After having knitted enough scarves to fill up my entire wardrobe, I have now made the big jump to knitting my very first sweater. I am knitting the ‘Smoulder’ sweater from Kim Hargreaves and there is a part in the pattern that I just don’t understand.
I have knitted the first part of the back and now have to start shaping the armholes.
I am knitting a size small and currently have 55 sts on my needle.
The pattern now says:
[B]Keeping patt correct, cast off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows. 49 sts[/B]. (I got this far, but then the trouble starts)
[B]Dec 1 st at each end of next 3 rows, [U]then on foll 1 alt rows, then on 1 foll 4th row.[/U] 39 sts.[/B]
I don’t understand what I am supposed to be doing here apart from obviously decreasing.
I dec 1 st at each end but then how many times on which rows? I don’t understand ‘then on foll 1 alt rows, then on 1 foll 4th row.’
Hi and welcome to the KH forum!
It sounds like the beginning of the armhole and the sleeve cap shaping. After the cast off of 3sts at the beg of the next 2 rows, call the next row, row 1. You would decrease at [I]each[/I] end of rows 1,2,3,5 and 9. That’ll take you from 49sts to 39sts as the patterns says. Good luck with finishing up the sweater.
An ‘alt row’ mean ‘alternate row’ or every other one. So after the 3 rows of decreasing every one, skip a row and dec on the next. Then work 3 rows plain and dec on the 4th row.
Hello, I like knitting however I have always done very easy projects. Finally I decided to knit a tops and I find quite difficult to understand this
I have 55 sts and have to get to 23 sts
Keeping the patt correct, dec 1 st at each end of 3rd row, then on 0 foll rows, then on 5 foll 4th rows, then on foll 9 alt rows
It’s it’s important to mention that following the patt (which is composed by 4 rows) on the 3rd row there’s a decrease of 2 sts
Welcome and good for you for moving up to some different projects.
What is the name of your pattern?
It’s possible that the 2 decreases in row 3 are compensated for by 2 increases across the row or in subsequent rows. Can you quote just row 3 for us? Don’t give us more of the pattern due to designer copyright.
As is, you would decrease at each end of rows 3 then row 7,11,15,19 and 23. Then decrease at each end of rows 25,27,29,31,33,35,37,39 and 41. That’s only enough decreases to get you from 55 to 25sts but you could probably work another dec at each end of row 43 to get to 23.
Thanks for the link. Nice top pattern!
You start with 63 sts and should end with 33sts for the first size. Thatls 15 dec rows or 30sts dec if you follow the rows given in the pattern and my last post. Don’t work the dec on either end of the pattern row 3, just work decreases on the rows I listed.
