Remedy for Underarm Holes

I hear a lot of angst from sweater knitters about holes under the arms.  It even goes as far as people feeling incompetent about knitting sweaters because there are holes under the arms. 

I’m talking about knitting a top down sweater where the sleeves are put on hold until the body is finished, and the live stitches worked with picked up stitches under the arm.  News Flash!  This method is bound to create holes.  But don’t despair.

There are two ways to fix this problem.  If you have already knit the sweater, you can go back with a darning needle and from the wrong side, tack those holes closed by using the yarn you knit with and pulling that area shut with a few stitches.  

If you haven’t finished the sweater or picked up the stitches yet, here’s another “purl” of wisdom.  Don’t follow the pattern.  Patterns typically tell you to pick up the same number of stitches that were cast on.  However it’s just the nature of the construction that there is space on either side of these picked up stitches and the live stitches for the sleeve.  This is almost guaranteed to create a hole.  Even very accomplished designers don’t mention this fact or add stitches.  Some designers will tell you to pick up an extra stitch on each side to compensate.  I almost always pick up an extra 2 on each side.  

When picking up these stitches, don’t pick up the very edge stitch, as that will stretch and not solve your hole problem!  Go down one row and pick up from there.  I have sometimes even picked up 3 stitches per side if the situation warrants it.

What to do now that your stitch count is off?  Decrease a stitch on each side the second row into the pattern, using the same decrease called for in the pattern lower down on the sleeve.  If you have picked up more than one per side, you can wait to decrease the extra stitches a little bit further down if you don’t mind deviating from the pattern a bit.  I find that some designers, like Andrea Mowry, tend to have a tighter upper sleeve than most people prefer, and adding these few extra stitches takes care of that issue.

Hope this helps some of you who were intimidated by sweater knitting.  Happy knitting!

Jennifer