Bell sleeves
I am about halfway done with the sleeve. Here are a couple shots of the bell sleeve:
Not bad, eh? I think I might have increased a little tiny bit too much and maybe too soon, but what the hell. I don’t think it’s that bad. And when I try it on it probably won’t look awful. At least I hope not.
Knitting math. Here is how I figured all of this out. I used EPS (Elizabeth’s [as in Zimmerman] percentage System). I knitted up a swatch to figure out what my yarn gauge is. (3 st. to the inch. ) I measured a sweater in my wardrobe around the chest area to find out the dimensions in inches around. (37″) Then I multiplied my gauge by my dimension. 37 x 3 = 111. I cast on 111 stitches for the body tube. I knitted the tube until it reached my armpits. Since I want my sweater to be fairly long (I have a long waist) I knitted it unitl it reached 16″.
Okay, now for the bell sleeve. Based on the trumpet sweater at Girl from Auntie, I kind of pulled this out of my - well, you know. So, I deduced from the pattern that to make a bell sleeve you have to cast on 62% more stitches than what you decreased to. (If that makes any sense). Basically, in the pattern, after you do all of your decreasing you end up with (in the Trumpet Sweater pattern) 26 stitches on the needle. In the pattern, you cas on 42 stitches. So you cast on 62% more stiches and decrease every 3 row 4 times. Okay, so to apply this to my sweater, According to Zimmerman in Knitting without Tears, you should cast on for your sleeve 20% of your body stiches. For me, that is 23 st. Only, I’m making a bell sleeve, so I want to cast on more. So based on this figure, 23 st. I figure out what 63% of this is: 14, and then add 14 stitches to my 23: 37. So I cast on 37 stitches. Then I decrease every third row four times (in intervals of 9 stitches), until I reach 23 stitches.
As I was reading the sleeve instructions in Knitting without Tears, I noticed that after casting on, you start to increase. hmm. Apparently, the sleeve eventually is going to be 33% of the body stitches. So what I did was I just knitted about three rounds and then started increasing, as per Zimmerman’s instructions. I want my sleeves to be long, like they are in the picture above, so It think it will turn out just right.
I love knitting. It’s so fun to be challenged by little things like this. It is so awesome because you truly use both sides of your brain when you knit.
Have a good weekend!
Oh, I forgot to mention when I posted this earlier, I just raked in another new knitter 
. One of the librarians I work with came to me yesterday and told me that she would like to join our knitting group. She was staying in Capitola with some friends and was walking around the villiage when she happened upon The Yarn Place(a fabulous yarn store, and one of my fave LYSs). She said she found some yarn that she loved and she is going to try knitting a scarf. Yay! Another knitter! I also had a long conversation the other day with this guy that works here that knits. He’s is working on an afghan right now. So we’re getting a nice little group together. maybe one of these days I’ll take pictures if they will let me. 
4 comments October 22nd, 2004