Even though a tone-deaf squawking bird drilled my brain into quickening at 4:30 am, there’s lots of smiles going round this morning at Chez Chic.
I’m at that happy point in top down knitting where the Body section is started and the Yoke is finished on the Cerisara I’m knitting for myself. That always signals to me that I’m almost finished with the garment! Which, if truth be told, is so naively optimistic, since this IS a cardigan, and There Will Be Sleeves…
(I know from already making this, that the sleeves are très cool, though!)
Meanwhile, a new skill has been learned.
During the Mondo Cable Class, while demonstrating how to join the sweater segments into the Body portion of the garment, I slipped stitches held on scrap yarn onto the working needle. My technique was to gradually release a few stitches from their “holder” by simple pulling the yarn out freeing about 5 stitches at a time, then slipping those stitches to the waiting needle tip.
The lovely Lisa asked why one couldn’t just slip the working needle through the middle of the stitches with the Scrap Yarn still up in there? Indeed!!! Start a revolution!
Here you see the held stitches on the green strand of yarn on the left, with the underarm stitches cast on, on the right:
There is enough room to accomodate both the needle and the Scrap Yarn for an Easy & Quick stitch replacement. When all the stitches are back on the needle VOILA! Just pull out the Scrap Yarn and carry on!
Just a few more minutes, and I’m ready to rock the lower half of my sweater!
Thanks Lisa — such a great idea!
I have always done it the way Lisa suggested, but I always use a much thinner yarn as a stitch holder. I have been only knitting for a couple of years and the thought of hanging stitches freaked me out in the beginning, so I just kept the yarn in until I had transferred all of the stitches. I may try your original way now with thicker yarn!
I usually knit a row or round or so, then take out the yarn.
Really great idea. I love this pattern, too.
Thin cotton yarn (crochet cotton) works really well as it doesn’t shed on your WIP. I’ve also used silk tape.
I actually leave the yarn in until I am done with the sweater. That way if I have any problems and have to rip back to the beginning of the sleeves the stitches are still on the waste yarn.
Another thing I do when cabling is just knit off of the cable needle and don’t slip them back on my main needles. Not sure if you do this already but seams like a similar thing to me.
When I need to slip stitches off the working needles to be held for later I slip them onto a smaller but longer circular needle. Then I just knit the stitches off that needle back onto the working needle. It saves the step of slipping them back on the working needle before resuming knitting. Don’t know if this is proper but it works for me!
Great tips!
One of the ladies in the Mondo Cable class did her provisional cast on right over a circular needle, which then acted as the stitch holder.