Posted on by Bonne Marie

Thursday, September 2, 2004

The Scoop of the Scoop du Jour is well, SCOOPED!


Who’s the Boss!?

Drafting several necklines this winter and spring has pushed me to try even curvier, faster curves. Step on it, lead foot!

I wasn’t convinced this was going to work – if you look at the picture from yesterday, you can see the narrowness of the shoulder piece. I wanted to use WIDE chunky rib at the neck and that needed a WIDE SCOOPER-Doo…

This means I had to leave a curved *hole* so to speak, that I was going to *fill-up* with rib.

But ya really don’t know until you get your hands (face, feet and NECK) dirty in this PROCESS so in I dived. I picked up 5 sts for every 6 on the edge.

My RULE of THUMB for edgings is thus: note your Row Gauge. Then subract 1 stitch from whatever that number is, so in this case it is 5 because this is an Aran weight yarn with a gauge of 6 rows per inch. I picked up 5 sts for every 6 stitches made along the edge (pick up 5, skip 1, pick up 5, skip 1, etc). This is called a 5/6 ratio.

If your row gauge is 7 rows per inch, pick up 6 sts for every 7 along the edge. For bulky yarns with a row gauge of 4 rows per inch, I pick up stitches in a 3/4 ratio.

The mistake I referred to on Tuesday was that I picked up stitches in a 6/7 ratio or 6 sts for every 7 on the body edge, and ended up with too many stitches. This made the ButtonBand flare out! I could see it in the picture, but didn’t spot it in person! I have no idea why I broke my own THUMB! A BB (and all edgings) need to be slightly smaller than what they are edging so they CONTROL the edge itself.


Dog is in the Details

Other Finishing FUN!

— I always slip the first stitch of the row of a band for a smooth edge

— on the Buttonband, on the last bind-off row, on a RS row, I bind-off all stitches knitwise for a cool, little chain edging on the band. This is firm and controls the roll…

— on the neckline, I started out with needles that were two sizes smaller than the body needles. Half-way through, I switched to three sizes down from the body; on the last two rows, I used a needle 4 sizes down. This gave me a nice sublte curve of its own with no pesky decreasing – which is always hard to do on a ribbed section.

14 Replies to “Thursday, September 2, 2004”

  5. That neckline turned out really nice and smooth. Thanks for the finishing tips – I may have a chance to try some of them soon myself.

  6. thank you thank you thank you! i think you’ve solved the problem i’ve been having with edgings. :)
    your scoop du jour looks great!

  7. Always love your designs. Thanks for all the tips you share. I’m a bit confused with your rule of thumb. If you rounded up to 5 from your fraction of 4.5 sts. where does the subracting one come in? > I feel dense but I’d really like to understand.

  8. Wow, I hope that I can get to a point with my knitting where I have your sense of intuition with it. Your tip for the collar is just so clever.

    I do have a questions on your rule of thumb, though. You said you had 4.5 st/in, and that you round the number up (to 5) then subtract 1. Wouldn’t that make it 4 stitches for every 5 or am I just a little confused?

  9. Great tips!

    I can figure out how you get the ‘pickup 5’, but don’t understand how you got the ‘per 6 rows’.

    I really like the way you decrease along the neck edge. I usually make the decrease one (sometimes 2) stitch in, and then either k2tog, or the slip/knit/slip thing depending on whether its the left or right side. As a result I get this line of knit stitches following the curve. I’d like to try the way you do it. Grovel, grovel, how the h%&k do you do it?

    Linda B.

  10. Add me to the list of people who don’t quite understand your rule of thumb. (I tried. I really, really tried.) Whatever it is though, it works – the edging (and the whole sweater) look fabulous!

  11. UHmmmm, maybe I should’ve called what I wrote earlier *Rule of Dumb* –

    I’ve re-written it on the page…

    Looks like the coffee hadn’t quite kicked in at 6am when I wrote that this morning – :)

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