Friday, February 17, 2012

Sam's Sweater



Problem: Sam has an extremely curved back.  I take him to a chiropractor twice a month, but there's only so much he can do.  He lessens Sam's pain, helps him breathe more deeply so he doesn't get pneumonia and, hopefully, keeps his back from getting worse, but he can't fix what's already happened.



Sam's sweaters rise up about 3 inches in the back because of the curve.  This means, besides the tacky fashion statement, that his waist is often cold because sweaters that fit in front don't cover him in back OR sweaters that cover his back are too bunchy in the front.

 Although his back is also curved from right to left, sweaters seem to lie pretty straight across the back.

So I decided to knit a sweater that actually fits him.  I'm using R2 Fuzzi Felt because I have soooo much of it in my stash and because it's bulky and fast and hopefully warm.  It is 58% nylon, 16% merino wool, 20% Acrylic and 6% alpaca.  That's 22% more natural fiber than the sweaters I buy him at Kohls....

I'm taking a course at Craftsy.com on knitting for curvy figures - by which they mean me - but I'm making Sam my first attempt at curvy knits.  (The course was a Christmas present from my DIL and son.)  My brilliant DIL suggested that I knit it from the top down so I can try it on as I go.  I bought Barbara Walker's book "Knitting From the Top" and started casting on for a v-neck raglan cardigan.  Here's where we are today:

 The offset color is where the raglan seam increases come in.  I'm not sure if I like this or not, I'm going to leave it and call it a design feature.  NEXT sweater...

But I think you can see that already the front is a lot closer to his waist than the back and also that the back is starting to be too small while the front looks just about right.  So I'm going to try increasing an extra two stitches every right side row in the back AND do a short row in the back every wrong side row.  I'll also stop adding stitches to the center front.  Each short row adds two rows to the back and with my gauge, I'll need 9 or 10 to make the 3".  I'm not sure how much wider I need the back to be.  

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