a pocket in lace? ...

Here I am, with the radio on, listening to a little Chris Stapleton singing about broken halos (why am I identifying with that?), and I’m at the point where I am either committing to this pocket thing or not. The method I use would be to put a manual row of ravel cord for the pocket opening only, so like 30 stitches in the middle of the row, but you need to be sure you have a clean row of stockinette below that and then again above that to be able to pick up the stitches and add the actual pocket patch and the band to finish it off  later. With regular patterning, like tuck, fairisle, slip or whatever, that just means to bring out those needles only that you want the stockinette on, knit the row and the machine will continue the patterning on either side - bringing the needles out cancels the patterning and produces stockinette only. But this is lace and you cannot bring the needles out as they would then automatically transfer on the next row and you’re screwed!

hand knit ravel cord

hold sts for later

You’ve never heard me say this and probably never will again, but it would be easier on a brother machine! Hah! I said it! Yes, on a brother machine, the lace carriage transfers only and in the space where you want the pocket opening marked with stockinette you would simply un-select those needles, pushing them back to B position and then you would get the desired stockinette. But, I’m using my beloved Silver Reed lace carriage which transfers and knits all in one pass so that does not apply. Now, I could get out the instruction manual and find extra point cams and set this up as a single motif thing but by the time I do that (and it would likely mean re-reading the row, yada, yada, yada), I’ve decided the easiest thing to do is simply lace knit the row and then un-transfer the few stitches in that 30 row space. I did that and then hand knit the ravel cord from #23-52, knit a lace row, unknit and un-transfer only the few lace stitches, reforming them to stockinette and then just continued. The actual pocket is added later.

first pick up, row below top of ravel cord

second pick up

both attached, inside garment

Before getting to this point, I made the patches (ewrap bottom edge, knit 52 rows and take off on waste, reserving a tail of main yarn to cast off with later) and the pocket tops/bands, each/both 32 needles wide so there would be an extra stitch on each side of both the patch and the band, compared to the opening. For the bands, I made the hem to just after the first set of racks is done and then transferred it all up to the main bed, knit a row of stockinette, and then an RTR (remove, turn, rehang) and another row (this will make a nice garter stitch row that shows on the outside, making a nice dividing line between the band and the lace fabric),then took it off again on the small piece of the garter bar, reserving a tail of yarn about 4 times the width that should be enough to do the attach and cast-off without adding a couple more ends to darn in. What you want to happen is to add the open stitches of the band to the row of stockinette below the ravel cord and cast it off, add the open stitches of the patch to the row above the ravel cord and cast those off. Then, if done correctly, you pull out the ravel cord to open the pocket! Ta-da! The band folds up to the front on the bottom of the opening and the patch is hanging behind with the top nicely covering everything – all you need to do now is catch-stitch the outside edges of the patch onto the back of the fabric as neatly as possible…OMG! I feel like a rocket scientist! ;-o   P.S. if you want the handout with the method for your techniques folder, email me! knitwords@shaw.ca

all done, inside

outside, finished