Hi, its me Abelene. It has been a long time since Jen has let me out of the closet. Here I am out on the sunny stair landing to model some pretty neck wear thing with pins stuck in me ~~~ ouch! Actually, it is not a neck piece, not really, for although it seems like it is, it is only the beginning of a top-down knit sweater, a little over half of the yoke to be precise. (And actually, I can’t feel the pins either, I’m made of foam!) Jen says this will be the kind of sweater that one cuts down the middle with a steek and picks up stitches for a button band later so it will become a cardigan. At last Jen is satisfied she has got the best fit, using a nothing but instinctive geometry, trial and error, and she insists she did horribly in math in school, but now is rather hooked on it. Rewrite the pattern again with new calculations? Okay!!! A day passes. More knitting. Groans of incessant worry that the thing is not right, so more ripping out, and more calculations, and more days pass (see previous post). This has been the thing, Jen is rather sucked into a math hole of some kind and I don’t know how to free her. Hopefully seeing the yoke pinned on me , with photos documenting, she will agree that its a fine fit for the human torso, and knit on now with confidence.
So Jen has got this thing in her head, she ponders a thing which is a yoke stash and the point of it all is so that she can just knit a yoke to pattern (forthcoming) with no regard to the all-over color of the body or even size, transfer all the stitches on to a flexible holder, and just put it away into the Yoke Box, and start another. Imagine that! Jen says this is an excellent thing for many reasons, but one very good one is that one can get started on the complicated & fun part of the sweater with as little as one ball of three colors, or even just two colors, and decide later what color to commit to, or shop for, or otherwise do at a later time. Maybe knit in a nice neutral scale, and the sizing can be generalized, because from her most recent pattern calculations one can change the all over size of the sweater by just continuing the repeats with more rounds and increases, thereby elongating the radius. At some point when one wants to really rush a complex colorwork yoked sweater project, all they need is to just pick a yoke out of the yoke stash and away you go on a couple of sleeves, and a body ~~~ voila!
Jen has got a recent yoke-in-progress to test-fit on me here, and I must say that I am quite pleased that she feels it to be satisfactory, and I feel very glamorous knowing that it represents bucket load of work. Now Jen needs to put me back into the closet and spend more time with her calculator, which I am worried she cares more about than me.
Ta ta for now,
Abelene
Jenjoyce Design 
This design is SO beautiful. For some reason, it reminds me of the lacy design of stained glass windows in a Medieval chapel.
Oh wow …. what a compliment! When eventually you see what the motifs are, I don’t think you’ll see it the same, but that sure gives me a feeling that it is a thing of beauty as it emerges. xx
Marvelous idea! I once read a story that Elizbeth Zimmermann, being
the die hard bottom up knitter that she was, had knitterly help knitting the body of her two color yoke sweaters so she could focus on her designs. One of her best friends, Barbara Walker, was a top down knitter. I’m sure she tried to convince her to try the top down idea to no avail.
Maureen, I know you’re a Barbara Walker fan, and I knew you’d eventually like this plan, of the Yoke Stash… yoke bank, yoke box… whatever one wants to call it. I don’t really know how it came about the top down, but let me tell you something; I did the first two yokes bottom up, provisionally cast on. But I hate provisional cast on , so I actually did long-tail cast on, and snipped picked out the stitches of the cast on later thinking it would be less frustrating than my work at provisional cast on! Anyway , I wrote all the math for a bottom up, first. Of course, the math goes much easier bottom up, but then again, there’s the thing about the yoke stash, and more importantly about my learning to do something like learn top down construction, calculating it as Elizabeth Zimmerman Percentage System as best as I can. It has been a struggle I tell you, I feel so upside down and inside out, and aside of these fun Yoke Stash kinds of situations, it will be bottom up for me. 🙂
Thank you! xx
You and I are in parallel once more…
I too am grappling with yoke decreases. Appropriately (given our different hemispheres) I am working bottom-up.
I made the mistake of allowing myself to get waylaid with Christmas knitting and am only just now even able to think about it again.
I see above you mention bottom-up is easier.
Thank the lord for that.
I have yet to develop faith in my math… partly because of ease!
Anyway, I have one jacket to finish and then I am back to my design with its guaranteed frustrations and its promise of deep satisfaction.
Much love
Karin
Karin, so glad you are at last designing!
I have gone from anxiety about the math, to finally, finding solace in it.
One sweater teaches, but then the next is easier for it only confirms what you learned before, as so the learning curve works.
Yet I am back and forth knitting to calculations. I figure the easiest way would have been, always is, do the math until its squeaky clean before even casting on. That is my trial by error big lesson. Sigh, and so I’m putting yokes down to pick up calculator once again to get those numbers squeaky clean for a size run that is reasonable (not so sprawling as I have done in the past, I will force myself to rein it in!)
Best of luck , and give me a message on Ravelry if you would like any help with your designing, as I’d love to! xx
Oh honey
I have been working on my designs for a while… I have so many ideas…
I have not yet pushed through to publication. “YET” being the operative word.
Then, of course, I get diverted (while I am gathering the courage to jump) and then when I come back, the battle is even greater.
I so related to you backwards and forward, in and out weaving as you pushed your brilliant idea along.
The yoked jumper I am working on is my most ambitious project so far..
All is good…until about 2/3 up the yoke…
So now, with my nephew’s jacket blocking it is time to reacquaint myself with the “calculations” and see if I can push this through the neckline!!!
Like you, I have relied on instinct but really only in the way a drowning person grapples to stay afloat.
Good on you for going back to the maths.
I have had to do that same…
I am excited to finish her.
And thank you so much for that fabulous offer.
I will definitely be in touch…
I’d love that.
Thank you…
Brilliant work!!