Sunday, March 15, 2009

Knitting, Writing and Question

Hi, everyone!
I'm back after taking two months to finish my November book, and also do a bit of publicity for my February book, DEADLY REUNION. In the midst of that, I also had a request from a lady at church to knit her great-grandchild-to-be (due in April), a sweater and booties. I'm posting the picture with this blog. My picture taking abilities are kind of 'eh', but the picture should give you an idea of what it came out like. The yarn is Bernat's Baby Coordinates yarn, I think it's called.


So that's the Writing and Knitting. The Question part concerns resizing an existing pattern for a hooded woman's sweater from Simply Knitting Magazine. I want to use a certain worsted weight yarn for this sweater pattern, which calls for bulky weight yarn. (I don't like the way it drapes using two strands together, so that's out.) I already know a good method to resize. That is, refiguring the number of stitches (and rows) in the pattern by dividing the stitch amounts in my gauge (per four inches,) by the stitches gauge in the pattern to get a multiplier. Say you get 16 stitches per 4", and the pattern calls for a gauge of 13. You divide 16 by 13, get 1.3 (rounding up). Then whenever you have a stitch amount, like with casting on, you multiply the number of stitches called for in the pattern by your multiplier. Example: Say it says to cast on 150 stitches. You would multiply your 1.3 times 150 and cast on 195 stitches to equal the same inches, but in your yarn. Same thing with rows. That's easy enough and it worked in a sweater I did.

So what I didn't run into before that I'm worried about? When the pattern calls for the decreases of 1 or 2 stitches. Has anyone resized a pattern and had to decrease? Do I also use the multiplier for that? Since the last pattern I resized with this method was knitted from the top down, I've never done the decreasing part of resizing before. I would hate to get a whole lot knitted and then mess up the decreasing part of this. Can't find it on the internet.

Not a big deal--I just don't want to buy bulky weight yarn when I have so much worsted weight that would make great sweaters.
Flo

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4 Comments:

Blogger Nephele said...

I'd recommend to doing a similar row gauge multiplier. That way you can check how many inches they comsume over all the shaping. Using the row multiplier you can make sure you cover the same distance. It can make a big difference in sleeve shaping and v-necks but is less crucial for underarm shaping.

You'll use your stitch gauge multiplier to figure out how many stitches you need to decrease and the row gauge multiplier to figure out how fast or slow to work those decreases.

6:19 PM  
Blogger Renna said...

Eh..wish I could help, but my knitting skills aren't that advanced yet.

7:54 PM  
Blogger Flo Moyer said...

Nephele, yikes, I knew about the row gauge multiplier too, and used that on my other project I mentioned, but I didn't even think about how I needed to coincide the decreases with the new number of rows that will need to be done--you are so right about that. Hm. Thank you for reminding me of that. I will watch for it when I diagram out the sweater.

Renna, thanks for replying, anyway.
Flo

9:24 PM  
Blogger Nancy Herkness said...

Wish I could help, Flo, but that's WAY over my head!

8:32 PM  

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