that knot...

In the original instructions for that #34 ‘chained picot knot’, there were 2 extra needles chained over and dropped to make the ‘knot’. Looking at my original swatch, because this top is more of a tunic, I thought it might look nicer with a bigger knot, so added an extra needle/stitch to the mix and I like it. Be sure to add a little extra to the amount pulled off for the double-stranded chain – you really wouldn’t want to run out of that extra strand before the end on this one! Notice I also added that chained line above the transferred stitches that make the scallop, to divide the trim from the tuck pattern – I think of this as a row of top-stitching to add an extra defining detail and so happy with that too!

Oh man, I’m such a greedy little thing! Joined the shoulders, finished the neck and slipped it on and this is too cute! So what if it’s a little big? An oversized sleeveless tunic is perfect for this way-too-hot weather! And I love the colour! Quickly decide she would prefer a short sleeve, work those up and get them on before I can really fall in love with this!

in the name of research...

Just wanted to let you know I’m ok! Summer finally came so it’s cutting into my production time a bit but I'm still knitting away!

Number 13 is done except for the final seaming.I was going to call this a short-sleeved T-shirt, but a little research told me it wasn’t a Tee because of the set-in sleeve. What I did was start making this for baby sister Marnie and after thinking about it while knitting the front and back, I decided she would likely prefer a short sleeve instead of the sleeveless version. No problem! I’m using that one-row-tuck technique again, mostly because I need a little extra width and guess what? MAO did a pattern, Body Basic, using the 1RT/WCD, with a short sleeve back in Knitwords 42, Autumn'07

Tuck stitch pumps up the volume. Take a thin yarn with a stockinette gauge of 9 sts per inch and add tuck to get 7.5 sts per inch and you get a much wider fabric, increasing the size range. Knit side as right side has subtle stitch pattern for a smooth fabric face. Basic fitted top, with either vee or round neck, short, set-in sleeve, circular bands. No-ribber hems also given.
And it’s sized up to a finished hip of 52 inches! What could be easier?

I only had to change it a bit - made an A-line instead of the shaped version, added some shortrows just above the hem to round out the A-line and used another variation of that 8-stitch repeat hand-transferred trim.
On the turquoise one, I did it as the book should have said, with the multi-strand ewrap and the tuck-stitch dividing line. For Thirteen, I used the chained cast-on and dividing line from #15 (mixing the 2 edges from my last post) and it looks great!
No need to get bored here!
Stay safe! Be kind! Be positive! Knit!

new-to-me machine...

You might have been able to read between the lines and see that I was in a pickle – my beloved SK580 that I purchased brand new back in 1989 – yeah, like 30 years ago! and it has like the equivalent of a hundred thousand million miles on it, gave up the ghost. Tried everything I could think of but, finally, reality sucks! What to do? what to do? I could just continue knitting stockinette and stripes and the lace carriage still works but I will really miss that one-row-tuck technique that I used for the E Fisher knockoff and for many other lightweight garments.
https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/06/fingers-crossed.html

Made some calls and there is no cheap fix, but long-story short, finally settled on a used SK840 which is the same machine as mine, without the built-in electronics. I thought what that means is I have to go back to knitting with DesignaKnit for patterning, I think and, that means purchasing a new cable…
I’ll be honest here. Before I left, in one last attempt to figure out what was wrong, I actually knit a swatch (you hear that, I did make a swatch!) for my own E Fisher knockoff (Wool Crepe Deluxe in Tacoma – love the fabric and the colours, sort of camo-ish), everything worked fine. I made the sleeves (no longstitch, just main bed patterning), everything worked fine. When I set up to knit the Back, and engaged the rib bed, nada! Tried that several times, ate half a jar of peanut butter. Changed up and was going to use different edgings that did not require the rib bed. Several more attempts, the rest of the PB, and had to face the fact the carriage was dead.
Back to yesterday and I have this ‘new’ machine. My mind is telling me that the 840 carriage will work on my old 580 bed but I can’t find anything in print that says that. I reasoned that the LC580 lace carriage works on both beds so why would the knit carriages not be interchangeable.


