Standout Cardigan Gets Seamed

Project – Standout Cardigan
Pattern Book – #500886 Sumer Standouts
Yarn – Patons Silk Bamboo colorway #58425 Lotus

Seaming.  The word brings a little shutter to my heart.  I have heard many stories about a sweater ruined due to bad seaming.  There are also stories about sweaters that are knit, but never finished because the knitter does not want to deal with the seaming.  And the worst story of all is the one where a knitter pays someone else to seam and finish off the sweater because it is just too hard.  Yep, a little shutter.

To be honest, my first attempt at seaming did not go well at all.  After several attempts, and lots of time spent watching utube videos and reading reference books, I began to understand why a knitter would pay someone else to finish things.  I folded the whole thing up and brought it to an experienced sweater knitter and said “help”.  She told me something that made all the difference in the world.

Many sweater knitting patterns instruct you to slip the first stitch of every row and work any increases or decreases after the slip.  This creates a selvage edge that makes seaming easier.  Here is where I was making my mistake.  I was seaming using the selvage edge.  Wrong.  The selvage is there to help you see where the next stitch starts and it is that stitch that you are using when seaming.  Armed with this information everything went pretty smoothly.

First I attached the sleeves.

I pinned the middle, and then the ends, and smoothed things out as evenly as possible in between. After backing up a few times, I learned to look ahead and be certain the sides were even. Occasionally I had to skip a stitch on one side or the other to keep everything lined up.

Picked up stitches from the back…

… and then from the sleeve:

Back and forth, over and over.  Every five or six stitches I pulled the yarn…

… and the result is a nice, pretty seam.

I repeated the whole process for the side seams.

In the end, it looks like a real sweater:

I slipped it on and it fits perfectly!  All that is left to do is work the button bands and make a couple of ruffles.  Oh, and weave in the ends.

 

Oops! Tips for Correcting Common Mistakes

It is rare (I think) to knit anything without making at least one mistake.  The potential for mistakes increases with the size and complexity of the knitting project.  Yes, it is safe to assume that I have already made multiple mistakes in my Cap Sleeve Cable Pullover.  Here are a couple common mistakes (in my knitting, at least) and how to fix them with minimal tears.

Dropped Stitches. There you are, knitting merrily along, when all of a sudden you notice a little stitch guy hanging out by himself several rows down:

Hey, get back up here, guy!  The way to get a dropped stitch back where it’s supposed to be is by using a crochet hook to help it “climb the ladder” up to the needle.  Insert the hook through the errant stitch, grab onto the first “rung” and pull the rung through the stitch.  Continue until you’re back at the top and slip the stitch onto the needle.

Misplaced Pattern Stitches. This problem is easier to spot once the cable or lace pattern is established.  Somewhere a few rows back some kind of mistake was made, maybe a yarn over was forgotten, or a decrease was misplaced, and now there are too many or too few stitches, throwing off the continuity of the pattern.  There are two ways to fix this.

First, spread out the project on a flat surface and determine how far back the mistake was made.  Then take the project off the needles (yikes!) and unravel back to a row before the mistake.  You don’t always have to pinpoint the actual mistake, just rip back to a row that you know is correct.  I usually rip back to one row above where I want to put the needles back in, then take the yarn out of each stitch individually and place it on the needle (this helps prevent dropped stitches).

The second way to fix this mistake is to count how many stitches the row is off by and then increase/decrease in an inconspicuous area to get the correct number.  (This is not for perfectionists!)  The pattern is not actually “fixed” but the stitch count is back on track.  If you can live with one messed up row, (I can, as evidenced by the second pattern row in my cable pullover) this is the way to go.

There are certainly many more mistakes that can be made in knitting (trust me, I have made them) but these are the ones I make the most often.  So don’t be afraid of mistakes.  And don’t be afraid to ask for help from a knitting instructor/clever friend/the internet.

-AndreaK2tog

The many faces of a Yarn Over.

Did you know that there are 4 ways to do a Yarn Over?  I have been knitting for a little over 4 years now and I have just discovered this.  The type of YO (yarn over) that you do totally depends on the stitch before and/or stitch after the YO. The Cables and Lace Hoodie that I am currently working on, calls for a Purl 1, YO, Knit 1, YO, Purl 1 combo.

Let’s break it down…

Knit, YO, Knit – This happens to be the most common YO combo.  Knit one stitch, bring yarn to front and knit the next stitch.  Since not much yarn is used to create this YO, a small hole remains.

