Thursday, September 27, 2012

How does your sweater grow?

There's not much going on here at Chez Wandering Cat - just working and knitting, working and knitting.
I've cast on for the second front of Eileen.


Even though I'm not that far along, this front seems to be going faster than the other front. Weird eh?

And it got me thinking about how I go about sweater knitting. Another blogger I read mentioned that she prefers to knit the sleeves of her sweaters first - so she gets them out of the way and doesn't get the dreaded second sleeve syndrome.


While my favourite way to knit a sweater is top-down with minimal seaming, when I knit a sweater in pieces, I always knit the back first. It's true, most patterns are just written that way, but I do it to get the largest piece out of the way first - once you've done the biggest swath of knitting, I find the smaller pieces with less stitches just seem to fly by.

How do you like to knit your sweaters?

And just because I can. Here's a picture of Tux.

Using his sister's butt as a pillow....

6 comments:

Araignee said...

I never thought of doing the sleeves first. I need to consider this as I tend to make ginormous mistakes when I first start a sweater and it is easier and faster to rip out a sleeve than a whole back. It would be like swatching with a purpose. Brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Tux looks like you are disturbing him. LOL

Unknown said...

I've always completed the back first and ended with the sleeves. But I actually like the idea of doing the sleeves first...might have to try that. Your sweater is going to be beautiful!

Very cute cat picture too!

Monika said...

Hehe, cute picture! I too like to knit the largest piece first.

Barbara from Nova Scotia said...

Glad to see that the sweater is closing in on that finish line! And cat pictures are always welcome!

LeslieA said...

I always knit the back first and then I get the sleeves out of the way before I tackle the front(s).