The view from Sleeve Island

This is why I so often knit short-sleeved sweaters: they do not require any sort of extended stay on Sleeve Island. If you're not a knitter, you should know that Sleeve Island is the mostly imaginary and frequently-visited place where we knitters go when we are elbow deep in sleeve knitting (see what I did there?). It's barren and lonely, and, in my case, very gray. You see, sleeves are wide and they are long; they are time consuming and they come in pairs. They make you think that they are just narrow tubes of fabric that will take no time to make. After all, you've already completed the front and back of the sweater, so most of your body is already covered at this point. The sleeves are basically afterthoughts, right? Wrong. Always so wrong. Sleeves are deceptive. Sleeves are cruel. They start narrow for the cuff and just get wider and wider. And then you have to make a second one.

Fortunately, for the 1900s knitter, designers were a little more sensible about sleeves. In the case of my Ladies' Outing Coat, the sleeve pattern starts at the top and decreases down to the cuff. This not only makes for a more pleasant stay on Sleeve Island, but also seems to offer more options for ensuring that the sleeve is the proper length. You can try it on as you knit and, if it ultimately ends up the wrong length, it's much easier to rip out a cast-off row and add or subtract length than it is to fiddle around with the cast-on row and do the same. With that said, though, I am trying to power my way through this first sleeve. It's still slow going, but, once it's done, I'll attach the sleeve and seam up half the sweater and see how things are fitting so far.

In the meantime, I've been thinking more about 1900s fashion. My 1907 pattern book is full of patterns for women on the go: they are fishing, riding horses, studying, traveling in automobiles, golfing, and sailing. It's fabulous.

Cable-stitch Sweater from The Columbia Book of Yarns, 1907

Columbia Knitted Blouse Jacket from The Columbia Book of Yarns, 1907

The S-curve silhouette and attendant smooth, puffed-out breast are still very present, but I think these designs express a nascent shift in womenswear, one that would allow for more comfort and freedom of movement, especially as increasing numbers of women took up hobbies like cycling and lawn sports. This era was one of great change in women's undergarments, too, as heavily-structured corsets gradually gave way to brassieres and lighter-weight corsets. There's a fascinating read on the Victoria and Albert Museum's website about the evolution of corsets in the early 20th century. I love that knitwear seemed to be able to offer women this greater ease of movement while also keeping up with contemporary trends in fashion designs and silhouettes.

In related news, I acquired a few new-to-me vintage pattern books over the weekend and am pretty sure I have my 1980s sweater picked out. I love it. But no spoilers for you.

Where are the mistakes?

Every time I knit from a vintage or antique pattern, I prepare myself to run into lots of mistakes in the pattern itself. Of course, not every vintage pattern is riddled with errors, and there are plenty of contemporary patterns that are full of them. Personally, I think this cautious sentiment stems from looking though mid-19th century pattern books, which so often contain a disclaimer that, although great care has been taken to prevent mistakes in printing, there will necessarily be some errors and that it is the knitter's responsibility to find and correct them. The publisher basically takes no responsibility for the home knitter's bad results from error-filled patterns. That doesn't exactly fill one with confidence.

So, I've always just expected mistakes. I look at each measurement, stitch count, and decrease with great suspicion. I do all the math. I count all the stitches. I interrogate each instruction. And if I don't find mistakes in a particular pattern, I start to doubt myself, as if I've overlooked something obvious if I haven't spotted an error. So far, my Ladies' Outing Coat instructions have been error-free, which has inspired in me a fair amount of distrust. Where are the mistakes? Have I missed them?

Fortunately, I worry no more. I have found some mistakes and weird math in the sleeve instructions (wahoo)! I have the strange sensation of feeling both confident and trepidatious: I found the mistake (all is right with the knitting world again), but now I'm concerned about the outcome of my sleeve. The pattern calls for a cast-on of 50 stitches, followed by increases of 2 stitches on both ends of the needle every other row until there are 100 stitches total; this forms the top of the sleeve. This is impossible since 50 is not divisible by 4 (haha! mistake! I knew you'd turn up). It also seems doubtful that the pattern would be uneven in this way, so I decided to work until I had 102 stitches. I considered the possibility that the mistake was something more than a simple typo, but the sleeve cap seems to look right so far. So, on we go.

In thinking about this mistake, I did also check a couple other sources for solutions. Unfortunately, no one has posted projects from this pattern on Ravelry yet. I wondered if later editions of the Columbia Books of Yarns might have the same pattern with updated instructions, but my search didn't turn up any later versions.

So much for Rule 6

I swear I would have posted progress reports sooner...if I had felt there was anything interesting to share. Since the back and fronts of this sweater are knitted all in one giant piece, my sweater-in-progress hasn't looked like much more than a pile of gray 2x2 ribbing since I cast on. Here's a picture to prove it. I put it in front of my Hoosier for scale and interest, but you can still clearly see that it's a big ol' pile of nice gray wool.

 

And here it is piled up in a slightly different way:

That being said, though, there are some interesting things going on in the construction of this sweater that make it quite different from contemporary patterns. Once knitted, the back looked extremely narrow to me, but as I got going on the first front, I realized that the width of the underarm area is cast onto the front only, which means that the fronts end up much wider than the back. Additionally, the fronts include a deep overlap for the double-breasted construction.

Here's the sweater laid out with the side edges folded under, as if the side seams were sewn. You can see the overlap and height of the center front.

And here it is with one front open and the full underarm width visible:

You might also notice in these pictures that the fronts both have some short-row shaping at the lower edge. The underarm length is left the same as the back while the center panels are about 1.5" longer. I suppose the shaping adds a tailored appearance to the jacket.

Onwards to the sleeves!