tychoish, now without a net

So we’re in a sort of “long stretch” part of the Latvian-Dreaming sweater. But I just wanted to post something to remind you that you can start this any time and that I haven’t forgotten about the project (it is in fact, basically my own project at the moment).

So here’s the plan:

1. The project materials (PDF chart, excel file with a more modifiable copy of the chart, a read me file explaining how to read the chart) are located here. Download them now!
2. Obtain yarn. Fingering weight to DK, in two colors. You’ll probably need a chunk more of the background/darker color. I’m bad at predicting this. I got about 1425 yards of each color, but I had the end of a skein leftover from a previous project of the background color. I think this should be enough, and I anticipate significant leftovers. This also depends a lot on factors like your gauge and any resizing.
3. Determine your gauge and the number of stitches that you need to get a sweater that you fits you. Hope that your number is close to 340. If it’s a bit smaller, don’t sweat it, if it’s a bit bigger, add a couple of stitches at each underarm before stitch 1 on the chart. If it’s more or more than a few stitches less, (read this](http://www.tychoish.com/2008/05/strategies-for-upsizing/).
4. If you want a ribbing cast on 320 and knit in two color ribbing for a couple of inches, then knit a row in the background color and increase to 340 like so. And/or adjust.
5. If you don’t want a ribbing, or want to think about about it yet, provisionally cast on 340 (or however many number of stitches you need) and begin knitting the pattern in the next row.
6. Ignore anything I said previously about 344 stitches. My fault.
7. After you’ve increased, begin knitting the pattern, following the chart, and the instructions for chart knitting included with the chart. You’ll be doing this for a long time.
8. Ask any questions you still have. (Before you ask about making a cardigan, read this.)
9. Keep knitting. Other than follow the chart, I’m not doing anything until the sweater is 12 inches long. This is 3 inches from the underarm point. I’ll get to what happens here in an upcoming post.

Knit in good health!

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Here’s another informational piece for people interested in knitting the Latvian Dreaming sweater.

After the cardigan modification, the most requested mod to this sweater is “how can I increase the stitch count,” for people who want to knit the sweater at small gauges (8 stitches to the inch) but need larger sizes. Since I’m awkwardly small I made a point of knitting this at a particularly small gauge (9.5 stitches per inch) to help make the pattern more accessible for the more normally-sized.

But there’s only so much that one can do with guage, particularly if you come into a project with a yarn picked out and a comfortable gauge established. This is further complicated by an important design principal that we are all wise to follow: keep the patterns centered. That is, make sure that the design is symmetrical on all sides. In practical terms this means that for every stitch you add or subtract to the chart, you have to add or subtract 4 to the total stitch count. As the repeats have 16 stitches, adding even half a repeat to the pattern means adding 32 stitches total.

Note: there’s already one stitch in background color that is not included in the chart before stitch number 1 on both sides.

But don’t fear, armed with a clear notion of your gauge and your desired size, we can tweak the stitch count to something more useable. Here are a few of these strategies:

• Put in stripes in the side panels. If you add stitches under either underarm you only need to add two stitches, and if you keep them in alternating colors the floats will be secured, and all will be well. You can add anywhere from 1 to 5 or 6 (2 to 10 or 12 total) stitches to the number of stitches. This option can be combined for fine tuning with any of the other options.
• As a side stripe, add stitches 9 to 16 from the chart to the beginning of both sides. You can drop the uncharted background stitch or add a second stitch on the other side of the panel This will allow the first pattern to balance on the side more clearly. This will bring the total number of stitches to: 356 (if you add the second border stitch) or 352 (if you omit border stitches). If you take out border stitches there will be a jog at the beginning of the round.
• Replace the uncharted side stitch with stitches 24 through 44. This brings the total number of stitches to 378.
• If you need to size (either as part of fine tuning or as part of making it smaller) down stitch 24 and 44 on the chart can be dropped without much error, and (this brings the stitch count down to 336). If you’re after 338 stitches, dropping stitch 44 on the chart shouldn’t disrupt anything (actually, I sort of wish that I’d done this, because I think it would look better).
• If you need to resize the pattern in a more massive way. then by all means add a repeat of stitches 45 through 60 on the chart before stitch 45, though this will bring the stitch count up to 404.
• Similarly you could consider adding a repeat of stitches 57-60 from the chart before stitch 45. This would bring the stitch count to 356.
• You may consider adding a half repeat of stitches 53 through 60 on the chart before stitch 45, though if you do this, I might recommend beginning the sweater/repeat on row 9, rather than row 1.
• Consider adding stitches or even additional patterns between stitch 24 and 25 and/or stitch 43 and 44. Remember that each stitch you add at one of these points accounts for a change in 4 total stitches. Buy Joyce’s Book for many great ideas for additional patterns.

My design intention with this is to have the main interlocking pattern of stitches 45-85 cover the majority of the center of the design. I’ve been hesitant to suggest major modifications to the first pattern repeat, though you may feel more than welcome to toy around in this space if you want to add repeats. I included the Microsoft Excel file that I used to mock up the charts with the project materials and I encourage you to experiment (and share) your modifications.

I hope this helps you reach a pattern that fits you better.

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tagged: latvian dreaming

So I have finally finished with the ribbing of my sweater.

I knitted 20 rounds of ribbing, which is likely more than you’ll need, becuase I’m knitting with such fine yarn. Actually, I think 16-18 would have been enough, but 20 seemed like a good number. I think the target depth for ribbings is like 2-2.5 inches. Mine is 2.75, but I think I’ll live.

And then I increased. Remember I cast on 320, except I need the sweater to be 344 for the size/pattern. Right? Here’s the instruction that I recommend to you:

* Knit 16 Repeat from * 10 times.

