Let’s talk sleeves.
I recently conducted a survey about alterations that knitters regularly make to a knitting pattern for a better fit. One of the most frequent answers was either shortening or lengthening the sleeves.
If this is an alteration you need to make but you’re not quite sure how to go about it read on and fear not. Recalculating the increase or decrease rate for a sleeve is relatively easy and straight forward.
[Note: For the purposes of this explanation we are assuming that the sleeve is knit top down. It works exactly the same way for a sleeve knit from the cuff up, just substitute the word increase for everywhere it says decrease.]
First count up the total number of sets of decreases in the sleeve. If the pattern doesn’t make this immediately evident or you are also adjusting the stitch count somewhere along the line you can do this by subtracting the number of stitches at the wrist from the number of stitches in the upper arm and divide by two.
Second determine how long you want the sleeve to be. Subtract the length of the cuff from this number.
Then determine how many rows you will have in the sleeve by multiplying the desired length (minus cuff) by the row gauge.
To get a rough idea of how often you should work a decrease row divide the total number of rows by the number of decrease rows.
To Summarize:
(Number of stitches at upper arm – number of stitches at the wrist) / 2 = total number of decrease rows
(Desired Length of sleeve – length of cuff) x row gauge per inch or cm = total number rows in sleeve
Total number of rows in sleeve / total number of decrease rows = how often to work a decrease row
Unless you get lucky, the final number probably isn’t going to be a whole number. Round this number down and work any remaining rounds after the last set of decreases but before the cuff.
You can use this method even if you are also adapting the pattern to fit your arms in some way. For example, if you have bigger biceps and don’t want to begin tapering the sleeve until the point where your arm actually begins decreasing, you can use this easily. Simply measure your arm from the point where you want to begin decreasing to your wrist. Use this number in place of the desired sleeve length when determining the total number of rows available for decreasing.