My husband took one look at what I’ve done and said, “Is that a Groovy Girls sweater?”. If you have little girls, I think you’ll understand this statement.

I’m at the point where I need to start shaping the shoulders and the neck. I could follow the pattern, which specifies the typical way to bind off shoulders, or I could strike out on my own like I did last time. At this point, I’m going to admit that this is only my second sweater since taking up knitting again (a year ago). That sweater was a simple cardigan called Tea Tree. The sweater turned out great but I haven’t gotten around to taking a picture of it.

On my last sweater I used short-row shaping so that I could do a three-needle bind off. The best explanation of this technique is in “The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques” by Nancie M. Wiseman. There are various resources, which describe short-rows but was the first book that I found which specifically describes how to do it on shoulders. Just to keep everything straight in my mind, I graphed it out first. I made it really complicated by doing short row shaping for both the neck and shoulders. This time around I’ll just bind off the neck without short rows. Sweaterscapes has some good tutorials about short-rows and three needle bind off.