The Sweatshop of Love Blog

It seems like most of the Beatnik knitters fell a little bit behind because there was a LOT of knitting in week three. This will be a great week to catch up because there isn’t too much to knitting the front of Beatnik. Even less than the back of Beatnik!

So if you are just starting your armhole separation this week you will be rolling! Finish up that back, then jump on that front and you’ll be good to go.

And with Two Boyfriend Cardigan knitters completely finished with the body of their sweaters we will be stuck in Sleeveland for a while. But how exciting is that?! Sleeves?! Sweet!

Keep emailing me or posting questions on our rav forum, sending me pictures, and, above all, knitting! We are past the halfway point now, so in less than a month we will have finished sweaters! How about that?!

Beatnik

Cherry - I mean Silas's - Beatnik!

By now you’ve already separated the front and back of your sweater. That was the hard part! Now you’ve got your front stitches hanging out on scrap yarn just waiting to be picked up! And that is your first step. Throw those stitches back on your needle, get rid of that yarn, and start following the directions for the front of your Beatnik. Which is to say start following the directions for the BACK of your Beatnik until your front measures (5.5[6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5]) from your armhole shaping – 2″ less than your back measurement.

Stefanie's Beatnik!

From there you start shaping the shoulders and neckline just like you did for the back, only your shoulder sections will be longer to allow for a deeper neckline shaping.

Alaina's Beatnik!

This Weeks Beatnik Goal: Finish the front of your Beatnik! And if you thought the back went fast, the front will go even faster! You are knitting 2 fewer total inches. So, again, it’s a great week to catch up!

Katie's Beatnik Start!

The Two Boyfriends Cardigan

Gillian's Two Boyfriend in the Chicago Blizzard!

First of all, congrats on finishing the body of your sweater! That was a TON of knitting that you just plowed through. Next up, of course, is tackling the sleeves.

If you’ve never used double pointed needles before, this is a great way to ease into them. Since you aren’t starting from the cast on, which is the most challenging part of knitting with double pointed needles, this is like taking a baby step to being DPN proficient!

If you are already DPN proficient, the Two Boyfriends Cardigan sleeves will be a breeze.

This Weeks Two Boyfriends Cardigan Goal: Knit a sleeve!

You are going to slide the stitches you are holding from one of your sleeves onto your double pointed needles, dividing your stitches evenly among your needles. You want to pick up 6 additional stitches from the body of your sweater at the armpit space, and don’t over think it. Just stab in there and pick up some stitches. You are eliminating the hole there, so just make sure they are evenly spaced and you’ll be good. It’s your armpit, you know? Treat it like an armpit.

Place a marker at your armpit center because this is the start and end to your rounds, where you’ll be making your decreases. And go to town! Just like with the body, don’t cut your yarn. You will only be working with two colors so it will be easier to keep your yarn from tangling!

And remember to BO loosely! This sleeve will be roomy and you don’t want it to gather.

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Post pics and/or questions on our Ravelry Knit Along forum, email them to me, or tweet them with #solknitalong so I can show them off next week.

Happy knitting!

Both sweaters are having BIG weeks this week! We are shaping armholes and finishing the back of the Beatnik and finishing the body of the Two Boyfriends Cardigan. I know some of you have been waiting for a challenge, and this is it!

More importantly? Serious progress will be able to be seen this week. BINDING OFF will happen! This is the halfway point, after all.

Lily's Beatnik!

Lily of The Owl and the Bee just started her’s this week, but I’m sure she will be caught up with us in no time. That girl can knit!

You know what isn’t a big deal? Being behind. There are a couple of you that I know haven’t even cast on and that is ok! Use the past forum posts to answer your questions and of course you can email me and I’ll be happy to help you through issues even if they aren’t this week’s questions. Just keep knitting and you’ll get there.

Keep emailing me or posting questions on our rav forum, sending me pictures, and, above all, knitting! 3 weeks down, 5 to go!

Jackie's Beatnik!

Beatnik

There has been a fair amount of freaking out about this armhole shaping we are tackling this week, and for good reason! We changed this pattern to be knit in the round, so instructions for what we are about to do are not written in the pattern. But the good news is that in the future when you modify your sweaters to be knit in the round you can use this exact same armhole separation method.

Alaina's Beatnik!

And if you’ve ever done this before, sweet! Do it do it!

So what you’ve got right now is the body of your sweater, ended on a wrong side row. Your needles should be right at your side markers, and what you are about to start working is the back. We haven’t needed to establish which side is the front and which side is the back until now, and up until this instruction both sides have been worked identically.

