One of the things I’m really trying to focus on with this new book is helping you to get a good fit, whatever your size and shape. Obviously, I’ll still be basing the patterns on a set of standard measurements that probably don’t really fit anyone perfectly, but I’d like those measurements to be a good starting point for as many people as possible. I’ve become a little obsessed with this – er more obsessed! Recently I’ve found myself talking to a lot of women of different sizes (it would be a bit creepy really if I’d been talking to lots of women of the same size) about the sizing and fitting issues they’ve experienced.
One thing I’m not sure most sizing charts get right is armhole depth. Apart from the fact that everyone seems to define armhole depth differently, sizing charts generally operate on the principle that armhole depth increases proportionally to bust measurement. Since sizing charts also operate on the principle that on average people get slightly taller as their horizontal measurements increase this sort of makes sense. Obviously individuals can be all over the map in terms of height / width proportions, but I can go along with the idea that there’s an average proportional increase. The thing is, is that I’m not sure armhole depth really increases as much as sizing charts would have you think. What does increase in reasonable proportion to bust measurement is the upper arm circumference, again this will vary, but it makes sense that we’ll see an average proportional increase. This means a couple of things in relation to armhole depth, if you think about a set in sleeve the sleeve cap will be wider and consequently wider at the base. If you were to wrap the measuring tape all around from shoulder, around the underarm and back up again that circumference will be larger. The thing is, that not all of this additional length will be added horizontally not to the armhole depth. I’m beginning to wonder whether sizing charts er on the side of caution and do add some of that extra length to the armhole depth. If the designer doesn’t add enough width at the underarms when grading sizes there will at least be enough ease somewhere in the armhole / sleeve cap area for the wearer to move her arms. Now it’s generally helpful to be able to move your arms, but that seems like a pretty hideous minimum standard, especially when it’s one that mostly affects larger women – shouldn’t we also be trying to achieve a good, flattering fit?
So this is where you come in, because it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong about this and there’s no problem with standard sizing charts, but I’d like to at least find out. If you could take a few measurements that would be wonderful – some of them might seem really irrelevant, but it’s helpful to be able to see where you fall in relation to average proportions. Either metric or imperial measurements are fine, whichever is easiest, and of course you can share anonymously.
Armhole depth - lots of definitions of this, but I want you to measure straight (like with a ruler) from level with the top outer edge of your shoulder bone down to level with your underarm. This is not the same as the armhole depth of a flat sweater example – I’m trying to see the relationship between the straight vertical and the 3 dimensional. If you can get someone to help you can get the most accurate measurement by using a pencil to make marks on the wall. If you do this in a cafe like we did you should probably ask first!
Armhole circumference - measure from the top of your shoulder bone down to your underarm, under your arm and back up to meet where you started. Don’t pull this uncomfortably tight, but make sure the tape is snug and straight vertically.
Underarm width – catch the tape between your body and arm at your underarm and measure from where the tape is level with your arm at the front to the back, eg. how much of the tape is hidden by your arm.
Bust – this is a little tricky and something I’m going to talk about a lot more in future, but what I want you to measure for now depends on your bra cup size. If you’re a b cup or smaller measure your bust at the fullest point, and if you’re a c cup or larger can you measure your high bust – level with your underarms. I don’t need to know where you took this measurement, just call it bust for now.
Height
Ok, I hope my not very good pictures make this clearer!
Thank you so much for doing this! If there are any particular aspects of fitting you think I should address, whether here or in the book, please do let me know.
If you’re in Edinburgh and looking for something to do this weekend this is where I’ll be going on Saturday, the monthly Morningside Maker’s Market. I went for the first time last month and found lots of lovely sellers to chat to and, of course, buy from.
Frequently I end up having to re-work something because I failed to fully think it through beforehand. That’s exactly what happened on the cuff of the cardigan I showed you a few days ago. My plan was to incorporate the motif of two leaves from the left front into the ribbing on the cuffs. The leaves would be placed so they’d be on the outside edge of the cuff and a little visible from the front. Something like this.
So I logically placed my motif quarter of the way around from the beginning of the round (positioned where a seam in a seamed sleeve would be). For some reason, about halfway through knitting the motif I decided to try it on, bound off so the needles wouldn’t get in the way and slipped it over my hand.
It looked good, but then, just in case I actually put the whole cardigan on. I couldn’t see the motif at all, not without a great deal of contorting. It wasn’t on the outside edge of my wrist at all, but on the underside, and no amount of twisting would position it anywhere else unless I turned my palm right away from my body, not exactly the most natural of positions, nor one that’s easy to photograph. You really can’t tell from this, but trust me that it was all wrong.
I have hundreds of stitch markers, many of them rather pretty, but sometimes a scrap of yarn is the handiest.
