I have been busily knitting away on the raglan shaping on my 8,000 Feet Hoodie. Raglan shaping really is just making increases on either side of your markers to grow the front, sleeves, and back of the sweater. It’s a little hard to envision what the sweater is going to look like when you have the stitches all squished up on your circular needles, so here is what it looks like all laid out.
Your cast on is the neckline of the sweater and you are working down. To get the sweater to lay flat like this I put each section of the sweater on a separate circular needle. There are five sections that are separated by the stitch markers. You could also put them on scrap yarn if you don’t have a million circular needles like I do. It is a little time consuming to do this, but it allows you to try the sweater on for fit and plan any adjustments.
At this point in my sweater I have just finished doing the increases every 4th row. There are still another set of increases done every other row to go, so by trying on now I can get an idea if I am going to need more or less increases than the pattern calls for to make the fir more custom.
I made sure that the middle of the shoulder section was hitting the middle of my shoulder. As you can see it is still a ways off from being big enough for the sleeves to fit around my arms and for the front pieces to meet.
This is when it’s time to do a little math, so stay with me here. My gauge is 5.75 stitches per inch, I use that fact to figure out how much bigger each section of the sweater is going to be by reading ahead in the pattern to see how many more stitches each section gets.
I still have 6 more increase rows. This means my front sections will get 6 more stitches which will make them one inch wider than they are now. When I divide for the sleeves and body I will be adding casting on another 9 stitches, which will give me about another inch and a half on each front. Then, add a one inch buttonband and the front will be plenty big.
As for the sleeves they will be getting 12 more stitches added in the increase rows which means they will be getting two inches wider. Then when it comes time to knitting them in the round I’ll be picking up another 18 stitches, which will add three more inches making the sleeves a nice loose fit like I want.
The back will also be getting 12 more stitches added in the increase rows so it will also become two inches wider. Then it get 18 more cast on when I divide for the sleeves and body which adds another three inches. It should be plenty big.
After I was done trying my sweater on, I moved all the stitches back to my circular needle, making sure to put the stitch markers back between each section. I will do this same exercise again when I have finished the last of the raglan increases just to be double sure I don’t need to remove any or add more. I’d rather take the time to do this now then have a sweater I’ll never wear because it doesn’t fit right.
Finally, here’s a tip that helped me when doing the raglan increases: The pattern tells you how many stitches you have in each section before you start the raglan shaping, but it doesn’t tell you how many in each section between the different types of increases (every other row and every fourth row). I like to figure this out myself to help me make sure I have done all the increases I’m supposed to. When doing this keep in mind every increase row adds 1 stitch to the front sections and 2 stitches to each sleeve and the back. So for my size, I ended the neck shaping section with 29 stitches in each front, 28 in each sleeve and 64 in the back. The first section of raglan increases is 12 times every other row. At the end of that section I should have 41 front stitches, 52 sleeve stitches and 88 back. In the next section I increase every fourth row 3 times, so I end up with 44 front stitches, 58 sleeve and 94 back.
When you get to this point in your sweater, if you need any help with the math leave me a comment with what size you are making and I’m happy help you figure it out.
© 2005 – 2011 Kathy Lewinski & Susan Cornish
