Surprise!

As I said it's a little project with left over yarn after I made this and this. Just wanted something bright and colorful to remind that spring is almost here.

Started: February 22nd
Finished: February 26th
Yarn: Elann's Sonata in Aegean Sea (4,5 skeins) and about half a skein in white
Pattern: there is really no pattern, just a simple top-down raglan.

This is as simple as a top-down raglan can be. Since Sonata is always available at Elann, I'm going to post the general instruction, in case one of my fellow Sweet Life Knitters want to make something like this for our top-down raglan KAL which starts March 1st.

Attention: all my measurements are in centimeters, not inches.

Step 1. Measure your neckline. Place your measuring tape where you want your neckline to be and little lower then that, because there will be some ribbing later. Mine was 55cm.

Step 2. Assuming you already have your swatch done, see how many sts you have in 1cm and multiply that number by the number you got from Step1 and that will be the number of total sts you need to cast on. My gauge was 2 sts per 1cm, so I cast on 110 sts. Now from this number subtract the number of sts for raglan lines. I wanted to make 2 stitch raglan line, so I subtract 8 which leaves me 102 sts.

Step 3. Now devide the remaining sts into parts: front, back and 2 sleeves. The general rule is to divide the total number by 3 and consider 1 part for the front, 2nd part for the back and third part for 2 sleeves. If your number is not divisible by 3, then add the remaining sts to the front part.

In my case I had:

34 sts for back

34 sts for front

34 sts for 2 sleeves (17 sts each)

But I like the front to be a little wider then the back. After all a woman's back is considerably flatter then the front. So, I took 2 sts from each sleeve and added them to the front sts.

So, my final count was:

back: 34 sts

ront: 38 sts

sleeves: 15 sts each

raglan lines: 8 sts

TOTAL: 110 sts

Step 4: Cast on, connect to knit in rounds and go! I usually start at the middle back. So I went: 17 st back, yo, 2 sts raglan, yo, 15 sts sleeve, yo, 2 sts raglan, yo, 38 sts front, yo, 2 sts raglan, yo, 15 sts sleeve, yo, 2 sts raglan, yo, 17 sts back. Next row and all even rows I purled all YOs and from the next row knit them.

Make YO's every other row until your raglan lines are long enough. Of course it depends on what kind of fit you want for your sleeves. I wanted a close fit, so once I was able to connect sides of a sleeve under my armpit, I stopped increases and separated the sleeves. Then you just knit in round to the desired length. Once the upper part was long enough to cover my boobs, I switched from stockinette to 2x2 ribbing. That way I didn't have to do any extra shaping for the waist.

The initial plan for the neckline was to make a high colar in 2x2 ribbing, but once done I didn't like it and left just a few rows of ribbing. I crochet one row of single crochet around the sleeves, so that they don't curl up.

This is it. Not much, I know, but very simple to make and you can play with this general pattern in many different ways.