Knit, YO, Purl – Sort of tricky, especially if you are new to the world of YOs.  Knit one stitch,  bring yarn to front, wrap the yarn on your right hand needle one time and make sure your working yarn ends up in front of your work, purl next stitch.  This YO uses the most yarn, thus creating a bigger hole than all other YOs.

Purl, YO, Knit – Purl 1st stitch.  Since the yarn is already in front of your work from the previous purl stitch, just go right into your next knit stitch.  This YO uses the least amount of yarn, thus creating a small hole.

Purl, YO, Purl – Purl 1st stitch.  OK, so the yarn is in front, but yet you need to do a YO, so again (like the K1,YO, P1 combo), you wrap the yarn around the right needle leaving the working yarn in front of your work.

The P1, YO, K1, YO, P1 combo that I am currently using sort of creates an issue if you are not well versed in the area of YOs.  If you do nothing to the stitches, you end up with a small hole (YO), stitch and then a large hole (YO).  How do you make the holes even then?  After completing the row with the YO combo, on the next row (wrong side of work), when I get to the YO combo portion, I simply loosen the stitches to get even holes.  This technique seems to be working very well on this project.

Yarn Overs’ are crucial to the knitting world.  Who knew there were so many?  Without YOs, there would be no lace and well, that would just be very sad.

Coming soon…  Cables and Lace Hoodie!!

-BrennaLePurl

Fair Isle Tam Tips and Tutorial

Hey everybody! I’m jumping in here to give y’all some help with your the Fair Isle Tam pattern. Firstly, I have to start with a big “Do as I say, not as I do”. You’re going to find out in my next couple of posts that I like to learn my lessons the hard way! I’m no expert, but I can certainly get you to learn from my mistakes. Secondly, the pattern works as written, but definitely has a couple of tricky spots! Don’t forget this pattern is labeled as “intermediate”!

THAT WACKY DECREASE ROUND

Judging by the comments, a lot of you are finding the decrease rounds at the crown a little confusing. It may take a little extra concentration to wrap your head around this one, but it’s well worth the effort. Look at those awesome lines of decreased stitches on the finished hat! Let’s take a look at the decrease, step by step.

Here’s what my tam looks like when I’ve just finished round 6 of Chart II:

(Actually, in real life my knitting isn’t blurry – but you get the idea.)
The next round, round 7 is the first decrease round. Here’s where you have to start paying attention:

“To begin shaping, slip rnd marker back 1 st at end of last rnd”
The first stitch of each decrease round is the last stitch of the previous round. Woah! I know, tricky, right? The start of the round moves back a stitch to accommodate the two-stitch decrease you’re about to do. You don’t have to totally understand why, but trust me, you need adjust where you start on these rounds or your pattern won’t line up right! So to be clear, don’t knit the last stitch of round 6, and instead, count is as the first stitch of round 7. Did you already knit it? Yeah, me too. Just undo the stitch and put it back on your left needle.

Okay, so now that I’ve slipped back that last stitch to become stitch one of my decrease round, it’s time to do that funky decrease.

“Center dec(worked over 3 sts) = slip next 2 sts as if to K2tog,…

…K1…

…then pass slipped sts over knit st…

… – center of 3 sts should be on top of decrease. (2 sts have been decreased.)”

Before I began, I had 1 blue st, 1 yellow, 1 blue. The center stitch, old gold, is now on top – just like the pattern says – yay! If we look at my chart, you can see the first stitch of round 7 is yellow – that’s the stitch I have left on the needle after the 2 st decrease.

General Tips:

- When knitting in the round (like we are here) remember to read every line of the chart from right to left.
- I didn’t bother using a marker the beginning of my round ‘cuz it’s pretty easy to tell when knitting in the round on dpns; the tail from your cast on is always between two needles. All the guts from starting and ending new yarn colours will be hanging out here too.
- You don’t always need to cut your yarn at the end of colour rows. If you see the colour you just finished using will be used again a couple of rows later, just carry it up there when you need it again. Life is too short for unnecessary end-weaving!
- Reading is good for you! The great thing about colour work is that it’s really easy to read your knitting. If you see on the chart that (for example) one red stitch should be on top of three blue stitches and your row doesn’t look like that – time to take a step back and check for mistakes!
- Blocking works miracles: Stitches a little uneven? Pulled a couple of floats too tight and other too loose? Beret look more like a dreidel? Block it! Follow the instructions at the end of the pattern under “finishing”. 100% wool is particularly agreeable with blocking and will totally be the icing (butter cream) on your (chocolate) cake.

