It's Ease-y

Sarah

As you may have gathered, I was not terribly happy with the accuracy of the swatch I knit for my dad's gansey. I cast on enough stitches -- I thought -- to get a chest measurement of about 42 inches, I ended up with a sweater that was a shade under 40. I was worried. Luckily, my parents came up to visit this weekend, so I was able to have my dad try on the sweater body. You know what? It fit pretty well. I was going for zero ease, but the sweater looked fine with a slight amount of negative ease.

It was unfortunate that I had to ruin the surprise and show my dad the sweater in progress, but at least I know that he likes the color, and I was able to confer with him about the exact length he wanted. I'm still unhappy that my swatch lied, but at least I didn't have to start over or repurpose the sweater. Over the weekend, I was even able to get the patterned front half (knit flat) done, and I'm about a third of the way through the back. Next, I'll be joining the shoulders and picking up for the sleeves -- I'm interested to see how the underarm gusset thingies work out, since I've never knit a sweater with those before.

Comments

[Carol]

whew! You dodged that one. yay!

[Suzanne V. (Yarnhog)]

They are devious little buggers, those swatches. I made a sweater last year for my brother, and not only did I swatch repeatedly, but I actually had him in house while I was knitting. Not to be foiled in so simple a manner, the finished sweater upped the ante by s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g like crazy after it was all done and blocked, leading to a phone call from my brother asking if he could "just throw it in the dryer to shrink it up a little." We're talking a 50" chest fancy aran knit in wool and alpaca. After I recovered the power of speech, I had to clarify for him some of the finer points of handknit sweater care.

[kim]

Good that it fit well! Also, I am going to bookmark your bind off tutorials. So handy!