And then, finally, I actually started thinking. I looked at the shirt I was wearing, I remembered the fitting notes in my dressmaking books, I felt rather stupid.
The thing is: if you make a garment with a seam from underarm to wrist, that seam runs from the centre of the underarm to the inside of the thumb. At least it does when the hands are hanging naturally by the sides, because the wrist moves inside the sleeve. The sleeve, unless it’s very tight fitting, doesn’t move with the wrist.
Glad I’d tried it on at that point and not say, after the twisted ribbing or even after both cuffs, I ripped. So, so pleased that I did. The resulting cuff is just as awkward to photograph while holding the camera in my left hand, but at least the work can be seen. I don’t imagine you’re very into putting work into details that no one will be able to see!
It’s always tricky trying to figure out how much of my work to share here before it’s done. I don’t share the opinion of my many publishers that everything needs to be shrouded in secrecy to avoid spoiling the suprise of the big reveal. Personally I think it’s pretty interesting to see a project build and gain some insight into the development process. Nor am I convinced that sharing a design in progress is necessarily marketing suicide, nothing wrong with building some interest.
However there are things that make me hesitate, there’s the long delay between initially working on a design and the final pattern being released. It’s nice and motivating to get “I want to knit this NOW, when will the pattern be released?” messages, but often seems like people don’t really get the time and work involved. Sometimes a design just doesn’t work out despite looking perfectly appealing in the pictures which is sure to lead to disappointing knitters. I don’t like disappointing you, but nor do I like trying to make a design I’m over into a pattern.
So, that said, given the choice between a silent blog and sharing what I’m working on, I know what I prefer. Just please remember that there’s a lot of work to go before you’ll see the end result – I do hope it will be worth waiting patiently for. I spent most of last year working on smaller projects for the two Whimsical Little Knits books, which was great fun, but left me wanting to work on some bigger designs and put what I learned about self publishing into an altogether larger project. And so, for the last few months I’ve slowly been working on a collection of garment and coordinating accessory patterns. Alongside the patterns I’m planning on including more text than the first two books, tutorials on fitting and particular techniques and more of the stories of the designs. I’ll be self publishing the book, but I’m very excited not to be doing absolutely everything myself this time, there are some wonderful people helping.
Some of the samples are already done and the other day Sarah helped me pick out the remaining yarns that will be featured, so much fun. The rest of the photos in this post are of the cardigan currently on my needles. It might be more efficient to hire sample knitters, but it wouldn’t suit the way I work at all. I need to be able to rip and re-work things, although I’d prefer if I didn’t always have to do so as much as I have with this. I’ll have knit it about 4 times over by the time it’s done.
I’d love to share more of my process of putting this project together, so if there’s any aspect of my design process you’d particularly like to see, please do speak up.
New Year seems like a while ago now, but on the 1st of January I had a look back through my previous year’s knitting and decided that I hadn’t knit nearly enough actual garments. I have almost a whole cupboard full of hats and mittens but not much to keep the rest of me warm. (The fact that is was below -10 degress c at the time might have had something to do with it.)
It’s been going well so far with two just finished:
This is Daisy by Kim Hargreaves, knit in Ethical Twist alpaca and wool, with a little bit of chocolate brown merino as a contrast colour in the pocket linings. I love the shape of this and the little pockets. It was knit flat in pieces which made it easy for me to carry around, but I think it would be fairly straightforward to knit in one piece, up to the armholes anyway.
And then I finished Plain and Simple Pullover by Veera Välimäki. My version was named Silver Birch by my friend Ruth. It’s perfect mindless knitting which I’ll get a lot of wear out of, as well as being nice and light so I’ll be able to wear it through Spring too. I used Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift which I bought on the book tour in November – Ysolda has an odd photo of me trying to decide on the colour in Baa Ram Ewe. Not sure why I look so worried!
I got some cute red smartie buttons from Dupp Dupp.
Next up though, is this:
It’s the Carter Cardigan by Laura Chau – I’ve been watching the in-progress photos of this for weeks and now the pattern is ready I can’t help myself! I even have some lovely Fyberspates BFL aran stashed away. I love the cable pattern, the pockets, the collar shape and the garter stitch detail on the back, everything about it really! I love the cables on the sleeve…
And then Ysolda’s favourite, the Mountain View Cardigan by Connie Chang Chinchio. I’d love to get this one knitted up for Spring.
And hopefully next week I should be able to show you something I’ve been working on for a while, Connie’s Sabbatical Cardigan from Twist Collective. The pieces are pinned out and blocking so it won’t be long until I have sweater number three!
This has actually been finished for a couple of months and although I wear it constantly photographic evidence has remained elusive.