I hope that helps! Good luck fair-isle-ers and happy knitting!

-Juliaknits

p.s. I’ll thank you not to notice my “interpretation” of Chart I. Attempting to knit, talk and eat lunch all at the same time can lead to wayward stitches!

Un-seam-ly Progress

Don’t you hate when life gets in the way of your knitting/crocheting? This pesky business of “making a living” and “feeding yourself” and “doing laundry” are really take a bite out of my leisure time. Don’t even get me started on friends and family! Anyway, without a lot to show you progress-wise with my hexagon blanket, I thought I’d make like you’re reading a boring book and skip to the end! Seaming!

I usually claim to loathe any part of knitting or crocheting that isn’t knitting or crocheting. Finishing was not my forte. I say “was”, because I’m learning to love the fine art of finishing. Poor finishing can really destroy all of the hard work you put into a project. A couple of people left comments about what a nightmare this blanket could be to put together. For whatever reason… I’m not concerned. I think I’m going to seam-as-I-go, which means, despite having but a few hexagons completed, I need to decide how to put this thing together!

Seaming Option #1: Whip Stitch

I’m calling this “whip stitch”, though it might have a different name I’m not aware of – any ideas, folks? It’s pretty much a no-brainer:

Thread a needle with whatever colour yarn you like. Insert your needle under the double-v at the side edge of your right piece and then through the double-v at the side of left.

Work from side to side, joining one stitch at a time.

I worked with the right sides facing, though I’m not sure it matters, as the result looks pretty much the same on both sides of the work. Here’s the front:

And the back:

I used red yarn so y’all could see what I was doing, but obviously the results would be less conspicuous if you chose a matching yarn.

Seaming Option #1: Slip Stitch Crochet

This is a technique I picked up somewhere on these crazy internets though can’t recall where. I think it appeals to those who loathe sewing and love crochet, as there is no needle involved.

With right sides together, hold your pieces together like a sandwich – let’s pretend it’s grilled cheese!

Notice that you’re looking at two lines of “V’s”. Think of the outside stitch of the top (grey) ‘V’, and the outside stitch of the bottom (white)’V’ as the bread. This makes the inside stitches – the ones that are touching – the cheese! This technique is all about the bread.

Insert your hook in the bottom slice of bread:

Then in the top slice of bread:

Now with some working yarn, yarn over your hook and pull it through the whole sandwich:

Now move to the next stitch in the, er, slice:

Allright, so I’m losing the grilled cheese analogy here, but hopefully you understand what I mean! You’re essentially creating a slip stitch through both thickness, but only through the outside stitches. By skipping the inside stitches you leave space for the two edges of crochet to meet up really squarely. It’s almost invisible from the front:

And leaves a neat row of stitches in the back:

So am I gonna whip it, or make grilled cheese? As much as I love the neat appearance of the slip-stitch technique, I don’t think I want my blanket to have such an obvious right and wrong side. I also find the slip-stitch seam a little more time consuming (though I’m sure I’d get quicker with practice). I think the good old-fashioned whip stitch is going to put this puppy together. I hope I can make like Devo and Whip it good!

-juliaknits

Magic Loop Madness

Seaming. Just typing the word sends shivers up my spine. I try to eliminate any and all seaming from a project. It can be done, especially when the ‘Magic Loop’ technique comes into play. A dear friend introduced this technique to me about a year ago and I have to say, I was a bit skeptical at first. You see, it is a technique that takes a little patience, a little practice and most importantly, determination. Do not fear ‘Magic Loop’ my friends, for it is a most valuable knitting technique.

The Hooded Cardigan has been a fun project so far. Since I am anti-seaming, I decided to knit the sleeves differently from what the pattern called for. Instead of starting with the cuff, I picked up stitches around the shoulder and am working my way down. Sure, you could use double pointed needles to achieve this, but why would you when the magic loop only requires ONE long circular needle?

Here is how it works:

Step 1: Pick up required number of stitches around shoulder/arm hole on one long (32″ or longer) circular needle. Slide the stitches onto the cable part of the needle.

Step 2: Count stitches and make note of where the half lies. Grasp cable and pull through the center stitches. Make sure not to put a crimp in your needle though!

