Good evening-- I am knitting the Short-sleeven scoop-neck version of the fitted sweater in Modern Classics Knit over twent timeless designs by Louisa Harding. The short sleeve pattern begins on page 28. I have the back complete and am working on the front. The instructions state “Work as given for back until you have worked 24 rows fewer than on back to start of shoulder shaping, ending with RS facing for next row.” I have a couple of different interpretations of this in my head but can’t figure out which is right. Can you please tell me exactly what is meant by this?
It seems pretty straightforward. Work the front as you did the back until there are 24 fewer rows, ending by working a ws row. At this point I imagine that you’ll be working the neck shaping at the front.
Does this help?
Thank you. I’m still a bit confused–does this mean 24 fewer rows total (for the back of the sweater) or 24 fewer rows than the start of the shoulder shaping? When I knit the back, I knit to length, following the instructions for decreasing and then increasing stitches, giving the body shaping. So there are two different sets of numbers–inches and number of rows for the decrease and increase.
24 less rows than the start of the shoulder shaping. You may shape them the same way as the back, but you need the 24 rows to do it.
I think I get it now–I’ll keep you posted. If I’m understanding the impact of this on my knitting, the back has decreases for the sleeves but, at least in this pattern, the front does not (or at least it is different) to accommodate the difference in body shape between front and back. To make this all more complicated for me, I’m using a different weight yarn and have made adjustments in the pattern to accommodate this. This will be one more challenge as I figure out exactly where the 24 rows start.
Here’s what it sounds like is going on. . .
You knit the back to, let’s pretend, 22", and then begin the shoulder shaping. But on the front, you have to start the scoop of the neck lower down than the shoulder shaping. So instead of going to my imaginary length of 22", you have to start the scoop at, again just to make up a number, at 18". So that’s where the 24 fewer rows comes in: Let’s pretend you’re getting 6 rows to the inch. So if it took 132 rows to get the 22", you’re going to need to stop at row 108, that is, 24 rows earlier, to start the neck scoop shaping on the front. Make sense?
Here’s the one place you might run into trouble-- if you’ve changed yarn, you might be getting a different vertical gauge than Harding was using. If the pattern assumes my made up number, for example, of 6 rows per inch, and you’re getting 5 rows per inch, you would need to stop 20 rows earlier, rather than the 24. Keep in mind all of my numbers are imaginary!-- you’ll need to make the adjustments based on the actual gauge and depth of the neck scoop in the pattern, and not my pretend figures!
Thank you all very much. This helped me reconceptualize what I was doing. I made an excel spreadsheet of the pattern went back 10 rows in the pattern from the shoulder start, then measure to get my gauge which told me I needed to back off another 1.5 inches from where I was with the back. Sounds like a complicated way to get to where I need to be! Fortunately this is a simple stockinet, without any pattern to it. Part of the challenge of knitting is figuring these things out!:yay: