Taking apart the Tree Jacket

The first step of reducing the bulk of the underarm on the tree jacket is to take the perfect body off of the very imperfect yoke. I started with snipping one stitch right above the body and pulling one row of stitches out. The live body stitches are put onto a circular needle and DP needles are used to tease the yarn out of its row. Doing this isn’t complicated but it does take care and with a clingy, furry, white yarn is a very slow process.


The first few inches are done.


With my fingers to see it better.



Look how well it is going.


Finally it’s done.



Sumi-e approves.


The next step is to unravel the Tree Jacket back to the safety pin that marks were the armhole should be. Then to join the body there and keep increasing at the underarms to bring the body stitch count back to the right number of stitches for re-joining and to knit new smaller sleeves. Once the sweater looks something like the Photoshop image I will try to graft the body back onto the yoke of the sweater.


I considered putting the increases in as bust darts for a more elegant fit rather than just increasing in the underarms. But I decided against it for all sort of reasons I can’t think of now. But it boiled down to keeping the raglan line going and that I wouldn’t have to think to do it this way. I won’t know for sure how it works out until I get the body back on.