No sewing white turtle neck sweater

With the arrival of cold weather, I have been working on my winter wardrobe. One missing staple was a fitted white sweater. I made one based on the scoop neck summer top pattern. Modifications included long sleeves and replacing the scoop neck with a yoke that ends in a turtle neck.

The pattern is highly elastic and forgiving. The hardest part was to do the proper number of decreases for the yoke while maintaining a rib pattern. The body of the sweater is worked in 3/2 ribbing. In designing the pattern, I knitted a 3/2 ribbing swatch with the needle size appropriate for the yarn and took three measurements: one relaxed, one at medium stretch, and one at full stretch.

Gauge

I used sport weight yarn (unidentified, it was in the clearance bin in a Ziploc bag) and size 4 needles. The gauge was, for 20 stitches:
Full stretch - 10 cm
Fully relaxed - 6 cm
Average stretch - 8 cm
And 16 rows for 5 cm.

Main body

I measured how large I needed the sweater to be at the hips (80 cm) and worked out how many stitches I had to cast on (using full stretch gauge). That came out to 178 stitches. Because I was using a 3/2 rib pattern, I rounded that to 180. That meant I could follow the instructions for the original pattern in a size M. That took me up to the top of the shoulders, where in the original pattern she begins the scoop neck band. In addition, I had to plan for the sleeves and how to attach them.

Note: if you are trying this at home, it is important to casts on a multiple of 10 stitches, not just a multiple of 5. This is so that decreases done at the yoke work out.

Sleeves

With a rib pattern, I wanted to avoid increases, and with the variable stretch, I did not need any. I measured around my bicep (at the point where my arm is the widest) and decided how many stitches to cast on using that measurement, and the full stretch. At the wrist, I was finding that fully relaxed, the sleeves would not be as fitted as I wanted them to be. So I cheated by beginning the sleeves using circular needles one size smaller. I switched back to the size 4 needles when I reached the elbow. I worked the sleeves as long as I needed them before joining them to the body.

Here, it took some math. My sleeves were 60 stitches around (a multiple of 5). I had to decide how many of those 60 stitches should be joined with the body at the underarm. I suspected, correctly, that there should be a constant ratio across the different sizes between the number of stitches left for the underarm and the number of stitches going around the arm. That ratio was about 1.3. So I divided the 60 by 1.3 (60/1.3 = 46). That meant 46 stitches should go around the arm and the remainder (60 - 46 = 14) should be joined at the underarm.

The body of the sweater was a tube of 180 stitches. At each side of the tube, 14 had to be used for the underarm (the part left on a stitch holder when attaching the sleeves). To make my 3/2 ribbing pattern fit the joining, I changed the 14 to 15, a multiple of 5. A bit more math: 180 - 30 = 150. 150 stitches form the front and the back, and 30 (15 + 15) form the underarm. And so when doing the round where stitches are placed on stitch holders, the stitch division is 150/2 = 75 stitches on main circular needle, 15 on stitch holder, pick up 45 stitches form one sleeve making sure remaining 15 stitches are facing 15 stitches on needle holder, another 75 stitches on main circular needle, join the other sleeve similarly. Having all multiples of 5 ensured that the ribbing pattern was not disturbed and everything joined smoothly.

Yoke

I worked the 240 stitches in the round until I reached the top of the shoulders where a shoulder seam would have been. Then it was time to form the yoke and think about proper decreases toward the neck. To decide on this, I measured around my neck (32 cm), and measured from the top of the knitting to the base of the neck (10 cm). I put the unfinished work on, but you can also measure from a line joining the shoulders across the chest up to the base of the neck. The 10 cm meant I needed to decrease from 240 stitches down to 96 over 32 rows, all the while maintaining some kind of ribbing pattern. This is how I proceeded.

Between each decrease round below, work 3 rounds even.
Decrease round 1: decrease the purled stitches of the ribbing from 2 to 1. But only every 4th (decrease 1 purl, don't touch next three), repeat all the way around. (228 stitches)
Decrease round 2: decrease the 2 purled stitches that are in the middle of the 3 untouched ones. You want to have every other purled unit to be decreased from 2 to 1. In other words, you want the rib pattern to now be (3K 1P 3K) 2P (3K 1P 3K) etc... (216 stitches)

For the next 3 decrease rounds, we are looking at 3K1P3K units and decreasing one stitch on each side so that the 3K1P3K becomes a 2K1P2K. For best effect, follow the rules of right and left decrease (SSK vs K2tog, see my post on techniques). At the same time, turn the central 1P into a 1K. So to summarize, by the time you are done with a 3K1P3K unit, it should be a 5K unit.
Decrease round 3: decrease every 4th unit (decrease 1 of them, skip the next 3 units) repeat all around. (204 stitches)
Decrease round 4: decrease each unit that is in the middle of the 3 that were left alone on the previous decrease round, so that now every other unit has been decreased (192 stitches)
Decrease round 5: decrease the rest of the units. (168 stitches)

By now, you have a 5/2 ribbing.

For the next 3 decrease rounds, turn the 5K units into 3K units by working a decrease on each side (again, SSK, K2tog).
Decrease round 6: as for decrease round 3, every fourth. (156 stitches)
Decrease round 7: as for decrease round 4, every other. (144 stitches)
Decrease round 8: as for decrease round 5, the rest of them. (120 stitches)

Now you are back to a 3/2 ribbing.

Decrease round 9: turn every other 2P to a 1P. (108 stitches)
Decrease round 10: turn all remaining 2P into 1P. Now you should be at straight 3/1 ribbing. (96 stitches)

Turtle neck

Work even until the base of the neck (should be almost there), then switch to smaller needles (the same used to start the sleeves). Work rounds until the turtle neck is as tall as you want it once folded over. Then switch all K to P and vice versa. Right at that round is where the neck will fold. Work as many rounds as required to have the folded over edge be the correct length, then bind off loosely.

Finishing

Very little of it. Sew up the holes you will observe where the sleeves were joined. I have not found a method to avoid the creation of those holes upon joining. Tuck in all loose ends. Enjoy.