Ravelry to the rescue!
So about that green sweater… I put it in time out while I stewed about what to do. (And okay, I admit it, there was a bit of sulking, too.) And then I did what I should have done all along: I consulted Ravelry.
Guess what I learned? The length of raglan sweater is the same as the depth of your armhole. (Just typing that makes me go, “Well, duh!” As usual, it’s the easy stuff that trips me up. Sigh.) I was using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s EPS system to design the green sweater, and her calculations say that the yoke length should be about 25% of the chest circumference. That’s probably true for men’s sweaters and for ski sweaters which need more room in the shoulders and upper arms, and it was probably true with the oversized fit popular in the 1980’s, but for today’s fitted ladies’ sweaters, the yoke depth is closer to 20% of the bust measurement. So my green sweater, which had a 36″ bust measurement, only needs about a 7.5″ long yoke, rather than the 9″ long yoke that I’d knit.
I’d held up on working on the Scalloped Lace Baby Cardigan, because that is also a raglan, and I was worried that it wasn’t going to fit if my raglan math was off. So I looked up the armhole depth for a 12-month old in the Craft Yarn Council’s Standard Body Measurements, plugged that into my spreadsheet, and I was off to the races.
I think it’s pretty cute!
Posted on May 1, 2012, in design, knitting, projects and tagged Scalloped Lace Baby Cardigan, Twisted Lace Cardigan. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
Laura Gets Crafty 
Elizabeth Zimmermann’s designs and methods tend more toward the boxy, and less toward the fashionable and fitted. Sympathies . . .
So I’ve discovered. 🙂 I used EZ’s method for a sweater with a circular yoke and it worked well, but I used Amy Herzog’s approach for shaping to give the body a more flattering fit. I suppose that’s part of the learning process: figuring out which techniques from which designers work best for you.
Yum! It looks like a sunrise!
I’ve been calling it the poppy sweater, because it reminds me of those pinky-orange blooms. But it also makes me think of Starburst candies. 🙂 I have to admit that I don’t usually enjoy knitting with 100% cotton yarns, but I like the colors so much that I don’t mind that it’s harder on my hands.