First Stumble
I need to slightly modify what I wrote yesterday. Since I’m making a cabled sweater, my gauge swatch needs to be cabled too. I’m getting this advice from one of Barbara Walker’s books. In it, she suggests that to find the proper gauge for an aran, you make up a number of cabled swatches and use the average gauge as your overall measure for determining the number of stitches around the chest.
This presents something of a chicken-and-egg problem. To determine what your gauge is (i.e., how many stitches are going to go around your chest), you need to work up a couple of swatches using the cable sections you plan to use in the final sweater. However, before you can pick out the cable sections you want to use, you need to know how many stitches are available.
I suspect I’m simply over-analyzing the problem. I’ve got four cable panels picked out that I want to use. One will be in the center of the body, one will form a border on either side of the center panel, the third will form a second border on either side of the first two, and the fourth will be used on the arms.
The overall construction is going to be the same as the first Aran. I’ll start with a collar, make a pair of shoulder saddles, pick up part of the front and back, pick up the sleeves, and then finish the body. The non-cabled sections are going to be done in seed stitch. The waistband is going to be 2×2 ribbing instead of 1×1 for a bolder look.
August 9th, 2004 at 10:34 am
don’t forget EASE in the measurements. To fit a 43″ chest you should probably be making a sweater that measures 45 to 47 inches around the chest.(possibly more) If you have one that fits comfortably check the measurement on that rather then your actual chest measurement.
August 9th, 2004 at 11:02 am
MMario makes a good point. Remember that Arans aren’t meant to be close fitting. Can you actually wear wool without another layer touching your skin? Would you want to?
The other thing is that because of your cabling, there won’t be much ‘give’ in the finished garment. Might want to keep that in mind when calc’ing ease too.
August 9th, 2004 at 8:35 pm
I would set up you desired cable patterns and add ribs and tiny cables along with a large garter/seed/half-bobble stitch fillers on the sides to increase or decrease the stitch count. I would also play with the # of stitches between the patterns (like adding a couple of purl stitches) if you are just a little shy of what you need.
August 11th, 2004 at 5:11 pm
You could also knit in panels by first knitting all of your center cables, then the sides. However, you would have seams to contend with.
Probably the easiest thing to do is to look at Aran patterns made with the same type of yarn you are using, and get a ballpark of the number of sts. to use. Swatching each cable for gauge will take you a long time!