Another First Sweater Question: casting on after dividing for sleeves

#1

I think this first sweater is going to be a tremendous learning experience if nothing else.

I’m working Pure and Simple pattern #224 from this page and I’m at the dividing for sleeves stage. The sweater is knit from the topdown and the pattern says to cast on 5 stitches on the right needle after slipping the sleeve stitches on a scrap piece of yarn. On her website, she recommends the backward loop cast for this and it was the first cast on I learned but I dropped it quickly in favor of the neater looking long tail cast on.

Well I’ve knit a couple of rows above the cast on and the stitches on the right sleeve cast on look perfectly normal like any other stitches. But the left sleeve cast on looks big and loose like the first cast ons I did when I started knitting. You can really tell the difference between these stitches and the others. The stitches are formed correctly but the cast on looks sloppy and messy.

I’m wondering if I should frog it or will picking up stitches for the sleeve even the stitches out. I’m not even sure how far back to frog it to if I need to. Should I frog back to the row I divided for sleeves or the one before or the one after?

Sorry for the seemingly dumb question but the rest of the sweater is really looking nice and I don’t want this stupid cast on to ruin it.

#2

That’s up to you whether you go back and redo the cast on. If it bothers you or will keep bothering you (it probably would me) then go for it.

You can also do a knitted cast on or cable cast on for that instead of backward loop. Both of them work fine. Check the cast on videos if you need to learn how to do them. :thumbsup:

#3

If it’s bothering you know, it will only bug your more as time goes on. :slight_smile: I would frog that part and redo. If you keep running into problems, you could always put the sweater in ‘time out’ and work on something else for a bit.

Good luck!

#4

Thanks, Jan and Lynne. I know it sounded like a dumb question but I had frogged my first couple of rows a couple of times because the stitch tensioin looked uneven and then when I just let it go and continued knitting, the stitches kinda evened themselves out so I was wondering if this was a similar case.

#5

The backward loop can be loose and funny looking even for just a few sts, so I usually use the knit cast on. It’s loose enough that you can pick up sts easily when you start the sleeves, but is a bit firmer than the loop CO.

#6

Thanks suzeeq.

I did the knit cast on as you suggested and its looking a lot firmer.

However, I think I found a more serious problem that would cause me to re-do the whole sweater.

After I tried it on the last time, I noticed some loose yarn strands on the wrong side about 4 inches below the neck. I’ve tried the sweater on several times, and this just appeared now. I think its showing above where I changed yarns so it doesn’t appear to be an unraveling of the Russian join. However, the stitches on the right side look very even which would indicate the join unraveled.

The only other thing I can think of is that I must have inadvertently split the yarn and where the yarn split, it broke off. I temporarily wove in the yarns but I’m concerned the structure of the sweater is compromised.

I was thinking about unraveling just that one column of knit stitches to see if I can untangle that one stitch but this stitch is about 50 rows back. I’ve unraveled a stitch up 10 rows before but not this many.

#7

It should be alright, but you could try weaving in another length of yarn over those sts and that may help secure the join. You could try felting them slightly too. Or tie a knot. I tie them so the knot is on the head of the purl bump and they don’t show or work through to the RS.

And yes, try dropping the sts, that may fix it, even though it’s a long way down.

#8

Thanks again, suzeeq. I hope I don’t have to re-do the whole sweater.