A Body Without Armholes

So having gleaned all the information necessary from my swatch cap, I forged boldly ahead into the body.  I decided that 200 stitches around would be right for the size I wanted to make, so it was dead simple - no extra purl stitches to deploy anywhere.

The body knit up ridiculously quickly, due in no small part to the fact that there is no waist shaping, no armhole shaping, in fact no anything shaping until you reach to tops of the shoulders.  This allowed me to cheerfully chug along at it through airports and plane rides as Mr. Mouse and I travelled to California for his company's annual meeting.  In fact, I was working the short rows for the shoulders on the plane home.

(Sidebar:  Of course you can knit on an airplane.  It baffles me that people are still surprised about that.  Knitting needles have been on the TSA's specifically allowed item list for over a decade now.  I got no comments from any of the airline staff beyond compliments on my lovely handwork.)

The astute among you should be panicking about now, having read the words "no armhole shaping".  Yup...EZ calls for you to steek the armholes open.  Now, this is not wholly unprecedented - steeked armholes have existed for centuries in many different knitting traditions.  What shocked me, however, was that this is a fairly large gauge project for steeking, and there is no colorwork involved.  In my experience, steeks are typically used on stranded color knitting to avoid having to turn and purl in color.  A tighter gauge means that everything holds a little firmer, wiggles less, and thus is less likely to spontaneously unravel.

However, undaunted, I decided to trust Elizabeth and make a tube with no armholes.

Then I practiced on a few swatches, took a deep breath, and crocheted my reinforcements.

And....took my scissors to it!

The next step was sewing the shoulder seams and attaching the sleeves (oh yes, I knit the sleeves...a topic for another post).

So the sweater is together...it just needs a neck, and I can't decide what kind of neck to give it!