messing with your brain

I taught a class on Saturday which was really fun. We messed with the raglan increases on a top down cardigan.

This is a standard set up for the raglan increases. Four shapelines (the diagonal lines of increases) where a pair of increases are worked, one increase before the shapeline and one after. In total there are 8 lines of increases. So what would happen if we took the column of increases on either side of the sleeve and shoved them together?Now we have a double line of increases on the top of the shoulder with one line of increases on either side of the the Front and Back.The single line of increases at the edge of the Fronts and Back keep the raglan diagonal line in place. But it seems to widen the neckline. The line of increases on top of the shoulder helps the sweater sit really well.

Now, could we push those single lines of increases into the centre of the Back and Fronts?

We would have a diamond shaped neckline where all the increase lines are an equal distance apart. I have gone one step further and separated the double line of increases on the top of the shoulder.Now I think it mimics a saddle-shoulder (imagine it without the YO increases).

And what if we turned it 90 degrees and imagined the opening of the cardigan between the parallel lines of increases?I could rotate the diamond neckline so that it's square again.This gives me a neckline that drops quite a bit at the front because the sleeves start with a lot more stitches at the top of the shoulder.OK, enough? I'm stopping now but there are lots more possibilities. In all of these examples I am still working 8 increases every other row, the same as the first standard raglan set up. So theoretically you could plug any of these into a standard raglan pattern. We talked about sleeve adjustments too.The easiest thing to do is to work the increases in the patterns that are set up and when you have enough sleeve stitches just stop increasing on the sleeves and continue on the Body. Here I sped up the Body increasing, after I had stopped the sleeve increases, to increasing 1 stitch on every row (instead of every other row). It wants to dip under the arm. I like that.

We had a blast moving things around and thinking up as many changes as we could. Then knitting the one which was most appealing (or strange). I'm glad the class is finished because I keep thinking up more and I haven't shown you my favourite yet because I started it on Friday and have some more work to do on it. This is the kind of stuff which wakes me up in the middle of the night.

Sweet knitting dreams,

-Deb