Bottoms Up

Before I start on how much I love the bottom-up construction of this sweater, a note on the progress of the hourglass sweater. I found that as I was decreasing, it was not decreasing quick enough and felt that it would have been too big. So, I decrease the size of the needle and went to work. This worked out great, no more baggy yoke portion of the sweater. I did continue to decrease a few more rounds before the purl round, as many have suggested.

So I used to think that top-down sweaters were my fav to knit. But since working with the Hourglass Sweater from LMKG I think for me bottom-up construction will work better for me. I have in the past had difficulty determining the cast on for the neck when working top-down. Inevitably it would be way too many stitches and the neck was HUGE. I was using some calculation that just wasn’t working for me. But, with bottom-up it seems less difficult. Maybe my brain just likes it better; I mean it is sensually the same thing just different direction. When I think about shaping and such, it seems to be easier to determine were to put darts. Also, my past top-down sweaters ended up with big arm holes, meaning that I continued knitting far to long before joining for the body. I don’t know it just seems easier for my brainy bits to understand and make a better fitting garment. It just all makes sense with bottom-up. I also like the sleeve joining process. With my past top-down the underarm was just nasty and ugly, thank god you don’t see that area very much. With bottom-up the sleeves are done, all I have to do is graft some stitches. I am sure it is no harder or easier than top-down, but like I said for some reason my brainy bits just wrap around this concept. So, next sweater project is for Paul. He wants a cabled sweater jacket. As much as I love my DH, I am dreading this a wee bit. We were looking through some stitch dictionaries and he of course picked out some very complicated cables. There was one that looked like a chain, but each time you crossed the cable to create the chain you had to cut the yarn. Ummm, NO! It will be my new found love bottom-up raglan shaped with cables and a zipper closure. I don’t know if there were be pockets. Maybe some side seem pockets so that it doesn’t interrupt the cabling.