Changing the length of a sleeve

Let’s talk sleeves.

I recently conducted a survey about alterations that knitters regularly make to a knitting pattern for a better fit.  One of the most frequent answers was either shortening or lengthening the sleeves. 

If this is an alteration you need to make but you’re not quite sure how to go about it read on and fear not.  Recalculating the increase or decrease rate for a sleeve is relatively easy and straight forward.

[Note: For the purposes of this explanation we are assuming that the sleeve is knit top down.  It works exactly the same way for a sleeve knit from the cuff up, just substitute the word increase for everywhere it says decrease.]

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The tapered sleeve on Knife Grinder’s Daughter.

First count up the total number of sets of decreases in the sleeve.  If the pattern doesn’t make this immediately evident or you are also adjusting the stitch count somewhere along the line you can do this by subtracting the number of stitches at the wrist from the number of stitches in the upper arm and divide by two.

Second determine how long you want the sleeve to be.  Subtract the length of the cuff from this number. 

Then determine how many rows you will have in the sleeve by multiplying the desired length (minus cuff) by the row gauge. 

To get a rough idea of how often you should work a decrease row divide the total number of rows by the number of decrease rows.

To Summarize:

(Number of stitches at upper arm – number of stitches at the wrist) / 2 = total number of decrease rows

(Desired Length of sleeve – length of cuff) x row gauge per inch or cm = total number rows in sleeve

Total number of rows in sleeve / total number of decrease rows = how often to work a decrease row

Unless you get lucky, the final number probably isn’t going to be a whole number.  Round this number down and work any remaining rounds after the last set of decreases but before the cuff.

You can use this method even if you are also adapting the pattern to fit your arms in some way.  For example, if you have bigger biceps and don’t want to begin tapering the sleeve until the point where your arm actually begins decreasing, you can use this easily.  Simply measure your arm from the point where you want to begin decreasing to your wrist.  Use this number in place of the desired sleeve length when determining the total number of rows available for decreasing. 

Enter the Troublemaker

I don’t know about you, but I have loads of leftover sock yarn. It’s enough to fill a couple boxes and seems to just multiply. [How does that happen??]

I’m always looking for ways to use it up. The Badlands Mitts were my first attempt to at getting rid of leftovers. Here’s the latest: I’d like to introduce the Troublemaker.

It combines two things that make using up small amounts of leftovers a breeze—stripes and small bodies.

The Troublemaker Cardigan is a great pattern for using up leftover sock yarn.

It’s sized from Newborn through age 10 and you can find out the specifics of the pattern including yardage requirements and techniques used here.

As always I love seeing everyone’s projects. If you share photos of your Troublemaker Cardigan on Instagram please tag me and use the hashtag #kathrynfolkerthdesigns and/or #troublemakercardigan so that I can see it. You could also let me know about it by linking your project to the pattern page on Ravelry.

Shoulder Seam Stability

What seams like forever ago I asked a question on my Instagram feed about shoulder seams. Unsurprisingly, people seemed to have a strong preference. Also unsurprisingly, their preferences were all over the map. But it did raise the question: is one method of shaping and joining shoulder seams inherently better than the other? Does one provide more stability? Is there a reason to favor one over the other aside from personal preference?

If you’re new to sweater construction let me explain (if you’re not, feel free to skip the next two paragraphs). Your shoulders are not flat. Depending on the type and fit of sweater you’re knitting, if you want it to fit properly you need to create a slope in the shoulder area.

In bottom-up sweaters, there are two main methods for shaping shoulders and joining them together. Traditionally you would bind off a few stitches on successive rows creating a shoulder edge that looks like a staircase. The staircase from the front shoulder and the staircase of the back shoulder are then seamed together. The other method involves creating the slope of the shoulder through a set of short-rows and then joining the live stitches from the front and back shoulders through the 3-needle bind off.

Enter my experiment. All things being equal, I wanted to see how each type of shoulder join would handle abuse and hold up over time. I dug through my stash for the heaviest yarn I could find and knit four identical shoulder pieces with it. Two were shaped with stair-step decreases and seamed together. The other two were shaped with short rows and and joined via the 3-needle bind off.

If these don’t look identical to you, it’s because the 3-needle bind off over live stitches takes up more room vertically than does seaming together bound off stitches. I measured and weighed the swatches and then sent about testing them, making sure to always compare the growth of the swatch and seam to its original measurements.

First I hung them dry over a clothes line with 1 kg of weight suspended from the swatch (half from the front and half from the back) to simulate the weight of a larger bulky sweater pulling on that seam as its worn. After two days I took them down, measured, and wet blocked them again. At this point there was no difference in percentage growth between the swatches.

Then I really tried to abuse them. I wet blocked them again and hung them weighted over the clothes line before they were dry. I took them down, measured them again, and then wet blocked them. Again, there was no difference in growth between the two. More importantly, there was no difference between the two in terms of growth at the seams.

What I conclude from this is that the two methods will hold up similarly over time and abuse so go ahead and use your preferred method guilt free.

Introducing Bipartite

Is it a hat? Is it a cowl? Why, it just so happens to be both.

I fell in love with a naturally dyed skein of Cheviot Super Chunky from Skein Heroine earlier this year at Unravel and just had to have it. It was one of those times when you look at a hank of yarn and know exactly what it should be and then everything else just falls into place.

Since these are knit in super chunky yarn they work up in a flash. If you’re using the same yarn as I used in the sample you should be able to get both the hat and the cowl out of a single skein.

You can check out pattern specifics here.

New Pattern: B Street

Ever knit a pattern and fantasize about where you would wear it if you could be anywhere in the world? The entire time I designed this sweater I was thinking about temperate climates, which reminded me of my time in Ohio.

B Street is named after the real street in Hamilton, Ohio, where fall is a real season and sweaters are needed. But wherever you live you could probably use a nice lightweight pullover. This one is knit from the top down in fingering weight wool.

The pullover is designed to be worn with minimal positive ease to give the textured stitch a chance to shine. Knit one up to wear over a tank top on a crisp cool day or under a heavy coat in the dead of Winter.

If you knit B Street let me know either by linking your project to the pattern on Ravelry or tagging me on Instagram with #kathrynfolkerthdesigns. I love seeing my patterns out in the world and the way each knitter interprets them. Also be sure you are signed up for my mailing list for the latest pattern release info and occasional discount codes.