Sometimes.

The more drafting I do for class, the more charts I end up doing, whether for working out how a stitch pattern will work out in a given shape, or weird neckline decrease issues, or whatever. The current class project (well, one of three that have to be done by next class on January 11) is a dolman sleeve sweater. Go ahead. Go throw up. I know. I’ll wait.

There are many things that I don’t want in a sweater, and giant dolman armflaps and seams down the top of the sleeve are two of the big ones. Which made this particular class project that much more of a challenge.

So. I started by making the dolman curve as shallow and angular as Jean would let me get away with (ok, maybe slightly more than she really wanted to let me get away with, but so far so good. She might make me rip it all out in class again, but hopefully not). Then I asked (begged) to do a wide patterned panel up the top of the sleeve, which would not only eliminate the seam that would normally be there, but would add a bit of visual interest, drawing attention away from the under-arm area. Bonus. Jean ok’d it, with that little smile. I knew that meant I was probably biting off more than I could chew, but this is all about the learning, right?

I picked one of my favorite patterns out of the Japanese 250 pattern book (if you don’t have one, you should. Kinokuniya in Seattle stocks it, along with a ton of other great Japanese pattern books) and swatched and swatched and swatched. Then traced the neckline onto tracing paper, and gridded it, and realized I was SCREWED. Bigtime. I ripped back several inches of sweater back, and then redid the graph for everything from shoulder point to neck.

And that’s where Excel comes in. Recreate the grid in Excel, and add the pattern with the (great) knitting font from Aire River Design. So. Easy. Extrapolate down to figure out where in the pattern to cast on once the neck is figured out, and this is what I end up with (enclicken to embiggen, as usual):

That turns into these:

The rest is super boring stockinette stitch and still needs the hems knit and grafted on (yes, Lara, still doing it all the hard way…), so there won’t be pictures of that bit until it’s all done, but hey. At least there’s been *some* progress, no?

In: Nihon Vogue | | #