Kay's Beatnik!

Your next instruction in your pattern reads:

Shape Armholes:

Sizes L, 1X, 2X, 3X Only: BO 4 sts at beginning of next -[-, -, 2, 2, 4, 4] rows. -[-, -, 115, 123, 127, 135] sts.

All Sizes: BO 3 sts at beginning of next 2[4, 4, 2, 4, 4, 4] rows. 85[91, 99, 109, 111, 115, 123] sts.

Figure out how many stitches you are binding off at the beginning of this row and bind those stitches off – either 4 sts for L, 1x, 2x, 3x or 3 sts for smaller sizes. And just to be clear, if you are making a smaller size, pretend that first instruction doesn’t exist and just start where it says All Sizes.

After binding off your stitches continue working in pattern to your next side marker. At this point you will have worked half of your total sweater stitches.

Cherry's Beatnik!

With a long strand of scrap yarn on a yarn needle, put the remaining stitches not yet worked on this yarn, up until your bound off stitches. Tie your yarn so you don’t have to worry about your stitches falling off. This is the front of your sweater! You will put these stitches back on your needles later, but for now they are just going to hang out on your scrap yarn.

Now all that is left on your needles are your back piece stitches! You will now be working back and forth on these stitches.

See? How easy was that?!

You will now turn and work your first real WS row of the sweater. Follow the pattern, binding off stitches as your size indicates and continuing to work your charts like you have been. It might take a few rows to get use to working wrong side rows across these patterns from the actual wrong side of the sweater, but by now you’ve got the cable patterns down pat so it won’t throw you off.

Stefanie's Beatnik!

This Weeks Beatnik Goal: Finish the back of your sweater! While this sounds like more than you have had to do in the previous weeks, it’s actually less because you are working less than half the stitches you have been working for about the same amount of inches.

Ginger4's Beatnik!

When you get to the shoulder and neckline shaping things get a little hairy. Much like working two sleeves at once, you will be working two shoulders simultaneously. I just made a video about making two sleeves at once that you can use for these shoulders if it isn’t making sense to you, and you can find that video here.

So finish up that back piece so we can get the front finished up next week!

The Two Boyfriends Cardigan

My Mom's Two Boyfriend

This Weeks Two Boyfriends Cardigan Goal: This is our final week of working on the body! So you will be finishing up your last few inches of body striping just like you have been for the past two weeks, and then finishing up the body of your cardigan with 2″ of ribbing with your main color.

Emily's Two Boyfriend

Be sure to end your striping with 4 rows of 2 color striping, and to knit 1 RS row with your MC before starting to rib. This keeps your striping continuity with the rest of the sweater and makes sure you don’t have different color purl bars sticking through your rib.

Bind off loosely! You don’t want a puckery bottom edge. And the congratulate yourself big time because you finished the body of your cardigan! Holla!

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Post pics and/or questions on our Ravelry Knit Along forum, email them to me, or tweet them with #solknitalong so I can show them off next week.

Happy knitting!

Both sweaters are inching through the body section now, so it’s a lot more of the same for this week. This is a great week to catch up if you are a little behind or starting late!

I had a little panic about my sizing this week. I was at about the 5″ mark and I thought mine might be too small! I knit a few more inches so I could stretch the body of the sweater out a bit and I’m sure it will be a good size now, but it’s scary to think you’ll have to pull out work because of sizing issues! Especially that annoying twisted rib section.

If you are worried about the size of either of these sweaters you can always run another circular needle in half your stitches to see the real size of the sweater, and try it on. If you are using a standard sized circular needle it’s only between 24-27″ long, and I’m guessing NOT the size of your sweater! There is no way to tell if it’s going to fit without stringing another needle in there, expanding the size to 48-54″, with a lot more wiggle room.

Cherryl's Beatnik!

Keep emailing me or posting questions on our rav forum, sending me pictures, and, above all, knitting! 2 week down, 6 to go!

Ginger4's Beatnik!

Beatnik

Stefanie's Beatnik!

This Weeks Beatnik Goal: Get to the armhole shaping. We’ll be tackling front and back separation next week, so finish up the body of your sweater this week.

Biblioholic's Beatnik!

The Two Boyfriends Cardigan

Gillian's Two Boyfriend!

This Weeks Two Boyfriends Cardigan Goal: This is our second week of working on the body of the Two Boyfriend Cardigan, so after this week you should be about 2/3 finished with the body of your sweater, or somewhere between 9 and 12 inches from armhole shaping depending on your size.