Plug your nose and jump in! That’s what I did. Rather than take the time to dismantle the whole 580, I just took the ‘new’ carriage, plugged it into the 580 bed and began knitting! It worked! OMGG! Got both the Back and Front made, no problem! I had briefly considered making a new swatch but in the excitement, tossed caution to the wind! As I was putting the pieces altogether, it did seem a tad bigger than I thought but oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained…it’s knitting in pattern! So happy!

geek alert...

technical ingredients follow, this is not just reading entertainment!
Having printed out a page of the Side Steps pattern – I thought it might be prudent to note any changes I made because you never know – I could forget what I did by the time I may get around to trying again? Who knows? But did I read it? no! of course not! I always think I know what I’m doing! The machine was set up for double bed work and as I put my hand on the carriage, I felt so good because it dawned on me, I was actually going to be knitting single bed, except for the 5 stitches at the hem side that would be the longstitch facing there. Those could be added next, but I wanted a plain row of stockinette for the initial row. Almost as though you were watching, I quickly changed to the knit arm as if I intended to do that all along and cast-on – I need two sections here, one for the sleeve stitches and the rest for the side seam. Duh! how about some weight, particularly as I would be using the double bed. I quit and wrote yesterday’s story – see what I mean? any excuse!
Fresh this morning, here I am at the machine even before my workout (I can do that anytime). Just to refresh your memory (and mine but I can use you as the excuse!) the one-row-tuck is set up so every other row is plain and that’s when we want the longstitch to do the work on the rib bed so there are clean stitches opposite, no tucks on the main bed, that would interfere with making neat stitches on every other row on the rib bed, right? Right!
Cast on each section separately, using the single bed ribber comb method, https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-just-have-to-tell-you-i-finally.html
here’s how I did it: Bring out the needles you want, every other needle only. If using the knit carriage, obviously you don’t have the ribber up. If the ribber arm is on, you need to have the ribber engaged. With waste yarn, T10 (as loose as you can get), knit one row. Move the carriage out of the way (drop the rib bed to make it easier), take the ribber comb, with the wire out and insert it from below, same way as always, poking the fingers between the sinker loops. When it is successfully in there, with the sinker loops on your side of the prongs, tip the bottom of the comb back so the prongs come forward, allowing you to insert the wire, without catching the needles or sinker posts. Drop the comb. It falls below everything. Bring all needles to work, set stitch size to main tension, and knit 10-12 rows.

 

What I did this time: using the half width comb for the side seam portion (#75-0-10 ns) first, and then the small comb for the sleeve section (#11-60 ns) but leave everything between/behind the beds (add a row of ravel cord on each section to make it easier when rehanging later). With the carriage at the left, T8, stockinette, knit 1 row. Change to rib arm (read/program your row here) and add 5 sts at left on ribber for the facing, end needle on ribber (less than my usual seven because that’s what E Fisher did). Fingers crossed – that’s what swatches are for! Set to tuck (you added weights, didn’t you?) and knit row. The rib needles have a loop on them, which is enough to cast them on - don't worry, no one is going to see them anyway and we don't want a difficult, complicated join between the Back and Front! This row was the tuck row. Back at the right side, now, set the ribber to knit those facing stitches only on every other row which in this case is 0-1, same as in Rectangles.

Everything is knitting beautifully, shaping/increasing at right edge for the shoulder slope and life is good! UH-oh, the shortrowed dart/gore is coming up – probably a good time to take a break and get that workout in! ;)

cross knitting...

the action or practise of mixing elements of two separate patterns to create a new design.
I’ve thought about this and thought about it some more and to be honest with you, I’ve let any excuse get in my way of jumping in.