You might remember that I visited the wonderful (and adorable – check out her new Audrey in Unst cardigan) Gudrun in October before Rhinebeck. In the run up to my trip I was busily finishing off Whimsical Little Knits 2 and hadn’t had a chance to knit anything large for ages, apart from the original Vine Yoke sample. It seemed like everyone attending Rhinebeck was chattering excitedly about trying to finish their Rhinebeck sweaters and I was a little sad that I didn’t have one. Vine Yoke is a pretty fast knit, I had lots of time to relax at Gudrun’s, and we happened to visit WEBS.
Enter Melissa, who had just started working there, and who I was teasing by testing her knowledge of the stock and ability to answer silly questions. “So, if you were going to make Vine Yoke, what would you use?” She made a beeline for Classic Elite’s Kumara, and I’m ashamed to admit that I took some convincing. It was soft and had an interesting composition (baby camel!), but it was sort of, unexciting and flat. But I couldn’t find anything else and the soft red was nice, so I decided to play along and make Melissa’s sweater.
I cast on, and it grew quickly, and then I decided to make Bobsolda and dragged the very tolerant Gudrun and her kids back to WEBS and around several other stores to gather the necessary supplies. And much to everyone’s amusement, I spent the rest of my visit knitting, painting, gluing, stuffing and wiring. My poor Vine Yoke lay neglected, only receiving brief attention in Boston when I was hiding my surprise from the Ravelry team. And it was absolutely worth it, because the whole Bosolda thing was a lot of fun, and I think it made a lot of other people pretty happy too.
But I do kind of wish that I’d finished Vine Yoke earlier, because it turns out that listening to Melissa is a very good way to get a sweater that you love. Plus, she might be psychic, because she picked the perfect colour to go with some of my favourite buttons from Jennie the Potter. I’m seriously considering leaving all future yarn decisions to Melissa.
A note about the fit: I know some people have been disappointed that their Vine Yokes turned out too big. Although Twist Collective’s photos are great, they did photograph it with a little more ease than I intended – something that’s sometimes unavoidable when you’re photographing lots of sweaters on a single model. If you’re thinking of making this, I’d go with a little bit of negative ease rather than the 3″ of positive ease shown in the magazine. I’m wearing the 32 and my bust measurement is about 34.5″.
And a note about the yarn: we’re used to seeing photos taken before a knit has been worn much. In this case, I’ve been wearing this pretty heavily and you can tell. However on the whole, I’m really happy with how this is wearing. The yarn is very soft and fuzzy and although there is some pilling, the fabric remains cohesive with good stitch definition and the pills come of easily – I’m just too lazy to remove them!
For helping to raise a grand total of £15,397.58 (about US $24500) for Médecins Sans Frontières for their terribly challenging work in Haiti. I’m incredibly overawed and humbled by the response to this campaign, thank you.
A couple of days ago, inspired by some other designers on Ravelry, I pledged to donate 50% of my sales to Médecins Sans Frontières to help with their work in Haiti. When I did that I thought that I was donating 50% of my usual income and felt incredibly fortunate to be in a position to be able to do that. What I wasn’t expecting was the response from knitters, which has been frankly overwhelming and humbling. Knitters have been buying up any patterns they like now, instead of waiting until they’re ready to cast on, they’ve been searching the wishlists of their friends and buying patterns as gifts, they’ve been spreading the word, designers whose businesses are much smaller than mine (and who are consequently taking a much greater financial risk) have been pledging donations, and altogether this has turned into a much larger fund-raising campaign than I’d envisioned.
Consequently I feel honoured to be able to increase my original pledge and to be able to make the kind of donation that I would never personally have been able to give. I will now be donating 80% of the sale price of all individual patterns and 50% of the sale price of all books (digital, print and wholesale) ordered through my own site or on Ravelry between the 16th and 31st of January to MSF. In addition, if you purchase one of my Twist Collective patterns please forward proof of purchase to mail@ysolda.com and I’ll add 50% of the sale price to my donation total.
It’s difficult to feel anything but small and helpless in response to such disaster as the earthquake in Haiti and the scale of the help that’s needed is truly hard to imagine, but to borrow a metaphor from the Yarn Harlot, just like knitting the small acts build, stitch by stitch into something bigger. And that’s what you have shown me, thank you.
Please, please don’t feel like you should buy patterns you don’t really want or that you weren’t going to buy anyway, but if you aren’t interested in any of mine, consider taking a look at the enormous list of patterns on Ravelry who’s designers have pledged to donate a percentage of their sales. Ravelry have done such a wonderful job of supporting this, Casey’s even made it easy to browse patterns in the list that you’ve already queued or favourited. I’ve also got a few more fundraising ideas that I’ll let you know about soon and the response of the wider craft community has been staggering, there are too many things going on for me to list, but if you know of something please do add it in the comments.
My thoughts are with the people of Haiti and with the workers on the ground who need as much support as we can give them. Thank you for helping me to help far more than I could have without you – I just donated £3766.60, that’s over $6000. Thank you for making that possible.
