Adventures in Set-In Sleeve Design. The beginning.

It all started innocently enough.

My (now adult) baby asked to knit her a Fair Isle sweater. To be more exact – Norwegian sweater.

I know my baby very well. The sweater had to be (hard requirements):  1) fitted 2) V-neck 3) set-in sleeves. 

I believe I can do any knitting technique, be it lace or twined knitting. But there are some things I dislike doing. One is to steek. I’m not afraid to cut my knitting, I just don’t like this pesky fringe the steek produces, and I totally hate the idea of stitching through my knitting on the sewing machine.  And I really don’t like to knit sleeves top down – to work on a cuff with the whole sweater attached is a torture. And I hate the combination of purling and stranding at the same time. Quite a laundry list for one sweater. 

So, I set out to find a way to avoid as many of these issues as possible. Set-in sleeves for Fair Isle sweater – Siamese sleeves, but I would have to steek.

Seamless set-in sleeves – pick up stitches around armhole and either knit top down; or knit bottom up and attach the sleeve to picked up stitches with short rows.  That’s it. Take it or leave it. Like it or not – your problem, girl. It’s your baby who wants a sweater.

As people say in Russia – laziness is the engine of progress (see the picture on right).  I was too lazy to do a proper steeking job, too lazy to pick up stitches around armholes; I did it my lazy way. I decided to fuse sleeves with armholes. True, I had to purl and strand some rows, but I got motivated to see how it’ll come out my way.

After that a moment of vanity comes. I want to share my way with other people. What’s the use to think of something unusual if you can’t share it with like-minded humans?

I started to tell about my way of setting in sleeves to my knitting friends. And the question was asked – Can I adapt some published pattern to use this construction? Sure! Easy! Any set-in sleeve pattern!

Those were the days. Innocent and naïve. I forgot that I didn’t go carefully through any published pattern for decades. All the sleeves I made were of my own design, according to my ideas of how sleeves should fit. And my ideas proved to be very different to the ideas of other hand knits designers.

And here my journey starts.