Geek-A-Long

2021 Geek-A-Long Sweater: Clue 18

17
Oct

Welcome to week 18! We are just 6 weeks away from completing this absolutely ridiculous project, and now that you’ve made it past the sleeve join it should be starting to look less like a blanket and more like a sweater.

This week we’ll polish off the chess squares, and close the seams at the underarms. You can technically wait on that, but I would recommend closing those seams now. Next week is a catch up week: there will be new clue content but it’s optional based on what size you are working and how long you want the yoke to be – more on that next Sunday. After that, clues 20-23 get a little hairy, with the most technically challenging part of the whole sweater: the yoke decreases. It’s nothing you can’t handle, these are the same decreases you worked in the swatches, but that combined with the most intense charting in the whole thing make for an overall higher challenge rating. It’s so worth it though. I have waited a year to show you the yoke charts and they are MAGNIFICENT.

So let’s talk about closing the underarm seams. Work the 8 rows in this week’s chart first. You should be having an easier time moving your stitches around the needles by then. It’s always a little tight right after the sleeves get added, but by the time you get to the end of the chess board it should be feeling more comfortable. You have stiches for the underarms on 4 lengths of waste yarn (orange in my pictures below) that are each holding an equal number of stitches (that number is determined by the size you are working). There are 2 waste yarn holders with stitches from the body, and 2 with stitches from the sleeves. In this photo you see one underarm, with one set of sts from the sleeve on top and one set from the body on the bottom:

You’ll want some double pointed needles for this, and I recommend using DPNs that are a size or 2 smaller than your working needles. You won’t actually do any knitting on the DPNs, and it’s easier to slide the stitches around if they are smaller than your working needles.

I find it’s easiest to have 3 or 4 DPNs at your disposal during this process. There’s a little bit of redundancy in the steps, I was aiming for the easiest way, not the most efficient way. It is possible to get this done without slipping them to a DPN, then to waste yarn, then back to a DPN, but the time saved by doing so is negligible, and working them as written is very much the path of least resistance.

The instructions are outlined in this week’s download, but what you’ll be doing is separating the right side and wrong side sts onto 2 separate DPNs, then grafting the sleeve right side to the body right side, and the sleeve wrong side to the body wrong side. You work the seam twice for each underarm, doing the right and wrong sides separately.

Released so far:

View On Board: Clue 18 by clicking this link or download it by clicking the button below. When you download the pattern from our website instead of through Ravelry, you will NOT receive automatic updates. You will have to come here and download the next clue every time. Please download it via Raverly if you are able, so you have immediate access to the clues as they are released and any errata that may appear.

Clue-18Download

~Megan-Anne

There are 10 Fridays left until Christmas.

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