Tag: knitting pattern

What a Mis-Steek!

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Okay, this happened a few weeks ago but I’ve been unable to talk about it until now. The sweater in question has been sitting in a basket in a corner since I threw it there and stormed off. I think I have cooled down enough and my head is fully level again so it is time to revisit the disaster that was my first foray into steeking.

Steeking is a technique used when knitting stranded colour-work in the round. Since it can be difficult to purl while knitting with two colours, many knitters prefer to work in the round when doing stranded colour work. But, working in the round means you are making a tube when sometimes you’d rather have a flat piece. In the case of my sweater, I wanted to make a cardigan so I needed it to be flat. In order to turn this tube into a flat piece you do something very scary… you cut your knitting right down the middle! Oh the horrors!

Before you cut your work you reinforce the column of stitches on either side of where you are about to cut. This is where the people are a little divided, and where I guess I didn’t do enough research. In theory, if you use a true Shetland wool (which is traditional for this style of knitting) then the catchy wool can grab onto itself and not unravel when cut, even if you don’t reinforce it. Other kinds of grabby wool will be fine with a crocheted reinforcement, the crochet chain running down either side of the steek “hugs” the yarn and holds everything in place after it is cut. Other wools that are more slippery, like merinos and superwash, really need to be reinforced by a couple of lines of sewing machine stitching running down either side of the steek.

I went wrong was in thinking that my project would be okay with a crochet reinforcement. It was not okay. I also should have taken the time to test it out on my swatch before taking the scissors to my sweater, but I did not. This disaster was avoidable, which makes it all that much more horrific. I’m going to chalk these mistakes up to lessons learned and move on.

Since this was for a pattern I was designing, and I had planned on adding a little picture tutorial on steeking (yes, I appreciate the ridiculousness of that), I have thorough photo documentation of the disaster as it unfolded. Warning: the following pictures portray unwanted unraveling, viewer discretion is advised.

First you crochet a chain through the column of stitches to one side of the steek.
Then do the same to the column on the other side of the steek.
Then you cut down the steek column between the two reinforced columns. Remember, you spent countless hours knitting the piece up to this point.
And then, if you’re yarn is too slippery, it will pull out of its crochet “hug” and unravel when you try to pick up stitches for the button band.

So the moral of the story is, always machine reinforce your steeks or you could end up with unwanted unraveling. I think I have a solution to the problem so stay tuned for updates on the steeking saga.

Thrumming Along

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I was recently commissioned by a friend to knit some thrummed mittens for her and her two boys. They are wonderfully warm mittens, perfect for these frigid Cow Town winters. I still had lots of bright colours of Cascade 220 and some taupe-coloured Merino roving left in my stash  so I was able to start on them right away. I decided to do them in a random stripe pattern of four colours. Since I’m terrible at being random or overly creative when it comes to these things, I hit up the handy-dandy Random Stripe Generator, input the colours and rows I wanted, and refreshed away until I found a pattern I liked. Also, since I have a terrible memory, I looked up the Yarn Harlot’s thrum tutorial. Then I did a swatch to figure out how many stitches and rows per inch (aka stitch gauge and row gauge) I had for my yarn and needle choice and did a little math to determine how many stitches I needed. I made a chart in Excel and added my stripes, thrums, thumbs and decreases and badda-bing, badda-boom, I had myself a pattern. I’ll include the chart here for anyone who might be curious, but with the warning that you have to do some reading between the lines (or just go ahead and ask me questions) if you’re going to try and make a mitten from it. I’m also going to show a little detail on how to make thrums.

Lets start with the chart…

The V’s represent where the thrums are added. Dashes are purls.

And now a brief tutorial on how to make a thrum. The usual advice is to make up a bunch so that you can just reach for them when you need them, and that is certainly most efficient, but I am neither usual nor efficient. I usually make enough for a row when I get to a thrum row, it breaks up the monotony.

Pull off a small piece of roving about 3 inches long (our lovely Queen for scale).
Fold each end in to the middle.

Give it a twist. I like to give mine a little more twist just as I’m about to use it as I find they like to untwist if left to their own devices.

And then a little about how to add the thrums…

Insert needle into stitch to knit, place the thrum over the needle, bring the yarn around like usual…
…then pull the yarn and thrum through the loop as usual.
On the next row, knit the thrum and yarn together through the back of the loop.

