Woo-hoo, even more knitting!!

«--- Mine

                                     Ankestrick's --»

I felt like I was neglecting one of my knitting machines. It's a standard gauge (4.5mm) Japanese machine (Singer 360 if you are interested).

So I decided to use it to knit a top out of some laceweight linen that I bought last year. There was a new and delicious looking pattern on Ravelry (Summer by Ankestrick, photo from the pattern above). So what if it's (a) handknit, (b) knitted top down and seamless and (c) made in DK weight yarn? How hard can it be to figure out the shape and convert it?

That weird drawing at left? That's my mapping of the beginning part of the pattern instructions. The back neck and shoulders are shaped with short rows, and every time you pass one of the four markers you increase at least one stitch. These increases eventually make what look like seams forming saddle shoulders that are very dropped.

Following my usual process, I sketched the shape of the sweater in two dimensions on gauge-specific graph paper and knitted the pieces - laid out prior to construction at right.

I think it took me as long to sew the pieces together with my new (to me) linker (Singer DL1000) as it did to knit them in the first place. The longest part of the whole process was attaching the ribbed bands at the neck and arm edges. I had to do quite a number of repairs, which are now invisible even to me. There is a distinct learning curve for all this!

I was pretty interested to see how I would like the fit of the very sloped shoulders when combined with a boxy shape, which is a new style for The Sewing Lawyer.

At left, you can see how the garment silhouette corresponds (or not) to my anatomy - as well as how airy the knitted linen fabric is. The garment structure puts the arm opening low down but the boxiness allows for movement that would otherwise be inhibited by the shoulder slope. The garment will ride up if I raise my arms too high. So this is not an active-wear style. It should be fine as a casual summer top, which is exactly what this is.

Now if only the weather would warm up!