Kim Hargreaves’ Spring/Summer book, Honey, is filled with marvelous designs, and Madeline is one of my favorites. It is such a perfect summer sweater, with the short sleeves in this ingenious lace design. I have knitted the cardigan in Debbie Bliss Rialto dk yarn rather than the required Rowan cotton glacé, as I find the cotton too heavy.
I added horizontal bust darts to this pattern, which helps create a flattering fit. And I have never been happier that I had wet-blocked my guage swatch before I cast on. The Debbie Bliss rialto dk yarn grows A LOT after washing! So I ended up knitting my sweater in a size small instead of a size medium. Once I washed my pieces, they spread out into the larger size, and the fit was just right!
For those of you who plan to knit this sweater, please note that the lace sleeves are knitted sideways, and are meant to fit extremely tightly underneath the arms. Otherwise you get a very unflattering “flap” that sticks out over the arm. In spite of all my work on the sleeves, I will have to use steam blocking to deal with the flap effect which you can still see from the back:
I would imagine that in the stiff cotton glacé yarn, the lace would stick out even more. I am hoping that when I block my sweater, the steam from the iron will help the lace sleeves soften.
I struggled a great deal with the sleeves because I don’t like a tight fit in my armpit, and when I pinned my finish sleeve together and tried it on my arm, it seemed way too small. I lengthened the sleeve on both sides, and then I got the “Dumbo” effect of elephant ears sticking out from each shoulder--the back photo above gives you a bit of a sense of what that would look like, only greatly exaggerated.
Clearly, I had knitted my sleeve too long. The sleeves are knitted sideways, so the longer the lace repeat is, the wider the sleeve becomes when you sew it into your sweater. And it is symmetrical, with gradual increases to a point at the cap in the sleeve, so any modifications have to be mirrored at the beginning and at the end. I didn't want to unravel my sleeves and start all over again, and I searched for a solution. Luckily, I had just taken a marvelous finishing workshop from the superstar knitting designer, Sarah Hatton, and she taught us a clever technique on how to cut your knitted fabric and get rid of the bottom section without the fabric unraveling. Here is how it works:
Step One: Mark the row above all the parts you want to cut off. Put your needle through one leg of each knitted stitch on the row above the parts you want to cut off. Each knitted stitch consists of two legs and by securing one of them on your knitting needle, you prevent the fabric above from unraveling. You can see that in the photo above, I poked my knitting needle through the right leg of each knit stitch. This secured the knitted fabric above my needle.
Step Two: Cut through the leg of a stitch in the row below the stitches on your needle. You don’t want to cut your fabric right at the edge of the row because that will leave you with a tiny end that is not long enough to secure by sewing it into your fabric. Cut into the middle of your row, as I did above. Once you have cut through the leg of your knit stitch, use a needle or pin to continue unraveling the second leg of the knit stitch, and then move to the stitch next door and do the same thing. You will see the entire row unravel before your very eyes! Pull the loose yarn and the rows below it away, and you will be left with your stitches that you had secured to the knitting needle in step 1.
Voilà! You have shortened your piece! As you can see from the photo above, I am free to knit in the other direction to change the lace band in any way I want or to cast it off. This technique is extremely useful for those sweaters that, when finished, prove to have a bottom that curls up. You can just cut off the bad bottom without having to unravel your entire sweater. The rest of the sweater is saved and, using the stitches above the row you cut that are secured on your needle, you can knit down using a new, curl-proof edge! In the case of Madeline, this technique allowed me to shorten the length of my sleeve lace band until I ended up with a small enough piece that I could ease it into the sweater with enough tension that it laid relatively flat.
These photos were taken at the lovely beach, Bean Hollow, south of Pescadero on the California coast where my husband and I spent a wonderful day hiking with our god daughter, who was visiting us. The ocean breeze was deliciously refreshing, and it was a wonderful getaway!