do sweaters cure?

You might guess from my blog name that I'm also a soap maker. Well, since knitting has been taking my time, soapmaking has taken a back seat. Maybe we'll have a soap day one day soon. My point is that soap has a cure time. Well, that shrug is having some cure time. I'm pondering whether the sleeves are ok or need to be re-knit a bit bigger. I'll be taking it to Starbucks tomorrow to get some input from my sisters of the wool.

In the meantime, I've been knitting some sleeve bands on the vest. I've been meaning to post about my pick-up calculations. You might remember when the vest was freshly knit the row to stitch ratio was about .75 And the pattern recommended picking up 3 stitches for every 4 rows. Well after the vest was soaked in Eucalan and warm water, there was some shrinkage, as I expected, based on the swatch swim. [I do hope you swim your swatches.] The row to stitch ratio, post soaking and blocking, is .69 which is quite near .7 which is 7 stitches to pick up for every 10 rows. Or a pattern of 2-2-3 is the way I think of it -- pick up 2, skip 1, pick up 2, skip 1, pick up 3, skip 1.

For those who want to know more about the math details and where I got this ratio -- in a 6 inch square, on the center back of the vest, there are 29 stitches and 42 rows. 29 divided by 42 is .69

I'm almost done with sleeve band number 1. When number 2 is done, I'll post a pic. This will probably be before she gets buttons. That may take a while. I know me.

more later,
j