I made a few modifications from the original design: it's a couple of inches longer in the body, I made the sleeves full length, and I worked the front edging in the same cable pattern as the body and sleeve edgings, and without a buttonhole.
The sleeves turned out to be a huge challenge, but not because of the pattern. It was all about the yarn. (Well, and my lack of time. Busy at the moment.)
The yarn is, shall we say... inconsistently spun, and I found partway through a new ball that it was significantly thicker than the previous ball, and I had a sleeve that suddenly got much wider, even though the number of stitches hadn't changed.
So I pulled back, started a different ball, and then 4 inches later, I realized I'd pulled back so far I was short a decrease.
Sigh.
So again I started, and although it was slow going due to various other things grabbing my attention, it ran smoothly enough, and I finished it Wednesday night.
It's just dry, after a quick dunk in the sink.
(Very runny, the dye on this yarn. The water looked incredibly muddy.)
But yes, a quick dunk in the way of a casual block, and 24 hours lying flat to dry, and it's good to go. (Yeah, ok, there's a whole whack of ends to weave in. More so than you'd expect, because there were knots in the balls, and the yarn broke a couple of times, too.)
I do really appreciate that it was done once the second sleeve was complete, no finishing required at all, other than the ends to weave in.
I'm not thrilled with the fit of the sleeves below the elbow -- a smidge too loose -- but that would be easily modified, and it's got nothing to do with the essential nature of the raglan construction.
The design is definitely a success, and it's the sort of thing I'll wear often.
Not sure I'd use the yarn again, though.
2 comments:
It looks wonderful! And it seems to fit just fine, narrow shoulders notwithstanding.
Did you use the Barbara Walker book much? I've just finished the body of a top-down raglan and I'm going to have to frog the whole thing back to the neck and start over. I've got the opposite problem you had - I've got an intended recipient with wide shoulders and a narrow chest, so once I had the right raglan depth, the chest was far too big. (Wish I'd tried it on him 30cm ago...)
It looks fabulous, and I am hopeful that I might be able to knit a flattering raglian for my narrow sloping shoulders!
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