Let me tell you the tale...
It's been a while, where were we?
Last time, I had knit to the bottom of the body and finished the ribbing. Then of course, I discovered it was too tight at the waist.
After decreasing the stitches at the top for my small bust, I had continued on and knit the waist decreasing too. Of course I didn't stop to think that while my bust is small, my rest of me is basically normal size (how many times do I have to learn this lesson? lol!).
Yup, I should have decreased less!
So I was thinking I might have to rip back to the decrease rows 30 or so rows back.
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| Here I pinned in some knit fabric to try simulating the button band. So snug in the waist! |
Aha! But Gail gave me some better ideas!
Here are some options:
- Just leave it, block the hell out of it and hope it'll stretch enough (cotton does stretch quite a lot).
- Instead of changing from 5mm needles to 4.5mm for the ribbing, stay with 5mm! But you'll have to do the same for your sleeve cuffs, neckband and button band!
- Change the rib from a twisted rib to a normal rib- it's more stretchy and open. Again you'll have to do the same for the sleeve cuffs, neckband and button band.
- Rip back to the plain knit row before the rib begins (much much less to rip back!), and sneakily add a few stitches. Make sure you increase by a multiple of four for the rib pattern to work!
Okay, so here's what I did. I didn't want to change the twisted rib since I had already finished the cuffs of the sleeves. I ripped back to just before the ribbing (this was super scary and I procrastinated a lot! lol). I put in a lifeline before I ripped back as described here. Phew! My knitting didn't blow up!
I added four stitches like a sneak! Then decided to try knitting the ribbing on the larger needles. I got a few rows in and discovered it looked quite different to my sleeve ribbing. Much more loose and mushy, no way did it match! So I ripped that back too! (What did I expect?)
I then knitted the ribbing on the smaller needles.
I also came up with 2 more ideas to ease the tightness. I have a slight case of newbie pride for coming up with these ideas:
- On my first ribbing, I noticed the bind off was not stretchy. This definitely contributed to the tightness. I've only ever learned one bind off you see? So this time I'm going to learn a new, stretchy one! Elizabeth Zimmerman's Sewn Bind Off. Wish me luck! :)
- I also reduced the number of ribbing rows so that the cardigan is shorter i.e the bottom hits on a smaller part of me. That way it will be less tight! Okay, a few rows probably won't make a huge difference, but it's the concept!
Phew, I also learned I can gab on about knitting for quite a while!
I hope that other newbies can read this and learn from my mistakes. It's good to know how many options there are if you screw up, eh? I know I've been learning a lot. It feels good!