💬 A sweater knitting question
Top down or bottom up?
In my opinion you just can’t beat a top-down, yoked sweater for fun and it is by far my preferred way to knit a sweater - this is my Humulus by Isabelle Kraemer.
There is just enough excitement and novelty at the beginning, then you divide for the arms and knit your way merrily down the plain body, sustained by the odd Netflix box set and a few snacks.
Yes, you do have to go back and work the sleeves it’s true. But I have found that a nifty trick is to work the sleeves first (before the body) at least until the elbows and leave them on waste yarn. That way you get all the turning out of the way before the bulk of the body starts to be annoying and heavy.
Once you are done with the body you can then try it on (another advantage) and determine how long you want the sleeves to be - weighed against how much yarn you have left.
That’s not to say that working a sweater from the bottom up doesn’t have it’s advantages too. There’s a lot to be said for knitting each sleeve separately and then joining them all together for the final yoke. I sometimes find you can get a better fit that way as you get a more realistic idea of how the finished garment will hang.
What’s your favourite way - and while we are at it why not let us know what your favourite sweater pattern is in the comments. We always need some inspiration for our queue after all.
My first jumper I made for my son was a bottom up which was fine. He was maybe 3/4 so didn’t deviate from the given measurements too much. But the challenge was knowing if I had knitted it long enough. When I knitted my first adult size jumper, I knew I wanted to try top down. Because logic would dictate, that you would just keep going. So if you needed it to be longer in the body, you just do five more rounds or 10 rounds or four more inches more etc.
Now I’ve made quite a few kids size top down jumpers (oh I love you Flax Jumper!) in a wide range of colours. And to be honest, I don’t think I will ever go back from a top down jumper. In the event, I find a pattern that I really love but it’s bottom up, I will probably send it to my friend/guru of all things knitting and see if there is any way we can work out how to do it top down instead 😂😂😂
My 3 biggest fears: Sharks, plane crashes + knitting a sweater. I’ve never done it so I don’t have a favorite way. Although, seamless is my preference. When I see things in a pattern like waste yarn, m1r, m1l, I’m instantly overwhelmed. I want to knit in the round like a sock 🙂