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Necklines are tricky. I'm guessing this is old news to most sweater-knitters, but it is just beginning to hit home as I work towards the end of sweater #2--my first non-cardigan. I figured, correctly, that I am not the only person to ever try to do a one-piece in-the-round no-seaming-necessary pullover. The man (my Pops) that I am making this sweater for has a giant noggin, so I need a large top hole and I want a little shaping. So yesterday I did a little googling about and discovered that one great way to create neck shaping in the round is with short rows.
Let me tell you a little something about short rows. Short rows are BRILLIANT and I love them in every possible way. The shapes you can make with a flat fabric are genius. Having some experience with short rows and the brilliance they entail, I sat down last night with yarn and needles to shape myself a neckline. By bedtime it was done, but my plan for tonight? Ripping it out and trying again.
Let me enumerate the ways this neckline went wrong. First, I placed my short-rows one stitch apart which made for a very steep curve. The sweater now has a very fetching scoop neck, but I'm guessing that's way to girly for Pops. Second, I discovered (belatedly) that while the front was too scoopy, the back of the neck was much too high. Because of this I created the third problem, some shorter short rows just over the shoulders. Tacking these on at the last minute messed up my decrease math--leading to somehow unmatched shoulders. I'm really not sure how that happened. Black magic? The most unforgivable problem is the last--a lot of this other stuff could be masked by the neckline finish and some blocking. However, I was doing that fancy wrapping a slipped stitch to supposedly hide a hole created by the short row turn. Let me tell you right now that this was a HORRIBLE mistake. The giant gaps are AWFUL. It looks like I was attempting to create some neckline eyelets. Wrong-o. Lace and tough guy pullovers do not go together. Le duh. On my next attempt, I think I'm going to twist the stitches to attempt to bulk them up a bit to mask those holes, or maybe even M1 at the turn, and K2tog when I get back there in the round. And tug really really tight. Wish me luck.
Here's the plan:
And most importantly:
This better work because the only thing I hate more than seaming is ripping out inches and inches (or HOURS and HOURS) and not dropping any of the stitches. Does anyone have any helpful tips for simplifying the frogging process? Something tells me that with my make-it-up-as-I-go approach to patterning I better get used to ripping stuff out.
(Note to self: Before you rip the thing out, insert a picture of the current neck with the woes pointed out.)
