Mods for Rogue
Contents
This page will provide information about modifications you can make to the pattern to customize your finished product. If you have mods you'd like to share in this space, please e-mail.
"Cardiganizing" the Rogue
It is possible to convert the pattern into a cardigan. Many thanks to Claudia for this modification! (See her finished Rogue on her blog, posted as the March 14, 2004 entry.)
Claudia used a two-way zipper--the type that has two zipper pulls and can be opened from either the top or the bottom. Here's what she did to convert Rogue into a jacket:
- Knit the body back and forth on a long circular needle (e.g. 32"), rather than in the round.
- Add one stitch to the front and back body so that you have an even number of stitches. (If you don't count the side panel stitches, all sizes have an odd number of stitches for the front and back.) This allows you to split the front exactly in half; when you knit the body, you will knit the right front panel, the side cable, the back, the side cable again, and then the left front panel. Slip the first stitch of every row, if desired, to create a nice selvedge.
- When working the kangaroo pocket, split the stitch count for the pocket in half (you will have to add 1 stitch to the pocket in order to do this, just as for the body front). Knit each half separately to its own front. The center front edge of the pocket will remain open until the zipper is added.
- Work the throat cabling as written, but work one side at a time from half the chart (including the central stitch) and on each side substitute a single M1 (use your best judgment as to the particular type) for every instance where there is a "make 3 stitches" instruction in the exact middle of the throat chart. ("Make 3 stitches" symbols occur on both RS and WS rows of the chart.)
- Once you are past the neckline split, follow the hood pattern as written; however, you will have 4 stitches at the center front edge instead of only 3.
- To finish the front edges, pick up 2 out of every 3 stitches along each front and knit an attached 4-stitch I-cord border. Graft the live stitches from the I-cord onto the 4-stitch stockinette border for the hood. If you work one of your I-cord borders from the neckline down to the hem, use a provisional cast on at the beginning of the I-cord so that you can graft it to the hood border afterwards.
Altering the hem
The hem on Rogue is about 2" of double-thick fabric, as the body is begun with a hem facing. If you do not want to have that bulk at the bottom edge, you can work a narrower hem. This hem version is also thanks to Claudia.
Instead of knitting 2" of hem facing, work only 4 or 6 rows in stockinette on smaller needles, then fold up the hem and knit each live stitch together with its corresponding cast-on loop.
Upsizing Rogue
There are no immediate plans to issue Rogue with an expanded range of sizes. (I've got plans to issue a children's version, though, and I even have the name picked out. Rascal. Isn't that cute? I knew you'd think it was cute. Cute, isn't it?). I suspect that if I were to adapt Rogue for larger sizes, I might want to alter the cabled portions to be proportionally larger as well, and write in short row shaping rather than leaving it as an exercise to the reader. However, if you're happy with the cabling as is, here are some tips on increasing the finished bust measurements.
If you need to add 6" to the body to yield a 54" finished bust measurement, that requires an additional 28 stitches: 14 each for the front and the back. You could distribute these stitches by adding an extra couple of stitches to the reverse stockinette background on the side panels, and an extra 12 stitches to the front and back in the plain stockinette portions. However you add the extra stitches, make sure you add an even number of stitches to the front stockinette panel to keep the cable design at the throat centered.
You can keep the side cable with its waist shaping, eliminate it altogether, or revise it to keep the cable, but remove the waist shaping. I suggest keeping the very beginning and end of the cable, but working a saxon braid (a four-strand plait, found in most stitch dictionaries) instead, if you want to have a cable but omit the waist shaping.
When you reach the armhole shaping, you will need to bind off and decrease enough stitches so that the final shoulder width is appropriate for your size; since you're adding an extra 7 stitches per side in this example, you'll probably want to decrease an extra 3 to 5 stitches than what's provided in the pattern (for example, bind off 2 more sts than indicated in the pattern, then remove the rest of the extra sts in the decreases shaping the armhole, but don't deepen the armhole--work until it is the same depth as the 48" size, unless you need to have a deeper armhole to fit your body). Your shoulders will therefore have an extra 2 to 4 stitches than the 48" size. You could then follow the neckline shaping as written; you'll just have more stitches for your shoulder seams.
As for the sleeves, you will need to add some width to them so that the sleeve cap will fit in the armhole. Based on the rough numbers above, you'd probably need to add another 1 to 1.5". You can either cast on those extra sts when you start the sleeve, or work extra increases along the side edges to do that. When you get to the sleeve cap shaping, you'll need to bind off as many stitches as you bound off for the armholes, and then work a few more extra decrease rows so that it fits the armhole. The sleeve cap will be a bit longer than the the 48" sleeve cap, but not by too much.
This all assumes that the reason you need a 54" shape is to accommodate the bust, not the hips (if you're pear shaped and only need to fit the hips to that size, you could adapt the body to more of an A-line shape instead).