The Sleeve

Once you have done the back and the front and the neckband, and out them together, you are ready to do the sleeve.

How long to knit the sleeve?

Measure the length from your spine behind your neck to you wrist whislt you are standing with you arm held outward in a T shape. You will need help for this!

For my test sweater, that measurement is 80 cms.

Now remember that the body pieces are 62 cms wide. To get the sleeve length, you need to halve the body meaurement and take that away from the length from your spine to wrist.

In this case that is 80cms. Take away half of 62 which is 31. We are left with 49 cms

The sleeve then needs to be 49 cm long.

Now some people include the ribbing in this 49cms and some add the ribbing to this. For this exercise we are going to knit the ribbing and then knit the sleeve 49cm long.

Okay. At the wrist we want to start off with 26cms. Divide 26 by 10 and mulitply by 28. This gives you 72.8. I would start the sleeve with 72 sts.

You want the sleeve 49 cm long. 49 div 10 x 40 = 196.

Your sleeve will be 196 rows long.

The top width of your sleeve will be 56 cms(2 x 28cms). 56 div 10 x 28 = 156.8.

So we need to increase to 156 sts.

We do not want the increasing to finish right at the top, so I normally finish it 5cms below the top.

5cms in this case is 20 rows. So we want the increasing to finish at row 176.

We want to increase from 72 sts to 156 sts over 176 rows. You halve the start number and the end number.

So that we increase from 36 sts to 78sts on BOTH sides. That is icrease by 42sts on each side. (78 - 32 = 42)

Here is how we work out even increases.

Divide 176 by 42. it goes in 4 times with 8 left over. 4 x 42 = 168.

Take away 168 from 176 and you are left with 8.

Now take 8 away from 42. You are left with 34.

So you increase 1 sts both sides every 4th row 34 times and then every 5th row 8 times.

(You always add 1 to the first figure that you get when you divided - in this case that was 4-as 42 went into 176, 4 times.)

I would start by increasing 1 st ev 5th row 8times and then every 4th row 34 times.

This means that your fist increase is on row 5 and you last increase for ev 5th row is on row 40. Your first increase for ev 4th row will be row 44 and your final increase will be on row 176.

You then knit 20 rows str8. Your sleeve is complete.

I guess the most complicated part of this whole sweater has been working out the icreases using the so called 'Magic Formula'. It took me ages to figure it out myself as reading about it made no sense. Now I use it all the time and I do it just as I wrote above.