Side Steps

I’m merging two of my previous designs. Side Steps, a sideways- knit cardigan with shortrowed gores that add an A-line shape to the body - the Back and Fronts are knit, shoulders joined and then the sleeve is picked up from open stitches and knit down to the cuff. Why? Because it already has the basic shape I want for that Eileen Fisher knockoff. Easy to turn it into a pullover – just keep knitting across the front instead of leaving an opening that would make it a cardigan.
Then the other pattern is Rectangles from Serial Stuff 4. Why? It’s done with Wool Crepe Deluxe which is the yarn I’m going to use here and it had automatic longstitch facings (that I want to use for the new neckline and hemline) and, bonus, a one-row-tuck stitch pattern that will combat the possible biasing of the loose-tension sideways knit (I have 500g of this Norwegian Slate WCD that am certain with the loose tension will be enough to get this knit without too much running-out-of-yarn stress).

Rectangles

So, you probably figured me out already – I’m going to attempt this without reswatching! Just use the same tensions and numbers as Rectangles and put them into the same basic shape as Side Steps. It’s all there, just getting to it seems the issue. I did Rectangles with DAK for the tuck patterning source but if you recall my DAK laptop computer bit the dust a while back and even though I have a very long cable that will reach across the room to my old desktop, which also has DAK7 on it – that machine has been making weird noises and I think it’s on it last legs. Today, I bit the bullet and just drew the 12X20 stitch pattern onto a mylar – took me at least 10 minutes from printing out the template from my DAK8 laptop (which I’ve never been able to get to work with my SL4 thingy that went from DAK7 to the knitting machine). My other option would be to install DAK7 on the current working laptop, but I’d need a life – another excuse!
This may not work but I’ll have had the joy of sharing it with you! More diversion! :)

fingers crossed...

Just to have something to do while I’m waiting for my CT8 order without a lot of thinking and prep work – let me back up a bit. The ideas, where do they come from?
On the way home from Toronto last week, I was wearing my blue 1Rt Linen Hoodie   http://knitwords.blogspot.com/2017/07/road-trip.html - it was quite warm and I was loving the hoodie. I had a black camisole under it with my light jeans and I felt cool and good. I caught a couple of glimpses in mirrors and liked the sheer-look of the fabric and it struck me I could knit a dress of the same fabric. Last year, for a special family occasion, I had sewn a dress of a sheer fabric with a bias-cut slip in black underneath instead of lining the dress and I could use that under a sheer-knit dress. http://knitwords.blogspot.com/2017/05/cross-training.html  


So, here goes! In KW#46, I did a four-panel fitted dress called Fit ’n Flare – it still fits me! I dug out the schematic/mylar that goes in my wonderful little KR11 knit radar. I have the exact same yarn, Sari – I originally had two cones of the same dye lot and the hoodie hardly took half of one. I had very good notes of the swatches, both unwashed and washed although, in a purging frenzy earlier this year I had trashed the actual swatches. To check the validity of my washed swatch numbers, I measured the actual garment and checked my row count numbers, and yeah, it looks pretty accurate. The only thing I forgot to note was which stitch pattern I had used. Because it is so loosely knit, it’s sort of hard to tell by looking but I feel certain that it was the one from Big Sister, KW#42 – hope that’s not subliminal just because someone mentioned that pattern in an email recently…
Within minutes of deciding to go for it, I was casting on and knitting! It’s a pretty quick knit, even if there are almost 400 rows to each piece and there is shaping happening all over – I got all four pieces knit in one day and even remembered to hang yarn marks at each edge every 10 cm/4 inches – these are long seams and that will be invaluable in making sure the seams are properly matched. Sort of cheating, instead of the fancy double bed hem, I just used a 3-strand ewrap – the fabric is light and floaty and if that doesn’t work, it’s easy enough to rehang and add one of my other edges to it.

dirty laundry...

