Once upon a time, I knit a sweater with a turtle on it for little baby Gwendolyn.
I used Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, and I made up the intarsia pattern myself. When I finished it, I was a little concerned that the head opening was too small, but given that Gwen wasn’t exactly born yet, and given that I didn’t expect the sweater to fit her until she was about nine months old, I didn’t have any way to figure it out for sure. So I had Leona try it on.
As you can see, it fit Leona perfectly well, and Leona has a biggish head. “Good enough,” I thought.
Seven months later, Gwendolyn is getting bigger all the time, and she’s just about big enough for the sweater. But it doesn’t fit her, because her head is not as squishy as Leona’s. Indeed, the process of being forced to try on the sweater made her quite grumpy, and she didn’t cheer up until her mother had removed the offending garment. Obviously, something must be done.
Gwendolyn’s mom would like me to try to fix the sweater, and I am only too happy to comply, in part because it gives me an opportunity to fix a few things about it that I never liked anyway. Also, it will provide a welcome distraction from my glacial progress on the back of Florence (formerly the Habu top), which looks like this:
Why have I managed to finish so very little of Florence? Well, there is the regular business of life: I have had to attend to work, house cleaning, bike riding, jogging, yoga, grocery shopping, making dinner, lunch with Gwendolyn’s mom, and so on.
Also, I’ve been trying to work up the Buster pattern so I can submit it to the Jimmy Beans Wool contest. I thought the hard work would be over when I got the charting done, but, uh, no. It’s been pretty painful. And just when I thought I was getting somewhere (around Wednesday), I realized that I had to more or less start over. So the Buster pattern and I are not on good terms right now.
Then, yesterday, after Yarn Harlot wrote about Mystery Stole 3, I totally got sucked in to the idea of making a mystery stole. I was particularly excited about using up a skein of laceweight yarn that I bought last winter with no particular project in mind. So I signed up, only to learn that I needed a lot more laceweight yarn than I actually had. I decided to just cast on for the swatch for the project, figuring I’d sort out some kind of plan as I went along. Luckily, by the time I finished the swatch, I had come to my senses: I don’t have the yarn for a stole right now. I don’t want to make a stole right now. And I have lots of other things I would rather do. I resigned from the Mystery Stole group this morning.
(Let me add that this outcome is one of many reasons that I love to swatch. When I’m really jonesing to start something new, nine times out of ten all I have to do is knit a swatch for the new project in order to realize it will in fact be no more exciting than my current project. Then I wash the swatch, put it away, and get back to whatever I was supposed to be doing.)
Which was what, again? Oh yes, Florence. Well, instead of doing that, I took apart the baby sweater. Now it looks like this:
It is time to formulate a plan. Here is what I’ve been thinking:
(1) One thing I didn’t like about the sweater to begin with is how thick the seams are. They are probably an okay thickness for an adult garment, but they don’t work for a baby sweater. The thick seams on the sides and for the armholes were unavoidable (because I couldn’t have knit the turtle in the round), though I can perhaps improve them a bit by doing the seaming with a lighter-weight yarn. But there was no reason to seam the shoulders or hood, so this time, I’d like to graft them. This should have the bonus effect of making them stretchier, which should help the sweater fit better over Gwendolyn’s noggin.
(2) I seem to remember that the back of the hood has more stitches than the back of the neck was designed to have. I tried to solve this problem by increasing in the last few rows of the back of the sweater so that I had a one-to-one ratio of hood stitches to back neck stitches. This is why the back of the neck looks kind of wavy in the picture below.
I don’t think that increasing those stitches was a bad idea, but it didn’t help much, because then I bound them all off and ended up with an inflexible back neck anyway. I’d like to rip out a few inches of the back and reknit it so that it gradually increases in width to accommodate the hood stitches.
That brings me to (3). If I make the back bigger but leave the shoulders the same size, and if I graft the hood on, and if I graft the shoulders, do you think that will give the head opening enough ease and flexibility? Or do I need to do all of those things and make the shoulders narrower, leaving more head space? If I do that, I’ll have to rip out the whole hood, because the hood is knit onto the front, and I can’t adjust the shoulder size on the front without also ripping out the hood. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but if I can avoid it, I will.
What do you think? Other ideas?
How are you binding off? There are some that are really stretchy, and others that are not stretchy at all…
If you
k2, slip both sts back to the l needle, k2tog tbl, k1, slip 2 back to the left needlt, k2tog tbl…..
it yields a nice stretchy edge.
that might help…
Grafting might also help. As would adding stitches to the back neck (or front neck if that’s possible).
I vote for not adjusting the shoulders… I think that increasing and grafting should be stretchy enough. Esp. if it’s cotton (which can grow to be more open with the weight of the hood.
I had the same question as the first commenter: is it the whole hood that isn’t fitting well or just the opening that isn’t stretchy? If the former, can you increase evenly along the spine of the hood instead of reknitting the top of the body back? If the latter, the Russian bind off for socks – “p2tog, put st back on needle, p2tog, repeat to end” is very stretchy and looks nice too.
Enjoyed reading the whole, meandering post, by the way. I know what you mean by swatching. It scratches that itch and then you come back to your senses (and to your current project).
Oooh, this is exciting. And a bit strange, seeing the turtle sweater all dismembered like that. I actually gasped. Now to clarify: the head opening is the issue. It seems to be a matter of “give,” and having carried that big baby head under my ribs (she was breech) for months, I can tell you, her head is lovely, large, and quite solid. Not a bit of “give” on the baby’s side of things.
Anyway, I’m ever grateful for your creativity in both design and problem-solving. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
If you assume the hood will fit, and graft the hood and sleeves back on for the extra flexibility, that sounds good. Since everything is apart, would you want to put a two way zipper from cuff to bottom hem on each side of the garment for flexibility and fit-ease? You put the hood on baby Gwen, let the front and back drape properly, and then zip her up at the sides. (Zippers allow venting at cuff hem and body bottom hem on each side… and starting with the hood and working down one side at a time might be a faster way to put a garment on a baby…)
What about taking the top back down a bit and reknitting it to have more of a dip? That way you increase the neck circumference. It means you can only graft the center sts, though. But in your increase method, why do you have to BO the back of the neck? Aren’t you leaving the sts live and grafting them?