Friday, December 7, 2007

Sizing A Japanese Knitting Pattern - Part I

After doing all those conversion of measurements the other day for the Sleeveless Sweater Vest, I've been thinking about how to apply the measurements to a top that will fit me.

I've decided to go with 2 inches of ease for a total of 42 inches at the bust. This works out to approximately 107 centimeters around or around 53 centimeters for the front and the back. I'll round up to 108 and 54 because I like even numbers.

The original pattern size is 92 centimeters around and 46 centimeters for the front and back. So I need to to increase the width of the sweater by 16 centimeters. This is 8 centimeters each on the front and the back.

The gauge is 19 sts and 24 sts in 10 centimeters. This works out to 1.9 sts per centimeter. If I multiply this by the 16 or 8 centimeters I need it equals 30.4 or 15.2 more stitches I need to cast on.

I'll probably knit this in the round so the total stitches I'll need to cast on is 206. (88 * 2) + 30 = 206

So just to be sure this calculation is right, I'll check it another way.

206 divided by 1.9 sts is 108.42 centimeters which equals 42.7 inches which is almost an inch more then my original size but that happens with rounding sometimes.

The center panel on the front of the top is 48 stitches. I'm not planning to change this. I'm going to put the extra stitches on both sides of the panel.

Since 206 divided by 2 is 103 which is an odd number, I need to either go up 2 stitches or down 2 stitches with my cast on. I've decided to go down since I don't want the top to be any bigger. So that is 102 for the front and the back or 204 around.

102 - 48 = 54 / 2 = 27

So, all that math boils down to:


Cast on 204.

On round 1, Knit and place markers after stitch 27 and after stitch 75.

The stitches between the makers will be where the cable panel goes.



Well, that was a lot of math and enough to get started but there are other measurements I going to need to calculate like the length and the waist shaping. I'll do that in my next post.

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