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a new topic but I‘m sure this is something I haven’t addressed here before. You’ve heard me say I love Wool Crepe Deluxe and if you look in the right place(s), I’ve talked about blocking and steaming garments but what happens to a finished garment that is laundered? It looks like this! Yikes! This is the 1RT raglan in ginger WCD that I made back in October '14,  http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/10/a-bird-in-hand.html
 BTW, this isn’t the first time I washed it, just the first time I thought to tell you about it! ;-) OK, a quick review of how I laundered this. I use Eucalan, in warm water, in my top-loading washer, with just enough water to cover the garment – I don’t mean to brag here but I do several similar-coloured WCD garments at one time, so enough water to submerge all. Note, never button a cardigan – it will stretch out the bands and look awful.
After filling, turn off the machine. Swish the things by hand and let soak for 15-20 minutes. If there were any trouble spots/stains, I pre-treat with straight Eucalan before submerging. After the soak, turn the washer dial to drain/spin, full-on and let the machine do the work to take the water out. Eucalan is a no-rinse product, so that’s all there is to it. Sometimes, I add a little fabric softener in there too but not a lot, just like a teaspoon, maybe. Then I put all the items in the dryer, along with a one-yard piece of percale sheeting that I keep especially for this purpose – it helps to make the sweaters tumble instead of wadding up on the blades of the dryer and has no lint. Set the dryer to ‘air’ only for about 15 minutes – this will take out the wrinkles and because there is no heat, no danger of shrinking.
Then I take the things out, lay them flat on towels and let them air dry overnight.
This one-row-tuck looks bubbly and nasty because of the tuck and it is necessary to re-block it (this happens to lace as well). I do it in sections on my ironing board. For one side of the front, put a longer blocking rod in the edge of the front band and a shorter one through the hem band – make this one go about an inch past the side seam so you don’t get a point happening at the side seam. Pin the rods in place – I don’t use a tape measure for this, just eyeball it, but if you’re uncertain, measure and make sure the second front matches in length.

Don’t worry about the side seam - no need to have a rod there, you can hold/stretch that side with your hand as you are steaming with the other hand. On the neckline, I just put a few extra pins to hold it in place without stretching it out. I’m just using my regular steam iron    http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2012/01/out-of-steam.html  and holding it just above the fabric until I get some steam into the fabric then I actually set it down for a sec to really steam it. After that section is done, walk away and leave it to cool for a minute or two.  Unpin, move to next section, blah-blah-blah. For the sleeves, I use the sleeve board and no rods. Good as new!

final details...

My linen One-Row-Tuck GirlFriend Hoodie is done, awaiting the arrival of the zipper - I did order it from zipperstop.com and it should be here, maybe even before Christmas! I ordered two - a nylon one that was a #3 lightweight and a #5 metal, brass coloured teeth option and I can decide which one will be best - I have not particularly liked the nylon coil ones but I thought maybe it was time to try one again - the lightweight part caught my eye! and they seemed pretty cheap so what the hay? The hoodie's all finished up, washed and dried, bands on, ready for the last thing of machine sewing in the zipper. I opted for slightly narrower hem bands than the original MFH pattern - if you go to 'Just the Flax' (KW#47), I used the same graded-tension bands, same number of stitches, but I started at T10 and went down from there by one dot per row for 7 rows and then back up - yes, there is an extra row (8) on the front side of the band - that helps it to lay flat and not curl over or under. I made the cuff narrower yet, only 5/6 rows, but again same number of stitches as the cast-on edge. I used all the same finishing techniques as the Manfriend Hoodie, with the outside seaming  and the same front edge stabilizing for the zipper installation... I'm so happy with this, I'm looking around to see what else I can use for another one and, even though it's freaking cold here and this is supposed to be warm weather wear, I won't be waiting, I'll wear it as soon as the zipper is in - we do have central heating!

that blessed pocket.....

