pick up and knit
i am obsessed with the neckline for celtic dreams. Obsessed to the extent that i knit the saddles and an inch of the body just to try different necklines on. The pattern calls for a garter stitch neckline and, well, with all that cabling, it seems a bit of a shame to me.
So, i tried this*:
But that looks a bit lacking to me. So i tried the called-for neck:
Again, not really what i am looking for. In my research on the topic, i found some information on picking up and knitting. Note the difference in picking up in the center of the stitch, i.e. pick up through the heart of the ‘v’s:
And picking up between stitches:
But getting back to the point, i am worried that 1) i will be picking up too many stitches if i pick up in each of the knits on the cables, 2) it will be difficult to pick up each of the stitches in the cables, and 3) what about the purl areas? I haven’t tried a pick up and purl.
Right now, the mental plan is to pick up the stitches in the cables and work those in pattern about an inch and a half further, while adding ribbing wherever a span of purls appear. Guess i need to get my neckline out again. At some point i’d like to actually be working on the sweater though…
*note that the color change is for my illustration purposes only. The final sweater will have the same color for the neck as the body
March 20th, 2006 at 14:20
[...] i may have mentioned this before, but i was not really enthralled with the neckline in the Celtic dreams pattern. It seemd just plain wrong to me to top off all those cables with a garter-stitch nack band. So i obsessed about it for a couple of weeks, knitting a second set of saddles and neck to test out different ideas on, hunting down other aran-style necks, emailing and IM’ing friends and generally going crazy. [...]
March 27th, 2006 at 08:27
Your Celtic Dreams looks fabulous, but I agree about the neck. The only Aran sweater I knit was years ago and had a traditional k1p1 rib neckline, the kind you roll over and tack to the inside. It came out really nice, but that sweater did not have the saddles your does. I don’t think that would work with the squared off look the saddles give the neckline. Have you thought about some kind of i-cord neckline? Of course I have no idea whatsoever how to do one…