Step 3: Hold the cable and pull it out of the stitches until your stitches are on the needle portions of the circular needle. Make sure the working yarn is on the back needle. Slide stitches on the front needle back onto the cable.

Step 4: Use front needle and knit all stitches on back needle. When you’ve knit to the end of the needle, you’ve knitted half a round.

Step 5: Turn the needles so both tips are pointed to the right and slide the now-front needle into the stitches that are on the cable.

Ta Da! You have now completed one full round. Keep doing this until you have as many rows as you need.

Magic Loop does take a little practice. The first time around may be a little shaky and you may notice that your tension is a little off. Keep practicing because with each loop, this issue fixes itself.

-BrennaLePurl

Nearly there

(Notice I did a couple pair with seed stitch cuffs and another with a rolled cuff – not sure if this will show after felting): Mitten Garland

Get ready for a violent hot water bath and the impending transformation. Whoot! I can’t remember if I’ve shared how much I love to felt knit items. I think the technical term to use is fulled (because felting is the correct term for when you needle/hand felt). Is anyone out there in the know on this? Mind sharing your expertise?

You’re going in my pretties (sounding like the Wicked Witch of the West)…

No! You can’t do this to us us!

I like ruining some knitting (on purpose). It is great fun. You get to knit extra large (to allow for shrinkage) and if you have an error here or there it is very forgiving. Just make sure you weave in your ends well and don’t leave any holes. And don’t ask me how I know why this is so important.

A few felting (fulling) tips that I say cannot be mentioned often enough:

1. Put the items in a zippered pillow case. (This could not only save your washer— but your marriage.)
2. Add something heavy duty (like jeans) to the washer because they will help speed up the process.
3. Set your washer on the lowest water level, fastest agitation, and hottest water, add a tiny (stress here on TINY) amount of mild soap.
4. Keep watch. Pull the items out of the pillow case often to check the progress. Some wool felts quickly and it all depends upon the water temperature, agitation, and whether Venus is in line with Mars or something like that…
5. Last but not least spin for a short, short time and have a clean towel ready to roll your felted items into to get rid of excess water because if you spin too long it can cause permanent wrinkles.
6. Shape/mold your felted item and allow to dry.

–knittinjen

Cable for Two

My cabled vest from Luxury Knits is coming along luxuriously. I’m enjoying every second of it.

As you might notice from the picture, there are two different sets of cables happening at the same time – the large celtic-looking one in the center, and the more whimsical loopy ones on each side. Like a lot of things in knitting, both of these cables are based on a smaller pattern, repeated several times. Repeats make our lives easier and makes our knitting more manageable.

In this case, two types of cables = two different sets of repeats. The center cable has a 36 row repeat. In the photo above, I’ve just completed a single repeat and am about to start the next one. The side cable has a 16 row repeat, which has been done 2.5 times in the photo above. The thing you have to do is keep track of where you are in both cables at all times. That sounds hard, but it’s easy. The key thing is _you have to keep track_. You can’t just pick it up and put it down and remember where you are. There are two ways I’d recommend keeping track – I’ll just call them ‘the fancy way’, and ‘the Jen way’.

The Fancy Way:

Row counters can be both very simple and very complicated. They have electronic ones, some that are basically beautiful mini abacuses (abaci?), but for multiple cables, I’d recommend something in the middle, that allows you to keep track of multiple numbers at once. These ones usually look like little peg boards.

The Jen Way:

I’m always in favor of the DIY solution. Why buy something if you don’t have to? A pencil and paper works just as well as a fancy row counter. I always make a photocopy of the pattern I’m working on and keep a pencil handy. Like a prisoner counting her days in the joint, I make a mark for each row, right after I complete it. With two cables going at the same time, I keep two separate tallies (usually right next to the corresponding chart).

And there you go! You can easily turn those ‘intermediate’ knitting patterns into something fun and simple.

A brief note about Patons Angora Bamboo: I love bamboo yarns, and I work with them whenever I can. This is the first time, however, that I have worked with an Angora-Bamboo Blend. It’s truly delightful – soft and shiny like bamboo, with the halo of Angora. Go to the store and touch it for yourself, if you know what’s good for you.

Update on my in-the-round conversion: So far so good. Nothing disastrous to report. I’ll update again when I get to the arms. In the meantime, enjoy some luscious cables:

-jencraft

Round and Round

The cat, she is out of the bag.

