When knitting pattern stitches with the G-Carriage it is possible to have a shaped neckline. It is an alternative to the cut & sew neckline. It makes a beautiful neckline & isn't all that hard to do, but a bit time consuming. (Some mker's try knitting back the out of work needles with ravel cord but that never worked for me)
1. When you get to the neckline while knitting the front of your garment you want to scrape off the complete front with your main bed carriage. You will be doing the neckline one side at a time.
2. Then rehang the left side back on the machine keeping in mind that you have to return the stitches to the original needles in order to keep your pattern knitting correctly. If you scraped off stitches for the shoulder you do want to rehang those stitches. Do not rehang the stitches from the neckline on the right side, or the center stitches. I hang the right side on the gate pegs so that the weight is not pulling on the other side.
3. My pattern says to bind off 1 stitch each row at the edge of the neckline. Since we are doing the left side first that would be needles on the left side only. Instead of doing that I am going to drop a stitch at the neckline for each bound off stitch each row, & use a double eye needle to knit them off & run contrasting yarn through that stitch. Knit in pattern with GC or whatever.
Those stitches will not unravel because they are on waste yarn & have the extra yarn drawn through them.
4. My pattern then says to knit 12 rows on the remaining stitches. Let the G-Carriage knit those rows in pattern. Scrape off stitches after knitting your 12 rows.
5. Now rehang the stitches for the right side of the neck omitting the center neckline stitches. Knit as for left side reversing the shaping.
6. The pattern will tell you to knit the 12 rows even. These rows will be the side of the neckline that go straight up without any shaping. Scrap off.
7. Now we have both sides of the neckline stitches almost finished. Rehang the stitches from the neckline on the appropriate needles & then hang the inside edge of the neckline stitches on the needles keeping in mind how big you want your neckband. Knit one row across these stitches in plain knitting. Scrap off.
8. Attach front & back at one shoulder & rehang the neckline on the machine, the back of the sweater neckline too, including the rows that were knitted even & the stitches that were scrapped off on waste yarn. Start the rib knitting for the double neckband. You might have to knit through by hand the first row. After that the GC can take over or knit the rib with main carriage & ribber carriage.
9. Once you have knitted the appropriate number of rows you can rehang the first neckband stitches so that you have 2 stitches on each needle, & bind off over 2 gate pegs.
You now have a beautifully shaped neckline & can proceed with attaching the sleeves & sewing up. Remove the waste yarn.