The astute among you will notice that this means that the sweater will have not 344 but 340 stitches.

That’s correct. I seem to have made some sort of crucial error in the chart as it turns out the key number for this sweater is 342. In the old chart, I had an extra stitch around 42-43. And I increased up to 344 started the chart and then knit two rounds before I realized that the pattern didn’t work. Stitches are small and it turns out that an increase here and a decrease there don’t really matter that much.

I have amended the chart, and revision 2 is here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2470929 for those that have run into an error. I’m slowly going back and changing old links… This is the reason why I’ve got a head start. Once the pattern emerges, I’ll have pictures for you. (And I want to see your pictures/sweaters as well!

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: latvian dreaming

Here is today’s entry/breadcrumb of the pattern for the latvian dreaming sweater. IF you want to make the sweater into a cardigan, here’s the scoop:

Some of you have asked for or expressed interest in doing this sweater as a cardigan. My last three sweaters have been cardigans, and I’m ready for a change, but these kinds of sweaters make a lot of sense to a lot of people, so don’t be discouraged, you can make this sweater as a cardigan.

The main difference here is that you need an extra stitch so that the patterns mirror properly. So that’s 345 stitches. There also need to be steeks. I think cardigans work better without ribbing, or if you’re going to do ribbing, why not wait till the end: this has to do with steeks and getting all of the end in the right place. So you don’t have to, but lets just assume that you do:

Cast on provisionally for 345 stitches, join in the contrasting color, and then using the long tail method cast on an odd number of stitches for a steek, I’m partial to 11 or 13. The first, last, and middle stitches should be in the background color, and the stitches on either side of the middle stitch should be in the foreground color. All other stitches should alternate fore and background colors.

You need the extra stitch because I suspect that you want both front edges to look the same. In a pullover you only want one middle/”turning” stitch, to make the pattern work. In a cardigan you want the middle stitch to be on both the left and right front. You could have the middle stitch on neither the left nor the right, but that seems silly, as typically you want the front of a sweater to be a bit wider than the back (it’s one of those anatomical things), and while 1/8th or less of an inch shouldn’t matter much, I seem to care about these things.

Then with both colors begin knitting the mirror side of the chart. Establish the pattern on the back the same as you would for a pullover, and end with one repeat of the normal side of the chart. Then continue reading from the chart, flipping back and forth as necessary.

Hope that helps!

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tagged: latvian dreaming

Ok I’m finally going to clear this business up about the 320/340/342/344 stitch count on the latvian dreaming sweater project

I said to cast on, 320 stitches, the charts cover 342 stitches, and I’ve been saying that you need 344 stitches. What gives?

Well, I want to avoid having the bottom edge of the sweater flare out. Casting on fewer stitches keeps this from happening. Elizabeth Zimmermann recommends casting on 90% of K (or 344), and that would give us something like 310 or 309. Meh. For starters I know that 320 is divisible by 4. Also, in laziness, it’s easy to cast on 320 stitches, because it’s divisible by 80 and therefore also easy to increase evenly across, because it’s so evenly divisible. The dirty secret of making KnittingMath easy for you and yours is choosing good numbers.

Secondly, I don’t want the lower edge of the sweater to pull in as much as I want it to not flare. Often people suggest casting on with a smaller needle and not having one at hand (and not much liking my US 0s anyway,) I’m just casting on fewer stitches. Feel free to modify this point if you like.

I should also admit that in the first draft of the pattern (the key number was 340, good thing that draft never saw the light of day: I didn’t realize that I needed 4 extra stitches for borders and turning stitches,) so I thought increasing 10 stitches on the front and the back would be really easy. But no matter, it’ll still work out.

That answer your question?

I’d like to see pictures and hear reports of your projects as they develop. Also, if you make any cool modifications I’d totally like to hear about them too. I know that I’m still ahead of the gang with the knitting on this one, so I hope that by dragging out the cast-on and the bottom rib, I’ve been able to let at least a few of you get your yarn and get caught up. It’s also let me get done with my last sweater, but next up we’re going to increase so we can begin the color pattern.

I see math in my future.

Knit in good health! I’ll be in touch. You be too.

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So at the end of the entry on friday–in short–I said to cast on 320 stitches, using an elastic method in your background color, join being careful not to twist, and knit 2.5 (ish) inches in K2 P2 bi-color (corrugated) ribbing. This time around I’m purling in the background color and knitting in the foreground or contrasting color.

But wait, you ask, “you said the key number of stitches was 344?” Yep it is. And then you ask, “Why cast on fewer stitches? and why did you choose corrugated ribbing? and while we’re at it, I think I want to have a hemmed edge or make a cardigan and not a pullover!”

In response: Hang on, I say. This week we’re going to cover all these issues. Starting today with why I’ve chosen this ribbing and why I decided to do this. Tomorrow we’ll cover the stitch count issue.

A lot of my sweaters of late have had provisional cast ons, followed by turned hems. I’m putting ribbing on this one, because it’s been a while since I’ve done a sweater with a ribbing, so this seemed like it would be the case. Also, for some reason that I can’t explain I’d never done the “cast on in the color your going to purl in” trick, even though it is in retrospect pretty obvious. By doing it this way, you’re not purling into stitches of a different color, and this keeps the ribs more “clean looking.”

Also, I think that this pattern is very small scale, and a little bit of a different texture seemed like a good idea.

If you want to put a hem on this one just cast on 344 (provisionally) with a crochet chain and the background and start into the pattern on the next row. You could knit the facing first, but I’ve always found that hems sew down better when done last.

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