And then you knit and knit and knit some more. And then you have oh-so-cute, oh-so-warm mittens.

Furry on the inside
Happy on the outside.


Giddy’up

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Since it is mid-October I’m having a bit of a crafting crisis. On one hand, we woke up to an inch of snow here yesterday so I am kicking mitten and hand production into high gear. P’s head and one hand are covered, but that other hand is still out in the cold for now. I’ve come up with new hat and mitts designs that are being tested right now. They are fairly simple and quick so I’m hoping to release them as free patterns that I’ll post on the blog as well. More on that to come.

On the other hand, it is getting awfully close to Halloween and I’m really hoping to be able to make the kids’ costumes this year. For the first 3 years of motherhood there was just no way I was going to go out of my way to make costumes when they had perfectly cute ones at Old Navy for $15. Last year we did make A a pretty cool costume out of a box – he was a construction worker…

But this year I own a sewing machine, and even kinda know how to use it. So I went out the other day and picked up this Simplicity pattern and plan to make the kids cowboy/girl costumes. I figure they can double-up as Stampede outfits next year. I’ve decided to skip making the pants and skirt, they can just wear their regular jeans, so I’m only making the shirts. As I was looking through the fabrics I realized that if I’m going to be making a shirt, why not make it something durable and nice that can be worn everyday. So I bought these beautiful fabrics and I’m going to use buttons or snaps instead of the velcro the pattern calls for. I’m hoping to get working on them this weekend, so maybe next week I’ll be able to post the finished product.

In Case You Don`t Procrastinate…

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…then you may be interested in starting to make Christmas stockings now, rather than my chosen time in early December. Now, on the one hand, if you start now then you should have nice, tidy, complete stockings for Santa to stuff. BUT, if you delay like I d0, when fall comes around next year you will have a selection of stockings in various states of completion, which allows you to make an impromptu tutorial blog post. See, it`s all part of the plan.

I had someone who obviously does not procrastinate (cough… Amanda… cough, cough) ask me if I had knit Christmas stockings. Well, yes, of course, everything in my house is knit. So I decided to dig them out of storage, take a few pictures and share them here. Since I came across the aforementioned mishmash of complete and incomplete projects, here comes the tutorial!

For the pattern I used the free Cascade Yarns W104. It calls for up to 10 different colours of yarn but I used 5. Cascade 220 is a great yarn to use as it comes in a bunch of great colours, is durable and high-quality, and not unreasonably priced. It really is the workhorse of yarns if you ask me (and some people actually do). The pattern is more like a recipe, giving you the basic instructions and charts and letting you choose how it all comes together. It is knit in sections of fair isle, using two colours at a time. This is not as scary as it sounds, but does take some practice. The colour you are not knitting with at the time gets carried along in the back, which leads to `floats`of yarn. I used duplicate stitch to stitch the names on afterward (which only looks okay since the high contrast between the navy and white shows any imperfections).

Since these floats could get caught by whatever Santa chooses to put in there, I decided to line the stockings with pretty material. I traced the outline of the stocking onto the material, cut it out (leaving a seam allowance) and sewed it up with right sides together. I turned the stocking inside out and tacked the liner in place at the toe and heal.

I turned the stocking and liner right side out, flipped the top of the liner towards the gap between the liner and stocking and hand-sewed the liner to the stocking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I braided three strands of yarn together and wove them through some of the stitches at the top of the stocking to hang them from the mantle. All that`s left after that is to hang them by the chimney with care.

 

The Knit That Keeps on Giving

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About 2.5 years ago I knit a very cute sweater for A. The pattern was Owlet by Kate Davies, and I chose a deep red colour of King Cole Merino Aran. I had a lot of fun knitting it and it worked up very quickly. The owls’ eyes are supposed to be buttons but at that time I hadn’t found Suzy Q’s (my favorite vintage button shop) so I used wood beads instead. A wore that sweater until last fall (my kids grow very slowly) and got quite a lot of use out of it. Now that it is getting downright cold again here, I dug it out to try on P. Sure enough, it fits her perfectly and the red colour is fine for a girl too. Since both kids will have worn the sweater it has now probably secured it’s place as a family heirloom and the classic design will probably still work for the grandkids someday.