Jogless Stripes and Underarm Gaps – Working on my ‘I Wish I Had Time to Knit This’ List

It’s been a while since I posted a progress update on my ‘I Wish I Had Time To Knit This’ list. Here’s my list:

• Pendulum by Amy Miller done
• Color Affection by Veera Välimäki
• Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig
• The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief by Orange Flower Yarn done
• Ishbel by Ysolda Teague done
• Howlcat by Alexandra Tinsley
• Grace by Jane Richmond  done
• Gradient Pullover by Amy Miller

And a new addition to the list….

• Birchbark by Alicia Plummer

I recently finished my Grace sweater. Yarn is Madelinetosh Sock in Antique Lace.

Instead of the Gradient Pullover by Amy Miller, I decided to knit her Sperry sweater. The yarn I am using is Cascade Superwash Sport in grey with white stripes. Here’s a progress pic:

What I really want to share here is the two techniques that have proven invaluable. First of all, both sweaters are top-down patterns and both require the picking up of stitches for working the sleeves. The stitches are picked up in the underarm area, easy enough, but I struggled with the gaps left on either side of the picked up stitches. This is a similar problem to picking up stitches at the heel on socks. Of course, we can pick up an extra stitch at each gap and then decrease it. I found this Youtube video that shows a particularly easy and invisible way of doing it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIUeMvFlkok. It worked beautifully for me!

The Sperry sweater has helped me to perfect the jogless stripe technique described here at the TECHknitting blog. The sweater is worked in the round and the white stripes are only two rows each. Hiding the jog is tricky. This finally ‘clicked’ for me and I have been working flawless traveling jogless stripes ever since!

Michelle