epic...

Seems to me like this project is taking forever or is it just my imagination? My first post on this was almost three and a half weeks ago - that’s a long time for me to have something in the works. You won’t believe this, but summer has got in the way and is continuing! Usually if we get two nice days in a row, we are pretty lucky and we make jokes about summer was on a Tuesday this year. Many times, we have a hard frost around Labour Day but not this year, it’s still really lovely and green and I’m taking advantage of the nice weather! I just had to share this photo – my favourite piece of graffiti ever, spotted at the top of a hill on my favourite local hike!
Finally got both pockets done, put the sleeves in and can try this on to decide further design elements and I just remembered I promised a little note here about the needle arrangement and where to have your underarm shaping end to give the nicest

following the black line

seaming. According to my schematic, I should be decreasing to #50 at the end of the underarm and then continuing straight up to the shoulder line. #50 happens to be a rib stitch and I know that won’t look so great (experience!). The seamline will look best if there are two purl stitches at the edge, one for the seam and one beside the rib stitch so I actually decrease to #48 which gives me the two stitches on the main bed at the edge – you might wonder why I went smaller instead of bigger? Mostly because this being a rib fabric, it is stretchier than just stockinette and I like my shoulder/sleeve to fit nicely, not sloppy – I am going for a close fit here, not like I’m wanting to layer a fleece jacket under this cardigan.
Another note – at the top of the shoulder, I did shortrow about a 1.5 cm slope which is about 5 to 6 rows. Bearing in mind that I’ve said to shortrow on the main bed only (transfer rib stitch up before holding), at the end of the shortrows, everything is on the main bed, I knit a row to get rid of the wraps and remove the shoulder on waste. When rehanging to join the shoulder, on the first piece that is hung, purl side facing, pull out that row of stockinette. Then, after hanging the second side (you can't rip out this row because it's the wrong way), pull this set of stitches through the first/back set to make the join and there will only be one row of stockinette which gives a nice dividing line between the two pieces.
Happy seaming!

 

look at that seam....

Got a few notes for you here:
1. Increasing in rib with an uneven needle arrangement like this – what to do:

l l . l l l . l l l . l l l . l l

. . l . . . l . . . l . . . l . . .

1st step - 2 edge sts

First, when setting up your needle arrangement, add an extra needle at the right side and select from the centre so that you have the same thing at each edge. For the sleeve, which will be increased, I had my edges with two stitches on the main bed at the ends and these remained constant throughout. Meaning that the two edge stitches were moved out one space, bringing a new needle to work on the

2nd step - 3 sts on MB

MB and then the heel stitch of the second stitch from the edge was hung on the now empty third needle from edge to complete the increase – don’t worry about the rib needle until there are three needles past (which means six needles on main bed) and then transfer that main bed stitch down, leaving an empty needle, to continue the existing needle arrangement.  

3rd step - 6 sts on MB

4th - transfer st to RB

In other words, the rib stitch isn’t brought to work until there are six needles in work at the edge on the main bed.

 

2. Shortrowing for sleeve cap: on the row before it is to be ‘held’ or shortrowed, transfer the rib stitch to the empty main bed needle and then put it in hold on the next row as needed. This way you won’t be having held stitches on both beds and when it is time to cast them off, they are already up on the main bed. Oh yeah, that tuck rib stitch, turn it into a real stitch before transferring it, either by manually knitting it through the tuck, or by bring the needle up  (fully out, like D/E but no hold buttons on) on the rib bed on the row before which will cancel the tuck and make it knit.
3. Seaming a purl side fabric on the machine: this seam needs to be flat to open out and look neat. Hang first side, purl side facing you, hanging only half the outside edge stitch. Hang the second side, putting purl sides together – looking at the knit side now, still hanging only half of the edge stitch – this one is a little tougher but its worth the effort to take your time and of course, you’re matching the increases (or yarn marks, if you remembered them – I didn’t put them because I knew I would be able to see that new rib stitch and use it as the match point). After it is all hung and looking good, bring the needles out, leaving the work behind the latches and using one strand of the yarn ( I used the darker one to blend in better), by hand, manually knit a fairly loose row and chain it off. This allows each side to open out flat and make a really nice seam, looking good on both knit side and purl side so the turned back cuff is very neat too. Hope you agree!
More on decreasing and a new pocket technique later!

