finishing details...

Attach the band to hood: bring out the needles, same number as the ribbed band (100 stitches). The hood edge has 120 sts so decrease 20 sts (100 divided by 20 is 5) which means you want to double up on every 5th needle as you are hanging. What I do to make it easy is go across the needle bed and bring every 5th needle slightly forward (start this on the 3rd needle from the right edge so you don’t have doubled sts at either end) and then using the 3-prong tool, hang 3 sts.

Pick up the next 3 sts and double up on the needle at right that already has one stitch. Pick up next 3 sts and hang on new needles. Continue across the row, doubling on every second pick up and it will work out perfectly! Remove the waste yarn, take the ribbed band, turn it and hang it stitch for stitch. Pull the band sts through the hood edge, manually knit loose row and chain off. Graft the back seam and try it on. Should be good to go.
Seam all the rest of the poncho and then pin the hood in place and try it on again just to be sure – the hood has to be deep enough from the top of the head to the neckline so it doesn’t hold the garment up off the shoulders and the front opening should be big enough for your face and most

important, the neck opening has to be large enough for the head to fit through! If any of these are compromised, you need to make another hood, fixing the issues but I’m good to go!  
You could stitch this in by hand but who’s kidding who? I’m doing it on the LK! Because it is a circle, start at one end and do it in sections.  There are no open stitches, it’s all closed edge on both pieces. I want the seam to be on the inside, so am putting right sides together, hanging the body first, right side facing me and then the hood piece, wrong facing. I leave it all pinned together from the try-on and just un-pin the section I’m working on.
To keep track that each side will be the same, start off figuring out how many needles for the entire neckline, so hold the centre back at 0, pull the centre front to the right – I got 55 needles for half the neckline. It’s my experience that the back-neck area of any garment should be pulled in slightly and the width of the back neck was 20 sts half plus the 3 cm/1 inch drop and I want to reduce that width slightly,

so I hang it over 20-0-20 needles. Put the shoulder seam at #21 right and then stretch out the front neck to the centre of the garment and hang the edge, half the outside edge stitch. This will likely be a bit less than the original 55, mine was at #50. Now, hang the hood section, from the centre front to the first shoulder.

Manually knit fairly loose sts – not quite all the way back to ‘B’ but close (just doing a single row to join and cast-off all in one – no need for the extra bulk of a joining row and casting off!) - to the shoulder and then chain those off except the last one. Hang the back neck, over to the opposite shoulder (#20 left), and then the hood. On this section, for the 16-0-16 section, the loose stitch for the chain cast-off is a little smaller to further draw in the back neck. Finish off the other side. Throw it over your head to make sure all is still good and breathe a huge sigh of relief!
Got ‘er done with still plenty of wearing days left for this season!
Hope this all makes sense!

rib recap...

 

1X1 rib, E4N std gauge

I’m making the cuffs for the poncho (1X1 rib made on the standard gauge ribber). If I hold the edge for the cuff up to the LK150, it appears that 20-0-20 stitches are needed. To set this up on the standard gauge, I am using 40-0-40 needles, selecting every 4th needle on the main bed and then the alternate 4th needles on the rib bed. The cuff

row of stockinette after rib
 

ribbing should be tighter than what is on the hem band so am doing it at T8/8 for 20 rows. Again, transfer up to the main bed and it is every other needle for a row of stockinette before waste yarn. TIP, before cutting, measure off the main yarn, 4 times the width of needles in work to have enough for the cast-off row on the LK! Two less ends to darn in! Ditto for the face band and for the grafted seam at the back of the hood.

sleeve edge on LK
 

To attach, hang the sleeve edge of the poncho on the LK150, knit/right side facing you. Turn the band and hang stitches in the hooks of the needles.

hang cuff

Put the garment part behind the latches, with the stitches still in the hooks. Close the latches and push back on needle butts to pull that row through the closed edge to join the pieces. Knit loose row and chain off!

loose row for cast-off

finished cuff with std gauge selector

For the hood, I’m using the same schematic as the Oxymoron Cardi which was almost the same as Milky Way (but a little deeper and I had grafted the back seam because it laid flatter and neater)  which was from Lacy in Red, KW#40, http://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/07/couldnt-help-it.html. Love the hood on Oxy (I know I didn’t show you, but I will soon, promise!), fits just right and really looks nice up or down and I think it will be just right for the poncho.

mylar  - follow red line

This hood is knit from the face edge (in one piece), back to the back of the head and the side edges are shaped with decreases to fit to the neckline. The stitch gauge tells me to have 60-0-60 sts (120 total) for the full width of the hood and I want to have a ribbed edge on the front of the hood. To do it in one piece on the standard gauge ribber, I can only get 100 sts total which is fine because I used a few less stitches for the front band on the Oxy hood and it works great, snugs the open edge of the hood in nicely, especially when it is laying over your back. 

hood before

Here, I made the hood band first, T10/10, 10 rows, but I will knit the hood on the LK150 starting with waste yarn. The band will be attached later because it will be easier to rehang the hood edge, gathering in the extra stitches evenly spaced rather than trying to hang the ribbed band and increasing across for the extra stitches! Attach the front face band before grafting the back of the hood or it won't open up enough to stretch across for the band. Just sayin'...



yeah, i cheated....

Don't hate me because I’m more than a one-machine-pony! heh-heh! I do like my LK150, but does that mean that I have to sit there and hand-latch every other stitch for 10 rows of 1X1 rib times 4? Hell no!

