I managed to finish the first leaf repeat after another two days of knitting. This sweater seems to be going by so fast, since I don't have anything else on the needles. My last post's pictures are much more true to color than this one, but it was the best I could do with our low light level.
At the left you can see the waist shaping that I incorporated into the design. Working out waist shaping is easy, as long as you know both your stitch and row gauge. I don't know if the way I do it is the best way, but it works well for me.
First I pull out my tape measure and go and stand in front of a full length mirror. It's easiest to do this if you're wearing a thin shirt. Make note of where the smallest part of your waist is (use a piece of tape if this is your first time doing this). Next, find the widest part of your torso that is beneath your waist, and make note of that location as well. You're going to use the tape measure to measure the length from the widest part of your torso to the smallest part of your waist - in other words, measure the length that you are going to want to decrease over. I don't know if my measurements are typical or not, but mine is about 2".
I have a really big difference between my waist and lower torso measurement (about 9"). I've found that you really don't need to decrease every bit of width in your knitting, since it will come out looking angular and the drape doesn't really work. I measured a few store-bought sweaters, and found that the ones that look best on me only decreased 2" around the waist. So, I use my 2" measurement of the length from my widest part to my smallest part, and multiply that by my row gauge (in this case, it's 18 rows). Then, I multiply the 2" with which I want to decrease my width by my stitch gauge (this time it happened to be 18 stitches). I marked the exact sides of my sweater (where the seams would have been, if I wasn't knitting this circularly), and then *knit to 2 stitches before the marker, ssk, slip marker, k2tog, rep. from *. Alternate this row with plain rows - don't decrease on every row, since it will make the knitting very angular. Your math might not work out as exactly (I know mine usually never does), so you might need to fudge a little - it's not a big deal if you only decrease 10 stitches instead of 12, or do it over 10 rows instead of 9.
Edited to add one important part: after you've decreased to as small as you want, you're going to knit a few inches plain, and then begin increasing, in the same way that you decreased, until you've reached the width that you'd like for your bust. Sorry to leave that out before...
Does that make any sense at all?
I've just finished adding waist shaping, and after working a few inches straight I'll start to increase back up to my original stitch count. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 420 stitches, so I'm quite happy to work for awhile on the smaller waist amount. I worked for 3 days on this knitting, and only have six inches to show for it. The lack of sock yarn around here (and the ban on buying anymore) is going to be a good incentive to get this done soon, though!
