Design Your Capelet

or the hand knit capelet generator page.

To design your capelet, you must pick a neck opening, a shoulder width and a front length.    These three items are illustrated in the schematic to the right.   How do you pick these?

Neck Opening:
You should select a neck opening that is approximately equal to your neck measurement, plus a small amount for ease.  To determine this, place at tape measure comfortably around your  neck, and measure that value.  My neck measures around 14.5".  A 15" neck opening is comfortable for me.

Shoulder Width:
Generally, for a cape, you should enter a shoulder width approximately equal to your shoulder width, plus a small amount of ease. (I picked 1/2" larger than my shoulders.)    If you want a collar, that does not reach your shoulders, enter a smaller value for the shoulder width.  If you want a collar that extends slightly past your shoulder, enter a slightly wide shoulder width. 

One easy way to find your shoulder width is to take a well fitted blouse from your closet and measure from shoulder to shoulder.  Add a 1/2". Another easy way is to read a standard size table, like this one for women. or this one for children.

All of the following "capes" use about 16" for the shoulder width:

I'm going to discuss the shoulder width a bit more so you can understand the concept of cheating to design something slightly different.   Notice that there is a "kink" in the side slope at the shoulder width.  The kink on the left and on the right are a shoulder width apart.  That's generally what you want.  You want the cape to lie nearly flat over your shoulders, but you don't want it to continue to flare out uncontrollably all the way down to the hem.   If you draft a long cape, when you read your directions, you will notice the "shoulder dart" stops before the hem.  All the "turning wedges" continue to the hem.  Setting the "shoulder width" value determines where those shoulder darts end. 

That's enough concept for now. I'll return to it in a bit.

Center Front Length.
Finally, for the center front length, generally, particularly for a capelet rather than a collar, just enter the center front length you want.  To determine the length you want, place a tape measure at the base of your neck and  measure down to where you'd like the hem to fall.  You can also measure from the side of your neck to see where that falls. However, the length along the side neck is about 1"-2" longer than along the center front. The length along the center back is longer too.   This is because the back neck is raised to keep the cape from shifting forward when you wear it. 

The red cape above is 16" long, the pink cape is about 11" to 12" long. The collar is about 4" long.

Most of the time, people don't need to understand anything more about the program.  So, just stop reading this and enter your values.  However, if you want to make a small collar or a cape with extra flare read about cheating.

Say you want to make a short collar.   Once you have entered a shoulder width, there is a minimum centerfront length possible. If you are knitting the machine knit cape, the program will tell you this length.  (I didn't code this warning in the hand knit cape because it's pretty obvious. You just stop knitting. Just make sure  you aren't told to knit a negative number of rows.)

The shortest  the front length you can code for a machine knit cape that would make the shoulder "kink" fall exactly at the hem.  If you notice that's too long, you are not stuck!  You can make the capelet shorter if you lie and enter a shoulder width that is more narrow than your shoulders.   Just enter smaller and smaller shoulder widths until you read the center front length you like. Then enter that center front length in the box for the center front.  There will be no kink at the shoulders, because the "cape" hem happens where the program thinks the kink should be.

There is also another option for cheating.  Suppose you want to make a longer cape or capelet, like my pink one, but you want more flare?  Start fiddling with shoulder widths, increasing it until the minimum center front length matches the center front value you want on your cape.  Then, make sure the value in the center front length matches the length you want. 

You will be making a "wide collar" that flares past your shoulders.  There will be no kink because you lied about your shoulder width, and moved the kink to the hem.