Ranunculus assistance: picking what size to make

hello everyone welcome to sundragon tips and tricks i'm rebecca i'm the owner of sun dragon art and fiber in downtown brevard north carolina and it's monday i'm at my house and i thought i would film at least one video today this is a really quick one because i keep getting questions asking what size of the ranunculus someone should make i've got all my videos from our ranunculus knit along in april and the question keeps getting asked and i keep answering it with a whole long paragraph so here is a summary of what i would tell you when trying to pick a size because midori in her pattern it she leaves it ambiguous on purpose so i am currently i still have to finish two sleeves here i am currently making this ranunculus in lace weight and it is pretty huge i will say but that is part of the decision to make it now midori designed this in the mori girl style which is an asian style japanese style of fashion that is oversized that's why the one i'm making looks so big it's meant to be super wide a lot of what we call positive ease which is think positive is how much plus space around your bust size negative ease is how much you want it to like how much smaller you want it to maybe be form fitting midori's pattern in the mori girl style i gotta back up so you can even see the whole thing it's designed to be super oversized it is oversized yet feminine in that especially if you choose a lighter weight of yarn a thinner yarn you're going to have a whole lot of drape with it you're going to it's not going to look stiff and big it's going to drape and be flowy and be really pretty now not everyone is comfortable with that so she has left it completely open-ended in terms of what size she doesn't say well if your bus size is this size you should make this size she just has finished measurements in her pattern and that's always an important thing to look for in patterns is when they're telling you about sizes are they saying your bust size make this or are they saying the finished bust size of the finished size of the garment oftentimes if they tell you finished size they will also have how much positive ease they are expecting or what they designed it for maybe three inches again if that's the case you measure your bust along the largest part of you which is probably either your girls or your tummy and you're adding on what they suggest to be uh the positive ease how much extra room they want now you're not locked into that you can add more or less depending on your comfort level so um and if you look at the pictures on the first page i'm going to flip up to that in my version of this she has a lot of photos of uh of models who are wearing it with 47 to 45 or so centimeters of positive ease now for people who don't use the metric system that's about 17 18 inches of positive ease that might sound like an awful lot but that is what it is designed for again because it's designed to drape so one way of attacking this is to take your bust measurements and add about 18 inches to it if you're using inches or 45 centimeters if you're not comfortable with that you can go to the page that has finished sizes and in my copy it's on page five and it's measurement b and you can look at that and say size one starts at 46 inches of bust now i my regular chest measurement is about 43 so that would be a very a fairly regular size sweater looking on me with only three inches of positive ease this is a size nine now again i did not test my gauge that's one of the things i love about this is you take big size 10 needles and dive in with about any weight and because there's so much positive ease in there even if my my stitch count is a little smaller it there's still lots of room in here so the size nine that i'm maybe hoping for is over 60 inches all the way around i don't think mine is quite measuring that i haven't blocked it yet it might be closer to 52 53 but that's still a lot of that's still 10 inches of positive ease but again i'm relying on the drape of it if you're doing it with a thicker yarn and you're worried that it's going to look too bulky if you do it that wide even even my worsted weight one i did a size 5 which is supposed to come out about 55 inches and it when my hand my arms are down it doesn't look super wide but if you want something that's closer to a comfortable sweater for you without the oversize i recommend either measuring your bust and adding on what you're comfortable with maybe only five inches i would give you i would give yourself a little bit of positive ease in there um if if that's still smaller than a number one definitely make a size one if you're looking for something that's close to a sweater you already own one of the ways to figure this out is take a sweater or a sweatshirt that you like that you feel comfortable in lay it out on the bed or some kind of flat surface where you can measure across the front and then that is about half of the full bust circumference that you want so try multiplying that by two and see if that comes close to one of the measurements in the ranunculus she really is offering a lot of choice in this sweater and for some people that's not a good thing i'd rather be told what to do some people might say i don't want to have that much choice but this is some ways to to narrow it down for you i'm going to see since i have one sleeve on needles i do i'm going to try not to lose that sleeve off of the needles but i can show you what this looks like so far on me following what i think are from what i recall is somewhere in like at the back down is somewhere in the size eight nine range so here's my sleeve so far a sleeve will really when you do the sleeve it'll pull up your arm opening quite a bit more than you're expecting so that'll tighten it up pulling this down it may be hard for me to get far enough away that you can see the length of this i could have made this a lot longer and flowier but see even though this if i show you how wide it is is super wide like if i i can't even get under that part to fill out the drape of it it doesn't look super huge now i am rather thick in some areas but it drapes really nicely so even though i'm doing a size nine and i could pull on it this lace weight and pull it really wide it doesn't make me look too much thicker than i already am so picking a size that is wide especially if you have a thinner yarn you can be okay i know not everyone is going to do a lace weight ranunculus that you can see through like mine but even a fingering way to sport weighted dk it's still because you're on a size 10 needle u.s sizes which is a six millimeter the bigger the needle the more you have some drape with this so if you're comfortable with that pick something that is oversized it's all right if you're not comfortable with that go with one of the smaller sizes again the smallest size for some people may still give them 10 inches of positive ease if you're really not comfortable with that you can go down needle sizes to make your stitches tighter just know at that point without testing your gauge and doing some magic math and i have some videos on that it's unpredictable what size your ranunculus will come out and that's some trial and error and that depends on how comfortable you are with that so i highly encourage you to engage and embrace making something that is oversized and drapey because it can be very very pretty and have fun making your ranunculus i last little bit about it uh i've mentioned this in a lot of um our group podcast the sundragon sideshow and a lot of the notes where i've answered people and emails with questions you don't have to pick a size until section after section three i believe like sections one through three on the ranunculus everyone is doing the same thing for a lot of the yolk the sizing comes from the raglan increases down there so you can start this sweater without picking a size picking the size will help you determine how much yarn you might need but that's also changes depending on how long you want the torso and the sleeves so if you not you're not sure you can start the sweater and decide at section four what size you want to make thank you very much for watching this video if you haven't subscribed yet please consider subscribing liking hitting the bell for alerts that kind of thing if you'd like to support the shop monetarily you can also do that through memberships here or go over to patreon.com sundragon and the extra benefit with patreon is you get some sun dragon swag after three months which is kind of fun thank you so much though for all of your support and for watching and for asking questions i'll answer as i can and as i always like to say may your crafting be filled with joy and confidence we'll see you next time bye you

Channel: Sun Dragon Tips & Tricks

Views: 5,037

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Id: xt4iSwKigb4

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022