did you miss me? …

We’ve actually been having summer here in Thunder Bay and I’ve been enjoying it. We had a fabulous time in Minneapolis – the Founder’s Fest was so much fun – thanks to the organizers and attendees, I felt I was with a bunch of close, good friends. Sorry I didn’t get a photo of Milky Way, but I promise when the heat and humidity and bad hair days are over, I will. I debated making it again as there were a few things that bothered me about it, mainly the pocket placement – I should have planned it so the pocket top lined up with the beginning or end of one of the lace stripes but when I mentioned that at the seminar they all thought I was being way too picky but I’m still thinking about it.
My new project is that same 3X1 tuck rib from the hems of Milky Way for another longline cardigan, all in that rib, with the purl side as the outside. I have a small stash of Forsell Naturell, a wool/alpaca blend that I’ve used extensively in the past, but unfortunately, it is long NLA (no longer available) but I have some partial cones that I thought would do, mainly 2 almost full (350g each) cones of lima (medium brown) in the same dyelot. My second choice is pullo (an olive shade), one full cone (400g) and a half cone of a different dyelot. To not waste my good stuff, I made the swatch with a grey and a pale blue that weren’t enough for anything other than swatching – using it double stranded to get the weight I want. The swatch turned out beautiful, so I threaded up the two browns and knit a sleeve.
Done, it weighs 50g which means pretty certain I won’t have enough to make this as long as I want - the fold-back cuff on the sleeve is taking up more than usual and maybe I want a hood…
I may regret this, but making an executive decision, I threaded up one strand of the olive with a brown and knocked out another sleeve. You might ask if I plated the yarn, but no – I didn’t do that with the swatch and it looks fine. Plating, there's a subject for another day!

moving on...

Got DAK7 going with old desktop computer; bought new battery and PE1 is working; received new shipment of CT8 – ordered two cones each of ecru, vanilla and pearl – the colour names don’t help but I’m going to make my long lace cardi hoodie in ecru (should be called cream) – looks exactly the same as pearl, so check your dyelots ( and FYI, vanilla should be named  tan or putty, IMO anyway!).
I told you what I was looking for – textured stripes of lace. For the horizontal stripes I did a couple of variations of eyelets – every other needle on every third row so the eyelets were transferred in opposite directions; every other needle on every fourth row (saw a upright diagonal here and possible biasing); every other needle on every fifth row (meaning sts were transferred in alternate directions, no bias but the lines were too far apart); and every third needle on every third row (didn’t give horizontal lines). Settled on the very first one but it doesn’t hurt to explore all options.
For the vertical lines, I was going for one of my favourites, that faggotting lace stitch (KW#45, Mazatlan) but with a few more plain stitches between the upright stripes – on one, the transfers were going the wrong way, too close together; 4 plain stitches between correct lace faggots and then 3 plain stitches – this one works for me.
On the ribbed  bands, I chose 3X1 rib with tuck every other row on the single stitch on the rib bed for the deep hems and front bands but I beefed up the cast-on by doubling the yarn for the manual wrap only, with success – good to go, so I then made an actual swatch for measuring, cheating a little bit. Instead of making three 60 row swatches, one for each technique, I just did 30 rows of each stitch and then used the green gauge to measure each section twice to add up to what the 60 rows would be – hope you get what I mean. In the end, after washing and drying, the ribbed row gauge is 50 rows to 10 cm; the horizontal eyelet is 45 rows and the vertical line is 40 rows. What I will do is figure out how deep I want each hem/band and multiply it by the 5 rows to 1 cm. For the body parts, average out the two gauges (45 + 40 = 85 divided by 2 = 42.5 to 10 cm) and use 4.25/cm. Stitch gauge is 2.7 st/cm for all three.
Here’s me, making a sleeve…:-)