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.

The book

The book "Start to Finish Before You Start" by Faina Letoutchaia together with two DVD's (which are an integral part of the book) is published by 2PlyProductions and available in 2PlyProductions online store.

I was motivated to write this book, in particular, by a desire to use modern technology to keep alive ancient crafts. A lot of valuable things from the past cannot be put in a museum under a glass hood; some are living skills that have to be passed from person to person. A book together with an instructional video is a close replacement of a person-to-person conversation. This was made possible by the modern technology.

In this book and the accompaining video I will teach you skills to make your hand knitting look professionally hand-made, and not home-made. The book starts with the very first finished edge you make – cast on and go through all steps of shaping, construction and what is usually called ‘finishing’. Along the way you will see you how to plan your sweater so that finishing is easy and comes naturally and painless. We will go from very basic techniques to advanced ones that can take your knitting a notch up.

Look inside

From Chapter 6. Sleeve cap alterations. There are two ways to make the curve of the sleeve cap longer – either you have to make your sleeve cap wider; or you have to make it longer. Which way to choose? If your upper arms are big, it’s better to keep the hight of your sleeve cap and make it wider. That means you do fewer decreases in the lower, underarm slanting part of the sleeve cap and more decreases near the top of the sleeve cap. If your upper arms are slim, you should make your sleeve cap more narrow and make it a little taller. It means you need to knit more rows on the even, vertical part of the sleeve. And, don’t forget— keep your selvage stitches on a loose side. Tight selvage stitches may result in a shortened sleeve cup curve.