Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Can’t stop for nothin’ …

… even though I found myself in the middle of nowhere with just the needle I used to knit the body of the pulli. It was way too long to comfortably knit the Hood. There is a small overlap area at the neckline which makes for a few tight rows even though you are knitting back and forth. It’s almost like knitting a funnel neck in the round which might be best worked with double points or a 16″ circular. My circular needle was, hmm, 32″ around?

Then I remembered something Nartian wrote: “What helped me was the tip Sandy (one of the Purlescence Yarns owners whose shop was hosting a Ribby Pulli KAL) gave about doing a big magic loop for a few rows…

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So here’s my magic loop, neckline style. But what the heck does that really mean?! ;p

Well, wherever you encounter tightness, make the needle fit the knitting diameter by pulling out the excess cable at that point. Because it is a circular needle, it forms a loop that neatly folds up on itself. You can see how really ginourmous my needle was by how big the loop I ended up with!

But it really was MAGIC! I knit around the row comfortably and that loop never moved. It was positioned at the beginning of the row at the overlap point and there it stayed whether I was on the WS or RS.

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I picked up the Hood stitches with the non-matching dyelot yarn I had. After about 3 inches, I started mingling in the other orginal dyelot yarn I had used for the body.

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This works on my monitor but your mileage might vary…

You can see that the slightly greener yarn really blends in with the bluer yarn quite well! The whole thing was sitting in my lap while I was knitting away and I could not tell unless I really squinted.

And as they used to say on the KnitList about mistakes in knitting: “…if you can’t see it from a galloping horse, full speed ahead!”

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

How to Join Sweater Pieces to Knit in the Round with Two Circular Needles

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When making sweaters in the round from the Bottom Up, I like to use two circular needles to knit the yoke in-the-round (same concept as socks just many more stitches). First, I put half the sts of one side of the sleeve on Needle #1; repeat with a second needle for the remaining sleeve stitches.

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Making sure I have the under-sleeve facing the underarm of the body of the sweater, I place the stitches that have been on a piece of scrap yarn back on the needle. The Front section goes on one needle; the Back section goes on the second needle.

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Now all that’s left to do is align the under-arm of Sleeve #2 with the underarm area of the sections and slip its stitches back on the working needles as for Sleeve #1, front and back.

That’s it! Now the large amouts of stitches are spread out over two needles, making it really easy to manage the bulk. This also eliminates the *squeeze effect* you get if you use one long circular (where the joins of the pieces are tight and awkward to work).

I go for easy. Maybe I’ll go for fast… ;p

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Chic Knits downloadable knitting patterns

Whew! Move it! All the way up to the Armscye! I re-knit the kanga pocket with a needle one size smaller than what I was using on the Body and all is well. I couldn’t wait to see how it played out so I hit it with the steam iron…

I love to press.

Giddy with cabin fever, somehow putting my first wee sleeve around the neck of Mistress Mannie just seemed right; I thought it ironic that it looks so natural there and am just itching to go measure my neck circumference now to see what’s up with that :)

This is going rather quickly now that I’ve finished the purple Eyelet Cardi. Aye, but does the Cheese Stand Alone!?

I always admire those who knit one thing at a time to completion, in fact I adore them! But I know that will never be my future. I exist in the exciting multiproject universe where no number of WIPs is too high!

There are all sorts of half-bakes all over this cabin, some pretty close to finishing, some recently arrived RAW…

L.E.T.IT.S.N.O.W…