Ruthless Knitting

Pattern: February Baby Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac (officially called “Baby Sweater on Two Needles; Practically Seamless,” p. 28)
Size: One size given in pattern. Measures about 9.5 inches wide, 9.5 inches long, with sleeves about 6.5 inches long from the shoulder.
Yarn: Kumo’socki sock yarn from Yarntails (80 percent wool, 20 percent nylon); 430 yds. per 4 oz. skein
Yardage: Just over half a skein — perhaps 230 yards?
Yarn Source: Circle of Yarns in Klamath Falls, OR
Needles: US size 5 bamboo straights
Gauge: About 5.5 stitches per inch? A little smaller than EZ’s target size, I think.
Notes: I enjoyed making this little sweater. Some people find Elizabeth Zimmerman’s approach to pattern writing to be frustrating, because she leaves a lot out and trusts the knitter to adjust, adapt, and fill in the gaps as need be. I like this about her patterns, because I find the knitting of them to be an adventure. I read through the whole pattern in advance, but I don’t really work too hard to visualize what she’s describing, so in fact I don’t actually usually understand what the next step will be until I get to it. This staves off boredom and makes Zimmerman’s patterns enjoyable for me.

That said, they do occasionally lack specificity where specificity would be helpful. I found two aspects of this particular pattern confusing. First, the directions don’t mention buttonholes until after you’ve completed the yoke; at that point, you’re supposed to put in buttonholes every eighth garter ridge or so. Are there not supposed to be buttons on the yoke? I checked, and in the picture at the beginning of the chapter, there are two buttons on the yoke of the sweater. Other Internet versions of the sweater have yoke buttons, too. Was I supposed to have read ahead and figured out that I needed to start the buttonholes long before EZ mentioned them? Probably. I could have gone back and made afterthought buttonholes, but I decided that the yoke will probably not need to be buttoned, anyway. I’m leaving it the way it is.

Second, I had some trouble where I was supposed to cast on stitches at the underarm. The directions say: “At 4.5 inches, work 25 sts., then work back-and-forth on the next 28 sts (plus 7 sts cast on at each end of them; 42 sts in all) for about 4 inches for sleeve, ending with 1 inch of garter-stitch. Repeat for second sleeve. Place remaining 92 sts on needle, knitting up 4 x 7 sts at the cast-on sleeve-sts, and continue with pattern and border for 5 inches, or to desired length.”

Okay, let’s walk through this. I work the 25 stitches that constitute one side of the front, and then I’m supposed to cast on 7 stitches on each side of the 28 stitches for the sleeve. I think. There’s no actual verb at this point in the directions, as the 14 cast-on stitches just sort of appear in a parenthetical portion of the sentence. Since EZ doesn’t specify what cast-on I’m to use, I decide to use the handy backward loop cast-on, which is one of her favorites. So I knit 25, cast on 7, knit 28, cast on 7, and turn. Then I work back across sleeve number 1.

Here’s the problem: where I cast on the first 7 stitches, the sleeve is attached to the body, as the 25th stitch for the front and the first cast-on stitch are connected by my running strand of yarn. On the other side of the sleeve, where I cast on 7 and turn, the sleeve is not connected to the next stitch, because I stopped and turned before I got to it. From the pattern, I couldn’t tell whether I was meant to have broken the yarn before casting on 7 stitches or what. Maybe I was supposed to knit across the first 28 sleeve stitches, cast on 7, turn, knit back, and cast on 7. EZ doesn’t say, so I’m mystified.

I pressed on. After completing the first sleeve, I was supposed to “repeat for second sleeve.” I decided that first I needed to work my way over to the second sleeve, since I had already worked half of the front and I therefore ultimately needed to finish working the entire row. I joined new yarn, worked across the back to sleeve number 2, and repeated what I did the first time, including casting on stitches that were (perhaps wrongly) connected to the body on one side.

