The Afterthought Neckline: How My Mother Reshaped Her Knitting

I have a number of Fair Isle garments knitted by my mother, and I’ve noticed that several had the neck shape made after the garment was knitted to the shoulder. As ever, we find the questions when the person who can answer them is no longer here, so I can’t say why she did it that way. Perhaps she was so engrossed in the knitting that she reached the shoulders before realizing she should have “slipped the neck,” or perhaps she couldn’t be bothered to think about it. Doing this for a high round neck makes some sense, but a deep V-neck will have required a lot of unnecessary knitting.

The earliest garment I have was knitted around 1953 by my mother for my brother. It has been repeatedly mended—no doubt all four of her children wore it. In this garment, when she reached the armhole opening, she didn’t use a steek. Maybe she didn’t know about that, even though she did know she could safely cut the knitting. (Ideas and practices took much longer to move around in pre-internet days.) Once she had put stitches for the underarm on hold, she worked on the front and back separately. She kept the right side of the knitting facing as she worked. To do that, she knotted together the two colors for a given row, knitted across, then broke the yarns before returning to the right edge and repeating. This method is known as “brak an eke.” She may have thought it easier to continue to the shoulders and deal with the neck shape afterwards.

Left: The V-neck sweater, viewed from the right side (according to Hazel this garment has had a hard life and is felted). Right: On the wrong side of the V-neck, you can see how the pattern that was on the right side continues where it was cut. The openings for the sleeves were steeked (not shown).

The sweater with the deep V-neck is more puzzling, as steeks were used at the arm opening, so I am not sure why the V-neck wasn’t also steeked. But looking at the wrong side, it is quite clear that the pattern continued and the V was shaped after the fact without any decreases.

How to Change a Neckline

Reshaping the necklines of these old sweaters is not very difficult. I prefer to use however many