On this poncho – I’m calling it the Thunder Bay Poncho because we need more that just a wide scarf that drapes the shoulders – this one also swaddles your butt and keeps your arms and sides warm, making it good for even a warm-ish winter day! Anyway, the original had narrow stockinette bands all round which was fine, but on my tweedy one, 1 did change those to 1X1 rib and even though it was close to 20 years ago, I do vaguely remember knitting the bands on the standard gauge ribber and then rehanging it on the LK150. If it makes you feel better, I did have to make the first one now only about four times before I got it right. I needed 80 stitches for the bottom so without thinking it through all the way, I set up and knit 80-0-80 sts in 1X1 rib at T10 on the standard gauge. Transferred up and knit a row which turned out to be much stiffer than I thought it should be but I reasoned that I was using DK weight on the 4.5mm machine...took it off and brought it over to the LK and saw that I had twice as many stitches as needed but also, it wouldn’t be wide enough if it was only 40-0-40 needles. Probably because I have been doing a lot of tuck ribbing previous to this, I felt a lightbulb go on and figured all I’d need to do was add tuck on the rib bed because that widens things out. Set up 1X1 rib on 40-0-40 needles, adding in tuck after the cast-on. Proceeded to get about 5 rows done before admitting defeat on that process. As I pried that off the machine, another bulb went on and I realized it should be Every-Other-Needle 1X1 rib which means every 4th needle in work on the main bed and than the alternate every 4th needle on the rib bed!
But, I’m still ahead of the game! Made all four bottom bands, starting with the manual wrap cast-on to make sure it was all stretchy enough, T10/10, knit 10 rows, carefully watching that every stitch knit through properly, transferred up to the main bed, knit a row of stockinette which is now every other needle in work and then several rows of waste yarn. Take the band, turn it and hang on the LK150, on every needle, so the plain row becomes a nice purl stitch ridge before beginning the stockinette.
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving and may  we all be thankful for pumpkin! 

ponchomania...

I’ve had several enquiries about poncho patterns lately. And it begs the question, what exactly, is a poncho? Is it a blanket, a shawl, a wrap? Mostly, I’ve always thought of a poncho as being a thing that goes over your head and covers up easily, mostly worn for warmth. Back in the day it was in late winter way back when, I made this thing called It’s a Wrap. Made on the LK150, the pattern was in the Spring 1999, Knitwords No.8 and the caption read:
Call it a poncho, cape or cloak! Whatever, it’s lovely to wear and easy to knit! A great yarn (alpaca/wool), knit in stockinette, really wide, a long-sloped shoulder with a small cuff to create a ‘sleeve’ and a vee neck opening filled in with another piece of stockinette collar. One size fits all!

We had a great time at the photoshoot with it and I wore it a few times after then, sister Marnie fell in love with it and asked for it. Of course, I gave it to her but I kind of missed it.
I re-engineered it to delete some of the volume at the sides, re-knit it using a tweedy DK yarn and I’ve been wearing it off and on for the past almost 20 years, both spring and fall. When I got the first query about a poncho pattern, I dearly wanted to remake this one again and add a hood – I’ve already admitted to being a hoodie junkie – but because this one is black and goes with virtually everything, I didn’t feel justified in making a new one for myself. My d-i-l was over the other day and I asked her if she’d like a poncho – she was thrilled, tried mine one, picked out a colour and timidly asked if she could have a hood on hers!

is it synchronicity? ...

or déjà vu? Last week I got an email from Stephanie telling me that someone (Pamela) had posted a photo of a poncho she had made from Winter 2004 Knitwords (means nothing to me, I go by the issue number which was #31) on Facebook Plastic Midgauge Machines KAL group and she wondered if the pattern was still available and how she could get it. I am Facebook-challenged, I admit it!. She sent me the link and I could see that the poncho in question was one I had made, called Tweed Angel. The funny/strange thing about it was the fact that the poncho was plated, and I was just working on a blogpost

talking about plating, whether to do it or not. That particular poncho is made on the LK150 and one of the really awesome features of that machine is plating - I did a garment in Knit'nStyle, Dec 2013, #188 that was a sideways Swing Jacket, along with a good article (I thought anyway) explaining plating, why and why not. Back to Tweed Angel, it is actually two reverse-shortrowed triangles that are grafted together, leaving an opening for the neckline. We showed it as a sideways knit, which made sense to me because the wider portion fits better over the arms and then the slash neck opening becomes a vee neck look.

I dug out the pattern, set it up as a pdf for those who might wish to purchase and realized there were a few things missing from the original pattern – how to finish the neckline and how to wear it. I re-knit it to make sure I hadn’t missed anything else, plating a strand of cashmere with a finer tweed wool that I had. It turned out pretty nice, but I knew I didn’t have enough yarn for the fringe, so I’ve added one of my 1X1 tuck trims.

Hold piece evenly up to needle bed, stretching very slightly, to determine number of stitches. Purl side facing, hang each end. Hang back half of outside row on every other needle, missing the odd one every so often and then fill in opposite needles with front half of outside stitch. I used 70-0-70 ns. (Single Crochet-Look Tuck Edge from The Handbook  for Manual Machine Knitters by MAO)

See my old blogpost  https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-slip-cord-experiments.html for more options on using this shortrowed triangle. P.S. I would have posted a link to this on that Facebook page, but I couldn't figure it out! ;-)