2025/02/11

Construction
This Tee is going to be a little bit ambitious for my skills, knit on 3mm needles, starting from scratch, no pattern. Design features are:

• Fitted design - no to slightly negative ease around the bust
• Work-as-you-go icord edging for the neckline for stable shaping
• Knit seamlessly top-down
• Contiguous shoulder construction combined with …
• … a lace saddle element continuing in the (short) sleeves
• … shaped neck contour with short rows for better fit
• Lace panels down the middle and along the sides of front and back (with elements from Hitomi Shida‘s Japanese Stitch Bible)

Yarn
The yarn I‘m using is a beautiful combination of silk and merino, however it is difficult to work with as there appears to be too much twist in the yarn causing it to wrap around itself if some length is released. This goes as far as resulting in a biased stich appearance if not taken care of. Will see how this is going on a larger piece like this tee. So far I only did gauge swatches and there I could manage with putting the caked yarn on a spindle and turning it to release the stress. Will be tedious for the whole thing though… Also the yarn is a little splitty, so quite some attention will be needed. Certainly no easy TV knit.

Getting started
Starting with an icord: Judy‘s magic cast-on (6 stitches), keeping the lower stitches on a small stitch holder. Knitting 109 rows of icord. Picking up of 107 stitches along the icord (one full „V“, i.e. both legs of a stitch, following the same stitch column over the full length) and taking the 6 stitches from the stitch holder back on the working needle —> total of 119 stitches on the needle to form the neckline and both shoulder saddles.

Continuation of the icords along the front neckline
The icords are worked together with the front panels. Therefore one stitch less is needed for the same optics as in the neck (no stitches have to be picked up on one side) and the two outermost stitches of both ends of the icords are knit together at the first occasion. The icords are always slipped at the beginning of the row and knit (or purled) at the end of the row. Therefore, they have only half the rows than the main work. While this is wanted to provide a firm edging, care has to be taken, that they don‘t get too tight and pull the work together along the edge. To ensure this, I knit the icords with a little less tension than the reminder of the work and add a yo before the second to last stitch in ever worked row which gets released (dropped) directly again in the back row which is slipped stitches only. To my experience this provides exactly the right amount of slack.

Neck shaping with short rows and start of contiguous shoulder construction
To learn and test the contiguous shoulder construction, I knit earlier a children‘s jumper. What I didn‘t like was the appearance of the shoulder line. Too many stitches are added on too short a distance along the shoulder. Therefore, I knit some test pieces to find a better solution. Not increasing in ever row resulted in an uneven look with enlarged stitches in the omitted rows. Instead, I decided to increase in ever row but then to decrease a stitch again every fourth row ending with an increase ratio of three stitches ever four rows, which looks much smoother.

2025/02/21
Pew, getting this started was more tedious than expected. So many things going on at the same time… Lace panels (one with lace stitches in even and odd rows), increases for the shoulders, icords, increases for the front edge. Definitely no TV knit. Made a chart of the whole thing which took me at least as long as the knitting to the shoulder ends itself , however probably prevented several rip-backs.
Starting with the sleeve increases now and joining the front panel soon.

2025/02/25
Front panels joint! To continue the icord (start of right side row) I did a kfb increase in its last (5th) stitch and continued knitting it for a total of 20 rows, decreasing the additional stitch again in the last row, then broke the yarn and kitchenered both ends of the icord together.
The new BOR was chosen to be at the beginning of the back panel, now working in the round. Arriving at the joined icord in the front, I picked up and knit 21 stitches from the edge of the icord. At the corners, where stitches grew big, I twisted the picked-up stitch to prevent holes.

From here on, things should go smoothly until the point where to separate for the sleeves. By then, I should have around 500 stitches on the needles. 65 rounds to go!

2025/03/14
Split of body and sleeves done! After some increase on the front and back portion before splitting I reached the intended number of stitches for my bust circumference and therefore decided not to cast on any further underarm stitches. To achieve a seamless pattern repeat under the sleeves along the side of the body I decreased a stitch on each side in the third row after the split. I also added one more lifeline, just in case. From here on things should be easy. Four pattern repeats of the main center panel to go.

2025/03/25
Knitted the body until the end of the first skein and tried it on once more (see pictures). Looks OK so far but clearly needs blocking to show its beauty. Continued with a sleeve to settle on their final length, will probably be ending above the elbow to cover the upper arm.