Faye Perriam-Reed
answers your questions!
SMOOTH SHAPING
How can I prevent the stepping
I get when shaping the shoulders for my jumpers and cardigans?
Oona, via email
This is a cracking skill to have Oona, and is worth the practice. Working wrap-and-turns into the shoulder shaping instead of casting off gives a nice even finish that is almost invisible (pic 1). You can see the blue cast-off line is much smoother, and gives you the option to work a three-needle cast-off rather than seaming the shoulder pieces together. If you look closely at your work, you might see where the extra rows have been worked but it’s tricky – which is why I created a sample working the short rows in blue, so that it is clearer (pic 2).
So how do you convert the ‘stair step’ castoff given in your knitting pattern to work in short rows? Take our example: we begin with 24 stitches, and cast off 8 stitches on every WS row 3 times. We want our ‘cast off’ (or in this case ‘unworked’) stitches to be at the shoulder edge, which in this example is on the right-hand side with the WS facing. Instead of casting off 8 stitches at the
Qbeginning of Row 1, on the wrong side, we are going to miss those 8 stitches on the row before (which we’ll call row 0), by working as follows:
Row 1 (RS) Work to last 8 sts, slip next stitch on LH needle purlwise to RH needle, take yarn to other side of work, slip stitch back from RH needle to LH needle, take yarn back to where it started, thus creating a wrap around the 8th stitch, turn work. (This is known as wrap and turn, or w&t)
Row 2 Sl 1, purl to end.
Row 3 Work to last 8 sts, w&t.
Row 4 Sl 1, purl to end.
Row 5 Work across all 24 sts, picking up wraps as you go.
Leave sts on holder to work three-needle cast-off with second shoulder.
You’ll notice we slipped an extra stitch after the wrap and turn at the beginning of the WS rows. This helps the stitches to sit that little bit flatter when they are reaching up towards the next row. If you want to cast off normally rather than work a three-needle cast-off, you can do so on Row 5, ignoring the wraps. Faye