Set-In Sleeve
The set-in sleeve is the one with a sleeve cap.
Knitting set-in sleeves from the top down
Some useful info/musings from Chris Hitchcock on the Ample Knitters mailing list:
The classic reference is Barbara Walker's "Knitting from the Top Down". I think it's currently in press as a reprint, and, at least where I am, the local libraries have it available for loan.
Here's what I remember about set-in sleeves:
Join the back to the front. Measure around the widest part of your arm (plus desired ease). Turn this measurement into stitches using your gauge. Pick up that number of stitches around the sleeve cap. She suggests using 1/3 of the stitches as your sleeve cap, which is probably about right. You could also figure it out using the desired length of the sleeve cap to the widest point.
For simplicity, I'm going to talk about "knitting" here - please understand that I mean knit, or purl, or work in whatever stitch pattern you are using.
Let's suppose we're using 1/3 of the stitches. Knit across to 2/3 of the stitches, wrap as you would with any short row, and turn. Knit back across 1/3 of the stitches and wrap, and turn.
Now, knit back and forth, adding one extra stitch on each row, and wrapping as you go. Pick up the wrapped stitches as you normally would when you come to them.
Continue to do this until you end up with all the stitches in work. Then continue the sleeve shaping as you normally would.
Thoughts about how to adjust this technique:
This is equivalent in shaping to a flat top, and decreases/increases at the end of rows to the full width of the sleeve, which is a fairly coarse way of shaping a sleeve cap. However, the one time I tried it, it did seem to work, although I was a little to clever for my knowledge base :) and made the sleeve cap too narrow, which made the sleeve itself too long and pointy, so the wide part of the sleeve is too far down my arm, and the shaping looks funny at the top.
There seem to be a few opportunities to adjust this method:
- You can vary the rate at which you pick up the stitches around the armscye (armhole), with more stitches in some parts and fewer in others. I'm not experienced enough to know why or how to tweak this, but I'm sure some here are.
- You can vary the rate at which you make the short rows, sometimes picking up more than one stitch. This would be equivalent to changing the increase/decrease rate, or even casting off some stitches. By contrast, if you skip some short rows, you can lengthen the shaping to every fourth row, etc. Commonly the rate of shaping on a sleeve is rapid at the top (often every row for a few rows), gradual for a long stretch (end of row or even every 4th row), then rapid again, so you get an S-curve shape. At the base of the sleeve cap shaping, the instructions usually say to cast off a long stretch of stitches initially. That would correspond to picking up the rest of the stitches on the last row. If I were to play with this, I would want to be careful about how the way I pick up the stitches as short rows around the armhole has an effect on the length of the sleeve down the arm (each time you pick up stitches, you are also making a new row, and so if you are picking up more stitches, you are also shortening the length of the sleeve head).
- You can change how many stitches you start with at the top for the sleeve cap. Again, I think now that the size of the top of the sleeve cap has less effect on fit than the length of the sleeve from the top to the widest point, so I would be inclined to change it in the service of modifying the length of the sleeve, rather than the width at the top.
Some more thoughts on the above, from Ruth, also on Ample Knitters
I'm a great fan of Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top and have made several sweaters with set-in sleeves using her method.
There is one thing in her method I disagree with. As you said, she has you pick up as many stitches around the sleeve opening as the circumference of the widest part of your upper arm plus ease. And then shape the sleeve cap with short rows. What I've found is that the first sleeve row is quite stretched - it seems to me that you have an opening that measures *more* around than your sleeve will because it includes the elongation from the sleeve cap.
If you flatten a sleeve out that's knit circularly and look at it from the sleeve cap up, what goes into the sleeve opening is the circumference of all 4 sides but Barbara Walker has you only picking up stitches for twice the length of the bottom side. I hope I'm explaining this clearly...
-------- / / sleeve / cap / ---------------- |rest of sleeve | ...
So what I do is pick up evenly around the sleeve opening as many stitches as seem to want to be there and decrease them evenly, some as I'm doing the sleeve cap and some after I get to the underarm and am doing the sleeve. After decreasing, I end up with a circumference that's the widest part of my arm plus ease.
I don't necessarily start the sleeve cap with 1/3 of the stitches. There's a description of shaping sleeve caps in June Hiatt's book (Principles of Knitting) that I work from, starting with the sleeve openings as I've shaped them using Barbara Walker's basic method. Unfortunately, the book is not in the same state I am, and I don't remember enough about it to say anything useful except to recommend it highly.
Ruth's other method for set-in sleeves
(Paraphrased) Decide how many inches you want the top of the sleeve cap to be, pick up the right number of stitches for that, then knit back and forth picking up one more stitch at the end of every row. Then when you get to the underarm pick up the stitches from there all at once. Ideally you will have left live stitches there when you worked the body, either from leaving them on a holder instead of casting off (if working bottom up) or from using a provisional cast-on (if working top down).