Did you know that was going to force me to choose? :-) Which side was going to be the right side, I mean! I was thinking I could knit it all and leave it to the last minute to decide if the knit side or the purl side was going to be the public side...but as I was knitting the pocket and shaping the angle at the side, I realized the look of that decreased edge was going to be the deciding factor. The pocket decrease is what I call the 'outlined 4 to 3 full fashioned decrease' and I'm not sure if I've actually put this part in writing before, but when I was doing those 1RT raglans (http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/03/1rt-raglan.html) I thought I did.

I made sure there were no tuck stitches in this 4-stitch edge - I know you know how - you can cancel the patterning by simply bringing those needles out past the latches before the tuck row (but there might be someone else reading this!) (or you could change the point cams - Silver Reed/Studio). This gives that no-finish-finish - a nice plain edge that curls slightly under to the purl side and looks great from the knit side, either on a stockinette fabric or, on this 1RT fabric, without having to add a finishing band or edging later. Hence, unless I want to re-figure the pocket design (NOT!), the knit side is the right side!

I probably don't have to remind you that at the top of the pocket, remember to make sure it ends on a stockinette row that matches the same stockinette row of the front when you take the front off to rehang the pocket top before proceeding. If you're using the garter bar for this, leave the pocket stitches in the hooks - don't push them back before hanging the front (else they will knit through the stitches of the front and you don't want that creating a more distinct line on the top of the pocket), you  want to leave all stitches in the hooks since the next pattern row is tuck and the needles need to be in B position to read that row...
Back, both fronts and pockets done. 298g left. The hood is next in the line-up!

progress report and tweaks....

I have the back done and I'm very encouraged by the fact that the remaining cone looks almost the same! of course, the first thing I do is throw the back on my scale and it weighs in at 116g and that's with the waste yarn at shoulders and bottom edge! I weigh the cone and it has 424g remaining (started with 540g) so that translates to 116g for the back - not going to knitpick here and just call it 120g. I know that I had been weighing individual pieces in the past in certain projects for various reasons. On my second Omega hoodie (http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/12/zipped-off.html)
I kept track - it was wool crepe deluxe (2200 yds per pound as opposed to the 1750 ypp for the linen) and a little different shape, but it will give me an idea of the ratio of the pieces. The back was 124g, back band was 20g, one sleeve with cuff was 92g, the hood was 74g and with band added it was 90g, front with pocket and band was 84g. That all adds up to 586g - take the bands out - they were all 5cm, doubled - that's about 70g for bands, so I'm very confident that I should be able to get this GFH done with pockets and hood, with contrast bands at least.
I've been thinking of you KAL-ing with me (hope springs eternal!)and figured I should add an extra consideration because this wouldn't be in the original MFH/GFH pattern as they are knit in stockinette. With the stitch pattern I am using, you may have noticed the vertical lines - there are actually 3 vertical lines separating the two reversed diamond-ish motifs. So I centred the pattern so the three lines run up the centre of the garment because that will look best but I wanted to remind you of my extra little tweak for patterns with vertical lines. After the underarm shaping is done for your size, or, actually before it is done, check and see where the vertical lines are placing in the shaping. Your finished garment will look much nicer if you can have a line (or two or three) running up the straight edge of the body after the underarm up to the shoulder (hope that makes sense). I did change mine - I made the shoulder wider by 2 stitches in order to have two vertical lines at each edge - of course, if you have chosen a stitch without vertical lines don't worry about this! :-) oh yeah and because of those three vertical lines, I added an extra stitch on one side, at the left for the back and will flip the pattern for the fronts and add the extra stitch at the right...and don't forget the yarn marks every 10 cm....oh, and I found a part cone of WCD leftover from Tobacco Road (KW#53) that is a very close match - instead of the beige linen...

on a mission....

