I kept raveling and reknitting the Green Gable sweater until I realized that the problem was not the width of the neckline, the depth of the lace section in front, the shape of the sleeves, or the shaping around the bodice, but the simple fact that I could not think of an occasion when I would wear it, and also I don't much care for raglan sleeves because they make my shoulders look out of proportion. So I wound my yarn up again and started fresh with my own design. Because.
I'm still doing a top-down sweater, but this one is based on the top-down sweater with set-in sleeves (yes!) from Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top. I'm adding some shaping details of my own to accommodate a tighter fit than she is working with, and so far it is coming along swimmingly.
The sweater begins with a provisional cast-on at the top of the shoulder, from which you knit the back and front separately down to the underarm shaping, where they meet up and the sleeve stitches get picked up, too. Walker has two options: knitting the back first then the front, or knitting the back and front in tandem, which is what I am doing, to simplify shaping.
I put both sides on the same long circular needle, with a row counter on one side. When I reach the row counter from either side I increment it, then turn around and work back. That way I'm keeping track of my rows, and both back and front have the same number of rows.
So far I'm much, much happier with this sweater than I had been with Green Gable. I think I don't much like patterns for sweaters; I prefer something more along the lines of a recipe.
