I"m knitting my first cardigan, in a class with an instructor. I’m using lamb’s pride bulky and Berocco Memoir (mohair) carried together to make gauge (wouldn’t have been my first choice,but I had only 10 minutes to pick out yarn…) Gauge is 2 sts/in.
After I knit the front and back, and seamed them with a 3-needle bind off, the instructor had me try it on to measure for sleeve length. It’s a drop sleeve. The length she came up with was 2" longer than the pattern size stated. I knit to that length, and at the next class, the instructor helped me hold it together and determined that yes, the length was correct.
Now I’ve sewn the sleeves to the body and finished all of the seaming, tried it on, and the sleeves are too long!
Is this a function of the weight of the yarn causing it to ‘sag’ after the seaming? Or should I have inded 'trusted the pattern?"
I tend to err on the side of trusting the pattern, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense. Drop sleeves are always shorter than you’d think a sleeve should be, but because the shoulders are dropped, once all is said and done it should fit. It is a ribbed cuff?? If so, you could just fold up the cuff. Does your instructor have any ideas?
On Knitty Gritty last week, Lili Chan was on giving tips on perfecting our knitting . She stated a gauge swatch should always be measured hanging up–yep, not flat unless the piece is being worn flat, like a scarf.
She stated to pink the swatch to a cork board & weigh the ends down with a few clothes pins, then take gauge. This gives you a more acurate gauge. If you don’t have a cork board, pin the swatch to a towel & continue as if pinned to the cork board.
I think that is what happened to your sweater. The sleeves may be the correct length according to the pattern, but off gauge once on the body.
I’m a new knitter, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Knitqueen … tonight is the last class, so I will talk to the instructor about it tonight. I can roll up the sleeves, but it’s stockinette, so the purl side will be showing. … my dilemma is that I am doing an i-cord edging around the sweater, and I’m not sure if I should edge the sleeves or not … if I’m going to wear them rolled all the time, it seems pointless to do the i-cord on the sleeves.
I’m not terribly upset about this sweater per se, because frankly, I don’t love the yarn, either – it’s going to be a wearing around the house kind of sweater. But I would like to make more sweaters, so I hope to understand what went wrong here to prevent it on future sweaters.
Compuslive: I saw that same episode, which is why I thought that might be the case with this sweater. I think that holding them against my arm while measuring prevented the stretch that happened when it was seamed to the body … and since it’s a heavy yarn, the stretching was more pronounced than if it had been dk weight or something.
Oh well, live and learn.