and more lessons on short rows in tops
I’ve made it to the armholes of my Twisted Lines top on the front. Woohoo!
One of the challenges with tops knit flat is that they often say things like “knit in pattern until Yin from bottom. Next two rows bind off X stitches for armholes.” On the first piece you do this is easy – you knit along, measure, and then start your armholes. But then you get to the 2nd piece and you want them to match and you can’t remember – did you round up or down to Yin? Because you’re rarely exactly Yin from the bottom. And how much did you try to smooth it out flat? Did that stretch it a little bit or not?
If you are like me, you didn’t sit there clicking a row counter all the way through. Or, you tried to but are pretty sure you forgot to now and then, and then maybe you did some extra clicks to catch up… and really you have no idea how many rows it’s been.
And trying to count rows up from the bottom is tricky. You blink, lose your place and have to start all over again. Ugh.
This is why I use locking stitch markers when I go back and count*. Every 5, 10 or 20 rows I place one in the stitch. Sometimes I’ll start with every 5 and then when I have a bunch, remove the middle ones to leave every 10th. For the Twisted Lines top, it’s even easier – I can count the little twists on the small 1×1 cables:
Because the 1×1 cables are easy to count, here I’ve done every 20twists or 40rows. The last marker which is close to the 2nd to last is the final set of twists before I started binding off. I actually found this easier than trying to see whether I was on row 4 or 6 of the XO cable pattern. Because I totally did not think to write this information down.
The particularly observant among you might say “but wait, you have clearly knit several rows past the corresponding marker on the front and haven’t bound off yet!” This is correct, because I had to watch out that I didn’t forget my short rows on the front. This is an easy trap to fall into if you adapt a pattern to add short rows where there were none.
Twisted Lines was written for front and back to be identical** up until the front splits into right and left fronts. Thus, both front and back read “knit until 14in from bottom” and is intended to ensure the side seams to match up. My short rows added length to the front, not the sides. So, if I just measure straight up the center, which is generally easier than trying to measure up the sides as they are curling like crazy, I’ll reach 14in too soon. I know I added 10rows total to the center with my short rows, or five 1×1 cable twists. This is the extra you see.
I’ve now finished the initial bind-off and the next step is to actually divide the left and right sides.
*When I am not stubbornly trying to just count the rows or forgot to bring locking stitch markers and am traveling…
**In addition to adding short rows, I also messed with the increase rates on front vs back to add more width to the front compared to the back. Like short rows, this is typically more important for larger cup sizes.