Morgayn's Slytherin Sweater This is a raglan knit from the top-down in Cascade 220 wool. If you're going to go to all the trouble to knit a sweater, then I think it's worth taking the measurements, making the gauge swatch, and doing the math to make the sweater really fit. Almost all of the sweaters I make are knit-from-the-top raglans. The back of neck measurement times three is the initial neck of the sweater. For Morgayn's sweater, this was 6", so the initial cast on was enough stitches for 18" in size six needles in stockinette. The first 12 rounds were knit in ribbing on size 4 needles, so the neck tightens up to fit. Morgayn wanted a loose crew neck, so this was sized generously. I like a doubled neck, so I cast the stitches on using a removable cast on. When I was ready to start the body, I joined the current round of stitches back to the cast-on round to make a tube neck. After knitting the neck, I divided the stitches into 6" for the back, 3" for the left sleeve, 6" for the front, and 3" for the right sleeve. I put stitch markers between the sections so I'd know when to do my raglan increases. The major math exercise is in figuring out the raglan increases to fit the shoulder slope. Morgayn has nice square shoulders, so the raglan increases were every other row. If you have very wide or deep shoulders, you'd adjust the raglan increases to make the sweater wider at a rate that fits your shoulders. After figuring out how to make the sweater fit the shoulders, you then put the rest of the raglan increases between the shoulder tips and the desired underarm length. On each raglan increase round, you make an increases before and after each marker. I usually make the increases one stitch over from the marker because I like the way that kind of increase looks. Other people prefer other styles. Morgayn likes roomy clothes, so her sweater was designed to be 38" at the chest, with sleeves that measured 14" around. When I got to the underarm depth, I slipped the sleeve stitches to a holder, cast on a few underarm stitches, and continued with the body. If I was knitting a sweater for myself, I'd put in some short rows for bust darts. The sweater was knit in micro stripes of two shades of green. I knit alternate rounds in each shade, putting the color switch under an arm where it wouldn't show. I knit the snake in on the fly. I didn't like its contours in a couple of places, so I fixed it with duplicate stitch after I was done. Although this piece was worked in the round, the snake was knit flat as intarsia. To do this, I slipped the snake stitches on alternate rows so I could work the purls. There are green floats behind the snake, but no gray floats in the green. The purling on the snake actually helped give it more of a snakey appearance. My knit stitches are not exactly like my perl stitches, so the snake section has a slightly uneven look that makes it look scaly. When I was 2" shy of the desired length, I switched to gray and added the bottom ribbing. For women's sweaters, I usually use a needle only one size smaller for the bottom ribbing. Women have hips, after all. Then I started in on the first arm, which I knit in the round on two circular Denise needles. The arms were boringly straightforward, around and around and around until they were 17" long. Then twelve rounds of ribbing on sock needles and we were done. Then it was weaving in tag ends and reinforcing the underarm a bit (the stitches in a raglan get a little stretched there). I outlined the snake in chain stitch, added a chain stitch tongue, and sewed on the snake's beady black eyes.

Copyright © 2004 by Heather Madrone. All rights reserved.