With the sleeve finished, I turned to EZ’s next direction. “Place remaining 92 sts on needle, knitting up 4 x 7 sts at the cast-on sleeve-sts.” Fair enough, but I figured I’d better go ahead and knit across the other side of the front first. So I rejoined the yarn and knit the other side of the front, completing the row I’d begun just before I knit the first sleeve. This put me on the wrong side. Was I supposed to knit back across now, working the front, back, and front and picking up and knitting the cast-on underarm stitches from the wrong side? That seemed an odd way to go about things, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to interpret the pattern, so that is what I did. It was extremely unpleasant, and I’m pretty sure it’s not what I was supposed to do, but it worked out okay. I decided to just ignore the short bars of yarn where I had my little cast-on attachment issue, and that was okay, too, but again clearly not what was intended.

Why am I bothering to explain all this? I looked at every February Baby Sweater over at Zimmermania and investigated the first few pages of hits I got on Google for “February baby sweater Zimmerman,” and no one else has mentioned having either of these problems, though the 4 x 7 business has caused some confusion. Seriously, I am the only one? I’m not usually all on my own on these things.

Perhaps the other February Baby Sweater knitters did a better job than I of figuring out the exact meaning of the pattern. Or perhaps they have concealed their shame in silence. I choose to put it all out there in service of the truth. Make of it what you will.

In any case, I did like the pattern a lot, despite the little blips along the way. The only intentional modification I made was to add two stitches to each sleeve (so I actually cast on 8 stitches on either side, but picked back up 7) that I could use for seaming. That tip is mentioned on many other blogs, and it’s a good one.

I also really enjoyed working with the yarn, especially following the Sea Silk that I used for the Clementine Shawlette. This Kumo’Socki is not an especially distinguished yarn, just a basic wool sock yarn of the sort many people find scratchy. But I love basic wool, so this was right up my alley. The colors, also, are just wonderful. The tones remind me of Noro yarn, as if the base color of the yarn is not a bleached-out white but rather a more natural beige-y brown, so that all the colors are a bit muted by this base, if that makes sense. The yarn is predominantly a greyish purple but regularly bursts into a short length of a brighter color — most notably red, but also sometimes yellow, sometimes mint green, sometimes pink, sometimes blue. This made it delightful to knit with, especially as the light changed at different times of the day. (It also means that the sweater ought to match all possible baby outfits.) I don’t normally like variegated yarns in lace patterns, but this one seems to work.

Now that I have written at least four times as many words as there are in the February Baby Sweater pattern, I believe my work here is done.

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Edited to add: Ah, but it’s not! I see this old post is still useful to some people, so I thought I’d go ahead and post my “If I had it to do again, this is what I’d do” tutorial for the sleeves. Here goes –

1. At 4.5″, break the yarn (or, if you have two balls, leave this ball dangling but follow the next instructions with a second ball of yarn) and slip 25 stitches to waste yarn or a holder.
2. Join new yarn and cast on 8 stitches, work the next 28 sleeve stitches, and cast on 8 more stitches. 44 sts.
3. Before you turn to knit back across the sleeve, move 42 stitches for the back onto waste yarn or a holder, 28 stitches for the second sleeve onto a second holder or piece of waste yarn, and 25 stitches for the other front onto a third holder or piece of waste yarn.
4. Return your attention to the needle with the sleeve stitches on it. Knit the entire sleeve and bind off as directed by EZ.
5. Now take the holder with your other sleeve stitches and repeat #2 and #4 above. You should have two sleeves and all the body stitches on waste yarn.
6. Go back to the beginning of the right side row on which you started the sleeve, join yarn again (or, if you didn’t cut the yarn, use the original ball that you were using before you joined the new ball for the sleeve), and work your way across, picking up 14 stitches from the cast-on edges of each sleeve — and skipping the two stitches in the center of the bottom of the sleeve, which you’ll use to seam — as you go.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 6:36 am and is filed under Finished Objects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.