedback from you experienced knitters.  I am looking to make the textured tunic next (the one on the cover).  I have found a rust colored silk tweed that I am in love with and want to use.  I was able to get guage on the number of stitches with a size 5 needle (rather than 10 per the pattern).  I could not get exact guage on the rows, but I figure that is ok since it is a top down sweater -- I can try it on as a I go and adjust row counts.

Has anyone out there ever made a sweater that required SUCH a HUGE change in needle size to get guage?  Does this really work? Seems like it should - math is math, right? But I am looking for some validation pretty please.

Amazing FOs!

Oh you GUYS!

I've just checked in after about a week of on the road madness coupled with work overload.  I'm so so impressed with the FOs you've been showing off!!

Everyone's work is fabulous!  Great Job!!!

Just a quickie update

Almost finished w/textured tunic in Aracunia Nature Cotton. Did the recommended waist shaping (thanks, Stephi!) which looks great and am doing the sleeves in the round. Made some changes on the sleeves as well; didn't decrease in the box pattern and went up a size (picked up 40 stiches), and then just increased 4 stitches evenly later on, and they look great. The hip area may be a smidge tight, but I figure that the cotton will stretch.

Then went a little overboard, and got both Knit Picks Merino style (strawberry) for the puff-sleeve cardigan, and Shine (Grass) for the rectangle tunic. Also, although it's not at all related to this KAL, I'm in love with the Bella Blouse, the web project from Summer IK...but must prioritize!

More Turtle and some gushing

Hi Guys!  I love checking in here and seeing what you've all got on the needles!!

I thought of a Turtleneck Tip while I was working hard on mine in the airport yesterday.

When you're done with the turtle, and ready to cast off at each shoulder, make sure you start your casting off on a purl section of the ribbing.  If not, the edging of the armholes will be purl and not knit.  It might still look fine, but it won't look like the pattern. 

You might have to K3 before following the directions for that row.

I also took a picture for Allyson:

That's my size 32 tube stretched out to encircle my laptop!  It really does suck back in when you block it, or even just if you stretch it back lengthwise.

Here's my progress as of Thursday night:

Separating the front and back (Turtle Tube)

Well, I was able to finish the neckline ribbing just now, so I'm ready to move on to separating the front and back.

Now.  I have 108 sts on the needle, and I need to figure out how many sts to cast off for the sleeve openings.  Even though I'm making a smaller size, I'm going to cast off 9 sts for the sleeve opening.  Casting off any fewer would make the armhole opening really narrow.

So, I look to the errata (sorry!) to see what to do:

“Bind off 9 (9, 9, 15, 15) sts. Work ribbing patt over next 12 sts, k21, work ribbing for 12 sts, bind off 9 (9, 9, 15, 15) sts, work ribbing patt over 12 sts, k21, work ribbing for 12 sts. You are left with two sets of 45 stitches each."

Since I'm basically following the instructions for the 34 for now (I'll diverge from the pattern later) I just follow the instructions for the 34. 

Turtleneck Tube part I: the turtle

Hi Guys!

I decided to cast on for a Turtleneck Tube. I'm going to use the needles specified in the pattern, and substitute Cascade Yarns Cash Vero (55% Merino, 33% microfiber, 12% cashmere; 98yds/50g) for the 220.  I'm using color 19, which is a light lavendar color.

I'm making this for a Cascade spot on the show The Needle Arts Studio, so it's the perfect opportunity to go through it with you guys.

OK, so I have my US5 needle and want to know how many to cast on.

There are 5 sizes and I want to make one that's smaller than the smallest one.  To figure out how many to cast on, I check out the sizes.  There's 34(36, 38, 40, 42) and cast on numbers of 108(114, 114, 120, 120) sts.

Since the 36 & 38 cast on the same number (114)  and the 40 & 42 cast on the same number (120),  If I want to knit  a 32, I'd cast on the same number as the 34 (108.) For the 28 & 30, I'd cast on 102 (six sts less than the cast on number of the size above.)

I'm going to make the 32, so I'll cast on 108 sts and work in ribbing for 5".  Since this turtleneck length is given as the same for all sizes, I might make it a little shorter for this size.

Help with Customizing Fit

Hi everyone -

I was thinking about the posts here regarding customizing the fit on the patterns we're working on, and thought I would send Stefanie Japel an email asking if she could walk through some additional examples of customizing fit, particularly to make the patterns smaller as that seems to be a bigger concern than making them larger.  I also invited her to join the KAL so she can do these as posts rather than comments.  She is so sweet and has graciously agreed to help us, but due to work and personal commitments will try to start a series of posts on the subject next week.  Here's my correspondence with her:

Hi Stefanie,

Hope everything is going great!  We are having a fun time over at the KAL and now have over 60 members with nearly 400 hits a day on the site.

One of our members had a question relative to adjusting a pattern to make it smaller than the smallest size indicated.  Here's the link to her post:

http://yarncrawl.typepad.com/fittedknitsalong/2007/04/turtleneck_tube.html

I think that in general, adjusting the patterns to be smaller may be something people are struggling with, and this might have seemed like an obvious adjustment to you as you are accustomed to custom fitting knits.  However, I think we would really appreciate a little guidance here - maybe you could walk through the Turtleneck Tube vest as an example.  The questions are really like - OK, fine - to make something smaller, maybe we don't do so many increases - but should we work those rows/rounds straight instead, or eliminate them entirely? Maybe the answer is as simple as, you don't know for sure at the front end and it depends!  Just an example so you know the types of questions being raised.

We all love your book and the designs and know our sweaters will be beautiful when they're done, but we would love a little further guidance in helping us get them that way and achieve the perfect fit you demonstrated throughout the book's pictures.

Thank you for any help you might like to provide. 

Also, if you'd like, I can send you a Typepad author invite so that if you ever want to make a post on our site beyond a comment, you can do so.  I'll just actually go ahead and send it and you can accept it or not accept it as you see fit.

Thanks again!!

Robin

She wrote back:

Hi Robin,

I would love to do this and will work on getting something written up.  The timeframe is questionable, though, things are crazy here at the moment.

I'm incredibly busy right now at work.  I'll try to start on this at the beginning of next week, maybe I can post it as a series of posts, rather than one long one...that may be easier to work in.

Thanks for the invite to the group,

Stef.

She's the best.  Seriously!

Fitting your Knits

Hi Guys,

I received a couple of emails today, asking for help in the fitting of the knits.

I'm happy to post about this.

The main question seems to be how to make the garments smaller.

If you're only decreasing the body circumference by a couple of inches or so, you can just do fewer raglan increases.  Not only does this make the body portion narrower, it also decreases the depth of the armhole.  On most people, if the body needs to be smaller, so does the armhole...you don't want the armhole falling too low (and on the tank, showing your bra band).  You'd need to figure out your gauge, how many stitches you'll need to have on the needles to get you the desired bust measurement, and then do your increases until you have approximately that number.

If you need to make a garment drastically smaller, you'll have to change (decrease) the number of cast on stitches, then re-calculate the number of stitches in between your stitch markers, using the proportions of the original garment.  Then do the increases like normal to the desired body width.

That's the fast answer...if you have more specific questions, please feel free to email me or comment here and I'll answer them as soon as I can.