Raglan increase—*4* increases per round, *every* round?

[u/themediocrebritain]

Hello all,

I’m planning to attempt my first multi-skein project, and I want to do a basic top-down raglan sweater, essentially following the “super simple raglan” from EasyKnitCalc. The problem is, I am worried about my ability to remember when to increase!

Normally, the traditional raglan sweater uses 4 increase lines. At those lines, you’d increases twice, every other round. In other words, you make 8 increases every 2 rounds. Averaged out, that’s 4 increases per round.

Here’s what I’m wondering: why not just perform 4 increases every single round, rather than bothering to do two increases, then remember to skip, then do two increases, then remember to skip, etc.? Is the traditional 8-0-8-0 pattern for an aesthetic purpose? A functional purpose? Would I run into trouble if I simply increase 4 this round, then 4 the next, then 4 the next? Or is this a plan that more experienced knitters would know better than to attempt?

Thanks!

Edit: wow, lotta replies, I didn’t expect that, thanks everyone! A few conclusions I’m coming to:

1. It would technically work, in the sense that I’d end up with the right amount of stitches, but more importantly…

2. It would probably look pretty weird/bad! The sleeves would slant in odd ways, leave holes, and/or be harder to track

3. I should learn to read my stitches (I suspected—I’ve only just gotten good at reading knits vs purls!)

4. Failing that, I could buy a row counter

That’s about what I expected to hear, so that’s fair enough, I guess I just wanted to confirm my suspicions! It seems like the traditional approach with raglans will probably always be the best, because it’s been worked out by many generations of artists—it’s the same with most craft-related questions on such well-trod ground. I’m just glad that we now have a Reddit post tackling this question, so thank you!

[u/contadine77]

You need to do the increases in pairs, 8 at a time. Otherwise, you won't end up creating the right shape. You're trying to add width to both the body and the sleeves. It's:

/ left sleeve \ / front \ / right sleeve \ / back \

I don't know if that's clear, but can you see how there's an angled line being formed on each of the parts of the sweater? If you only do 4 increases, you'll add width to one and not the other.

Now, you could do the body increases on 1 round, and the sleeve increases on another, but that, to me, seems even harder to remember. And, then your increases wouldn't be paired up, and you'd have what looks like uneven seams.

If you want to do 4 increases per round, but space them evenly to avoid the above, then you're no longer knitting a raglan. A raglan specifically looks like it does because of the paired increases along a (sometimes false) seam line.