My Sister in Law Emily's Two Boyfriend ON Baby Nolan!

(And now my family is just getting ridiculous! Here is my sister in law Emily’s Two Boyfriend Cardigan ON my soon to be god son Baby Nolan!)

My Mom's Two Boyfriend with... Nestor!

(And you might recognize the guy sitting behind my mom’s Two Boyfriend Cardigan. Yep! Nestor the Long Eared Donkey! Aren’t they the goofiest?!)

Remember! This sweater is designed to hit at the widest part of your hip, so if you want a longer sweater add inches at will, but figure out how many inches you’ll have to do over the next three weeks so you stay on track.

Post pics and/or questions on our Ravelry Knit Along forum, email them to me, or tweet them with #solknitalong so I can show them off next week.

I’ve been itching to pick my Beatnik back up after reaching last week’s goal. I got really into the cable chart, I’m loving my yarn, and I want to see how the rest of the cable pattern turns out! I had to put it in a box. Out of sight, out of mind!

But I know a lot of you had a couple false starts. I tried to keep the first week’s goal small so that if there were issues with sizing, shaping, or chart reading you’d have some buffer time to get back on track.

Beatnik, naturally, was the more troublesome of the two sweaters. Lots of issues were brought up an answered on our ravelry forum, and if I got any questions by email or on twitter that I thought would benefit everyone from hearing I reposted them on the forum, too.

I also published a blog post this morning about color coding your cable charts, which I highly recommend for Beatnik! I’m sure you’ve all noticed that there are a billion cables in that thing!

Keep emailing me or posting questions on our rav forum, sending me pictures, and, above all, knitting! 1 week down, 7 to go!

Beatnik

Stefanie's Beatnik!

Now that you are into the chart pattern and have been working Beatnik in the round for right around 3 1/2 – 4″, you’ve got the whole changing the sweater to be worked in the round thing down. The great news is that for the rest of the body nothing crazy happens! Your waist shaping only happens on right side rows so nothing has to be adjusted. It should be smooth sailing for us for the next two weeks!

This Weeks Beatnik Goal: We’ve got two weeks to get to the armhole shaping, so everyone has got between 12-13″ of in the round body knitting to complete before Week 4. Figure out where your halfway point is between the first row of Waist Decreasing, where we are starting now, and your final inch total. If you are knitting the smallest size you’ve got 3 1/2″ of sweater now and want to end Week 3 with 15 1/2″ completed, so you want to do 6″ this week and 6″ next week. If you are knitting the largest size, you’ve got 4″ of sweater now and want to end Week 3 with 17″, so you want to do 6 1/2″ this week and 6 1/2″ next week.

And since you’ve got the next two weeks planned out, if you are a little behind now or have a busy week or two ahead of you, you can plan accordingly!

The Two Boyfriends Cardigan

My Mom, Baby Nolan, and her Two Boyfriends Cardigan!

(Like how I get to sneak in pictures of my nephew Baby Nolan even in a knit along post?!)

Next up? Sleeve separation! If you’ve never knit a top down sweater before, separating the sleeves like this is just like separating for the thumb when you are knitting mittens. I like to put some scrap yarn on a yarn needle and slip my sleeve stitches on that way.

Work Separate Sleeves Row: Remove the markers as you come to them, as you won’t need them anymore. Just like normal, K1, Bar Inc, K to your first marker. With your yarn needle, slip your sleeve stitches off your left needle and onto your scrap yarn. All 56 (64, 72, 80, 88) between your first two markers will be on this scrap yarn. Tie the scrap yarn in a knot so you don’t lose any stitches. Continue knitting your back stitches just like the stitches you held for your first sleeve didn’t exist. Repeat for your second sleeve, and finish the row as written. The only stitches left on your needles are both your fronts and back stitches.

This Weeks Two Boyfriends Cardigan Goal: Start working on the body! Continuing to work your front shaping as written, and:

You’ve got three weeks to finish the body, so if you are knitting the smallest size you’ve got 14″ of body (12 in color pattern and 2 in bottom rib), so you want to get about 4 1/2″ done this week. If you are knitting the largest size you’ve got 18″ of body, so you want to get about 6″ done this week.

This sweater is designed to hit at the widest part of your hip, so if you want a longer sweater add inches at will, but figure out how many inches you’ll have to do over the next three weeks so you stay on track.

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My biggest challenge so far? Not finishing this sweater in one sitting. I’m a knitting beast and I’ve really never paced myself on a project before. So far? I hate it! But it has given me many opportunities to work on other projects. My heart is with Beatnik, though, and even though it’s sitting in a box, I want to finish it and wear it! Is anyone else struggling with this slower pace?

