Slopes
Thankfully, not snowy ones that one has to hurtle down, in the insane activity known as skiing. When I lived in Colorado it was impossible to escape the question - so, have you been skiing yet? - and like a fool I finally gave in to it one winter’s day. A slightly over-enthusiastic friend, a Nazi instructor, a few bunny slopes, several falls and a dreadful back injury later, I swore that it was the first and last time I would ever throw myself willingly down a slippery slope with my feet embedded in long, dangerous things. I’m perfectly willing to be the friend who sits in the cabin by the fire knitting something, to whom everyone says at the end of the day, you really should have been out there! No thank you. Some cocoa? Or do you prefer single malt?
ANYWAY. The slopes I am talking about are those incorporated in this Wicked vest, and those it seeks to, ahem, accommodate. This post is an effort to list coherently all the modifications I am making to this pattern, so when I start the second front, I don’t reinvent the wheel.
First off, there’s the v-neck you see at the front. The pattern calls for a deep, squarish neck, but I gave it a deep sloping v-neck instead. I started the neck decreases at the same time as the armhole ones, also on the RS. So I decreased every RS row 19 times, and then every other RS row 4 times. A total of 23 decreases at the neck, plus the 18 decreases at the armhole out of a total of 62, leaving me with 21 stitches for the shoulder. This formula was painfully arrived at through several frogging sessions. At first the gradient was not right, then I counted wrong, then I made a mistake in the pattern - you know the drill. I also tried adopting Maggie Righetti’s excellent formula for V-necks in her Sweater Design in Plain English (pp. 239-242), and although I eventually chose a gentler gradient than the one she prescribes, it’s a great formula to learn the construction.
I also decided to continue with the button-band edge and keep the sweater a little unkempt, as it were. So this neck edge you see is a 2p, 1k rib (with the edge st slipped on the WS) throughout. It actually looks quite neat, and I felt it somehow went with the overall shabby chic look of the fabric. What do you think? I’ll know for sure when I have it done and blocked with the buttons on, but so far I like it. I just have to make sure the back neck also has a similar edge, so I’ll redo the last few rows of the back, with two rows of purl and a final knit bind off. That should give it a continuity all around the neck, no?
And then there are short rows all over the pattern. Okay, in two places. First, instead of binding off at the shoulder in steps, I decided to do two short rows to get the sloping effect - on the WS, purl 7, wrap & turn and knit back, then turn and purl 14, picking up the first wrap, wrap & turn and knit back, then turn and purl 21, picking up second wrap. I’ll do a three-needle bind off on the shoulders once I’m done.
I also added bust darts. A first for me, something I’ve been wanting to try, and while a lace pattern was not the best place to start, I think I managed it okay. I added a dart of 8 rows, therefore four wraps. I began the short rows at the button-band edge on the WS after 18 rows of the stockinette lace panel. I added wraps on the 36th, 46th, 56th and 61st stitches (basically the ones right after the lace repeat, except for the last stitch). This meant that until the armhole decreases, the lace repeats were staggered across the row, with one column on row 2, another on row 4, and yet another on row 6 of the pattern repeat. But as long as you maintain each column in its own repeat, no harm done. Can you even tell that there is a dart there? I had to add the black annotations because I couldn’t see it myself.
I added the darts mainly because the pattern changes just beneath the bust, and I don’t want it to ride up and look ungainly. Let’s hope, though, that it actually works when I finally wear it. Thanks again to Maggie Righetti, and to Honeybee33’s detailed bust dart tittorial (yes, groaaaan, and giggle) for help with this technique.