When your sweater has a dip

and not the good kind like the spinach artichoke stuff

While a lot of the northern hemisphere has been getting ready for barbeques and Hot Girl Summer mode, I've been swatching with wool and thinking about sweater fit.

Yep, I'm a weirdo.   Wait?  You, too?? We’ve found our people!

Not to say that the knitting mojo doesn't take a vacation when the thermometer goes up, but knitting is usually on my mind even if it isn't sailing off my needles.

Anyhow…thoughts about Round Yokes have been dancing around in my brain lately.  Specifically, the fit of them--I mean, how do they work their magic?  We basically take a circle and pop it onto a human, 3-D body, right?  Imagine wearing a rouund-yoked poncho:

You get the gist.  It's a big circle with a hole in the middle for your head.  And because it's a circle worn on a human, the radius dips lower in the front.

But with a round yoke sweater, you actually separate the sleeves from the bodice, cast on some stitches at the underarm, and have a used-to-be-a-circle-but-isn't-quite-a-circle-anymore below your underarms:

Up around the yoke, the radius of your almost-circle still dips in the front although there is usually a bit less of a “dip” near the hem.  

If you're wearing your sweater with a lot of positive ease (i.e. your sweater is a lot bigger than your actual measurements), you may not even notice it.

But if you tend to like your sweaters a bit more fitted, the “dip” in the front may indeed turn out to be noticeable.

Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking about the dip when I knit up the first prototype for my Yellow Brick Rodeo pullover.  I  placed markers at the sides, did a few sets of decreases along them (the lavender lines below),  and thought I was going to have the exact fit I wanted at the waist and hips.

Except it backfired.

.Sure, it was more “fitted”, but the result of putting decreases at the sides pulled the sides of the sweater upwards, making the pullover look like it had more of a dip in the front than if I'd just skipped any shaping at all.

And it looked…weird on my frame.  If I'd remembered the “dip” and also remembered what happens with lace patterns that put decreases along one line and increases all along another…I'd have remembered that the fabric pulls inward/upward where you put the decreases, and flares where you put the increases.

So, how to fix the “dip” while still doing waist shaping?  Add your decreases along "princess lines" (highlighted in lavender below) at the front and back--this will cause the sweater to pull up a bit where it's already wanting to dip.

But increases for the hips should work well at the sides again--those increases will cause the sides to dip a bit and will even out the sweater:

That was my strategy when I worked up my long sleeved Killer Queen Pullover for myself, and I think it worked nicely:

Of course, there are exceptions to consider. Like, if you’re blessed with a bigger bustline in proportion to your shoulders, the girls will hold out the front of the sweater and counteract “the dip.” You were born to wear this style! A sweater with a lot of positive ease may also make any dipping irrelevant as well.

Either way, I hope you still have the good kind of dips in your life like guacamole, queso, and that yummy baked artichoke dip that people bring to pot lucks).

Talk soon!

Mary (aka Lyrical Knits)