Hi everyone, I’m designing my first bottom up yoke sweater in the round, and am finding it very difficult to find an answer to the following. When it gets to putting stitches on hold for the underarm from both the arm and the body, is there a method for calculating how much to put on hold here? I read somewhere vaguely about a 8% if stitches but then it said not to follow this rule with bulkier sweaters and I can’t find anything online to help. I’ve looked at other patterns to help guide but they vary a lot and would rather understand the method. Thank you in advance!
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Are you working on a bulky knit? It may be that the best thing to do is to survey several similar patterns in bulky weight yarn and see how many sts are on hold. I see a post discussing the 8% rule.
Ann Budd has a couple of nice boosk talking about sweater design for different weight yarns that might also help. “The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns” and “The Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns”. My public library has a copy so you might find one there.
Meg Swansen (daughter of Elizabeth Zimmermann who popularised this construction method in America) has a nice post on this here:
If you are interested to learn more, seek out one of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s books or single pattern leaflets from Schoolhouse Press that includes “Elizabeth’s Percentage System” (EPS).
I don’t believe there is any particular rule behind how many stitches to put on hold or bind off for the armscye. Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen must have knitted hundreds of these designs in many sizes for their families, so their recommendation comes from a lot of experience.
The recommendation for pieced sweaters for adults is around an inch cast off each side, so that would give two inches as a guideline. (Vogue Knitting) Whether this equates to around 10% of the stitches, I don’t know.
I don’t know of any reason to change the armscye allowance for bulky sweaters if you are using a percentage. Do they say which way to change the percentage?
It might be a matter of “Knitter’s Choice” 
This is rather beyond me but I was watching a roxanne richardson tutorial the other day where she said it would be an inch under the arm. Perhaps you can work out how many stitches by how many per inch for the yarn weight and gauge?
I’m not sure I would be able to find the same video again ut perhaps look at her tutorials?
If I do see it will post.
Found it, it may be of no use to you. I was looking for information about set in sleeves. She mentions it’s about an inch at 31 min into the video when drawing out how the sleeve shape works.
Like I say though this may not be what you want at all.
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No, you are right, it’s the same for any type of sleeve that has an initial cast off to create a little horizontal “bite” out of your sleeve width.
In a sleeve knitted flat, that’s an inch cast off on either side. In a sleeve knit in the round, that’s two inches cast off at the underarm (an inch either side of the BOR marker).
Obviously the inch “rule of thumb” won’t work if you are making a small or large size garment. Then you could default to EZ’s percentage system, or just eyeball a bit more or a bit less than an inch.
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