I’ve been delaying discussion of this project because it’s a gift for a friend who just happens to be a reader of the Patons blog. Considering the input she had on yarn and color selection, I’m not fooling anyone from this point on. I was unable to come up with a way to blog about the project without exposing it, and without boring y’all to death. (‘Here’s another picture of my wall. No knitting there, no siree!’)

So I’m coming clean: I’m making the awesome, awesome cable vest from Patons pattern book #500873 Luxury Knits. This vest, like many simple garments, has simple construction. It’s knit in two pieces (the front and the back), and then seamed along the sides and shoulders. No pesky sleeves, no yokes, the front and back.

The pattern is simple to start, just some ribbing and then you’re off on a cable adventure!

Nothing to see here folks, just some ribbing.

While perusing the pattern, I realized that the front and back are identical, at least up to the armpits. I had to ask myself, ‘why do the same thing twice?’. Among the dangers are inconsistency, inconvenience and seaming (yes, it’s a danger when you do it at the last minute like I do).

I prefer knitting on circular needles in general; as a subway knitter it keeps me from chasing after rogue sticks or poking people I’m crammed beside. After a short bit of consideration, I decided to knit this garment in the round.

Changing up a pattern has a lot of repercussions – I considered a few of them, the others I plan to deal with when I get there (oh hush, it’s a perfectly reasonable strategy). Tons of sweaters are knit in the round, why not this cute vest? So now I get to knit most (or all) of the vest in one piece, saving myself trouble and time. I just repeat the same thing twice before moving onto the instructions for the next row.

There are several places you can mess up when converting a pattern like this. Here are a few I’ve found so far.

Tips for converting a pattern to be knit in the round:

1. Make sure you keep track of where you are. This means stitch markers are necessary, especially to mark where the front and the back happen.
2. When patterns are written to be knit flat, they often allow for seam allowances – one or two stitches that will be lost when you sew it up. To account for that, you may want to decrease the number of stitches by one on each side. I opted not to do that, but fyi.
3. You may also find that the pattern needs to be adjusted to account for the stitch pattern. In my case, the sides have a k1, p1 pattern that ends on a p1, and starts on a p1. to avoid having a weird spot in my knitting, I just kept going in the k1, p1 pattern instead of following what was written on the page.
4. Garments that are knit flat are knit on the right side, then the wrong side (like how row 1 knit and row 2 purl makes stockinette). This means the instructions for row 1 (RS) should be fine, but the instructions for row 2 (and all wrong side rows) are backwards. I need to knit the purls and purl the knits. If the pattern is simple and you don’t need to rely on reading, this shouldn’t be too hard. If it’s complex, you may find yourself messing up. If the pattern has cables and you can read a cable chart, you’re in luck! Follow the chart instead of the written text for the cable. Charts don’t care where you’re coming from, they just care what it looks like when you’re done.

Now I’m done with the ribbing, onto the body, and we’ll see if this scheme works out for me.

*crosses fingers*

-jencraft

A little lesson

Making progress

If you are a new knitter do you have trouble distinguishing what the knit or purl stitches look like? Don’t feel badly, even experienced knitters sometimes have trouble with this one.

I thought I’d take a few photos of my current project (the Cable Hat) as the pattern has many places where it says to “knit the knits and purl the purls.”

The knit stitch

Without assuming that I know any more than any of our readers this is one of those little things that took me a long time to be confident about. Do you see the previous row (directly under the loops that are on the needle)? If it’s a little “v” then you’re lookin’ at a knit stitch. If it’s a little knotty bumpy loopy thingy (technical term) it’s a purl stitch. I think of these as either a v-neck or a turtle neck sweater.

See that little knotty bumpy loopy thingy? (I’m nothing if not consistent with using technical terms.) That’s a purl stitch.

Patterns assume you posses a certain amount of knowledge. Hence why they are “graded” as beginner, easy, intermediate, etc. This one is intermediate. Having to “knit the knits and purl the purls” means that you can’t just go along aimlessly. You’re going to have to pay some attention. Don’t take that to mean it’s difficult. It most certainly is not. It’s just not necessarily one of those projects that you get to put in your favorite movie or watch your nephew play soccer while knitting away.

Because I am new to crochet I thought this little lesson might be helpful for those of you just learning to knit. I had some trouble finding info online that clearly shows where to place the crochet hook when you’re ready to do a stitch (is is under one loop or two loops?). I eventually found something that made sense to me.

As for the hat, I’m cruising along.

–knittinjen