I know you're dying to find out how my swatch went, so just quickly, here it is, hand washed and laid to air dry. I've settled on the T10 swatch - it is still nice and loose and airy - I hope you can see in my photo here, it's fairly see-through-ish and I like that. My final gauge is 23 stitches and 38 rows to 10 cm so quite a bit looser than the washed gauge of 28 sts and 43 rows of Linen Spin at T8 and the yarn will go further this way. I could get really anal and figure out the square inches of the swatch versus the weight and the square inches of the garment and be closer to knowing how far this yarn will take me, but that would take the thrill and suspense out of the project! I know you're going to join me and do this too but I'm just going to forge ahead and work at my own speed and you can catch up or not! BTW, I did also decide to make one size bigger than my original GFH because  looser is better for the summer...oh, and either side can be right side - I'll leave you guessing as to which one I choose!

fingers crossed....

There is a group of knitters in the Maritimes, Nova Scotia actually, and they are doing a Knitalong using an old pattern of mine, called Hood'sUp from Knitwords #22, Autumn 2002 - here's the link I gave you back in 2014 to their initial blogpost:

http://mkkal.blogspot.ca/

When they first asked for my permission back in 2014, they seemed to start off with a bang and then I never heard from them. http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/02/remake-of-remake.html
A couple of weeks ago I got an email titled Adventures in Machine knitting and what do you know? it was those knitters resurfacing and getting going again! They now have a ton of very interesting information about swatching, cleaning your machine etc that you might find interesting. The premise is not everyone has the same machine or yarn etc and they plan to explore options and all sorts.
 Anyway it seems whenever I join a KAL, it never works out or I just get tired of waiting for everyone else to get knitting so I'm going to just pretend to do this on my own and tell you about it here...
You may recall in the past year or more I had become obsessed with hoodies or was it that stitch pattern? ;-) Anyway, I took a hiatus from both and now I ready to go again! I want a light, summer-weight hoodie that I can use as a cover-up so I've inventoried my yarn stash and came up with some options - several lightweight cottons, linen blends and linen. Now, I don't want to have to re-design the original - I want to use the same shape file and the basic techniques, but I don't need to match the gauge exactly because I'll be working with my knit radar and all I have to do is plug in my new stitches and rows. BTW, I'm using my Manfriend Hoodie ( http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2015/06/manfriend-hoodie-pattern.html ) pattern (the girl version because this is for me!) - it is actually the updated 2015 version of Hood's Up. I ruled out the really fine stuff because it would be too complicated and have to totally be redesigned. I took the linens and the biggest problem is the amount required. I did use this yarn twice before - KW#47, Just the Flax (used 460g for the 4th size) and #49, Linen Spin (410g for 2nd size). Both of those, I used one of my one-row-tucks knit fairly loosely. Here's the link to one of my previous posts explaining 1RT: http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/03/1rt-raglan.html
Now, I had initially thought of lace when I decided on a summer-weight GFH but the linen is not conducive to lace carriage (too stiff - it does soften up nicely when washed though)) and I'm really not up to another Battenburg experience!
When I was in Dallas last month, one of the really great questions I got was 'how do I know how much more yarn I will need for swatching, planning etc?' Even though I've settled on this Linen - it's from Silk City/BTYarns/Knit It Now - 100% linen, 1750 yds/lb - I have a cone of brown and one of cilantro, each weighing 540g and I have a leftover 240g of the beige. I'm calling it lightweight because I am knitting it quite loosely - I did one swatch at T9 and another at T10, washed them and will wait for it to dry before deciding which to go with. I swatched with the beige, not wanting to waste the good yarn because I will be lucky (actually, really lucky) to get a hoodie out of one colour. My backup plan is to use a different colour for the bands - brown with beige bands would be fine and I have an almost-exact-colour match in Skinny Majesty for the cilantro linen. So my answer to the question was to use some other yarn to make sure your stitch pattern is good and then hopefully use another colour leftover of the same yarn for the actual swatch and also, have a backup plan in case you still do not have enough (shorter sleeves and optional hood!)