Post pics and/or questions on our Ravelry Knit Along forum, email them to me, or tweet them with #solknitalong so I can show them off next week.

Happy knitting!

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for! It’s time to cast on our sweaters and I couldn’t be more excited.

It has been so fun hearing about your gauge swatches and your yarn shopping this past week. We are all OVERLY prepared to start these sweaters, right? This extra week has given us all ample time to gauge, get our needles in order, and think about our sweater plan of attack. Have you ever waited this long to cast on a sweater before? Maybe we are on to something!

General Sweater Knitting Notes

Before you start, go through the entire pattern and circle all the numbers that you are going to be working with. You know what size you are going to work with, so at every bracket circle the number that corresponds to your size.

Highlight important steps in the pattern so you won’t miss them. Changing charts randomly? Highlight it. Knitting to a certain measurement? Repeating a chart pattern 3 times? Once you get into a pattern these steps are easy to miss unless they jump out at you.

Post-it notes are your friend! Stick them to your pattern and tally shaping or rows you need to count on them. Your pattern stays uncluttered, and when you’ve filled up your post-it with tally marks, just unpeel it and throw it away.

Beatnik

As you know I’m not a fan of seaming, so I eliminate it from as many pieces as possible. More than that, and I think specifically with this sweater, working both the front and the back at the same time will allow you to keep the outside of the piece in front of you so you never turn your back on those complicated cables. This also guarentees your front and back will be the same!

So I’ll be cast on both the front and back on my circular needles, joining my stitches, and working the entire body of the sweater at one time.

Following size 44″, I’ll be casting on 110 sts for the back, placing a marker, casting on another 110 sts for the front, placing another marker, being super careful not to twist my cast on stitches before joining. Then I’m going to work my Twisted Rib in the round for 1 1/2″.

Things to remember: You will never have a wrong side when working in the round this way, so you will have to change all wrong side instructions to right side instructions. For instance, when you switch to larger needles and establish the pattern, instead of how the instructions are written, you will:

Next Row [WS]: K6[12, 16, 22, 26, 32, 36], place marker, [m1, K5, m1, K6] six times, m1, place marker, K6[12, 16, 22, 26, 32, 36]. 91[103, 111, 123, 131, 143, 151] sts; 79 sts between markers.

And obviously you would follow this instruction twice, once for the back and again for the front.

When following the charts for Beatnik, on established WS rows you would simple knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches, just like you would if you were actually on the wrong side of your work. But because you are on the right side, you can see your cables forming before your eyes, and catch any mistakes a row earlier than you would if you were knitting blindly.

This Weeks Beatnik Goal: Work the body of Beatnik in the round up to the waist shaping, so you should have 3.5[3.5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4] inches of sweater completed. BUT if you want your Beatnik longer than designed, this is where you want to add length to the body of the sweater, so add body inches here.

The Two Boyfriends Cardigan

The Two Boyfriends Cardigan is a neck down cardigan, which gives you a ton of freedom in your sizing! Each sweater starts basically the same, and you increase out for the front and your sleeves from there. If you are torn between sizes, CO your best guess and work your increases until your sweater fits to your armholes.

It’s the best part about knitting a top down sweater! You can try it on as you go to make sure it fits. As we work through this pattern this will come in handy again and again. You can stick your arm right in your sleeve hole to see how long your sleeve is. You can put your arms through the sleeve holes to check how long your sweater is. It’s pretty genius.

This Weeks Two Boyfriends Cardigan Goal: Work the shoulders of your sweater, right up until the sleeve separation, which we will work through together next week.

Why Bar Increases? They leave a cute line of little holes along the shaping lines of your sleeves, and when with the striping, you bar increase a different color, which adds even more shaping detail.

It’s a note in the pattern but I just want to reiterate again that there is no need to cut your yarn when you change colors! You are changing colors so often that you can just leave your unused strands where they lay, and pick them back up when you need them. This goes for your center color changing and your front color changing. Keep your strands nice and loose, and save yourself hours and hours of finishing later.

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Me? I have yet to cast on. Solidarity, right?! I haven’t even touched my yarn because I know that if I did I would wake up 3 days later in a finished sweater. But I am so pumped to cast on today! There is nothing I like more than a complicated cable pattern worked in the round! <- Seriously.

Post pics and/or questions on our Ravelry Knit Along forum, email them to me, or tweet them with #solknitalong so I can show them off next week.

Happy knitting!