Easy Eyelet Yoke Sweater is past the sleeve division! I made the same modification as last time – immediately knitting the sleeve cuffs so I could keep the colours aligned with the body stripes. Now it’s just the long stockinette body slog… which I’ll be doing at the cricket tomorrow! 🧶 🏏
New (reclaimed) knitting project! I finished the Sugar Maple sweater (last photo) two years ago but rarely wore it. The style just didn’t suit me. So a couple weeks ago I unraveled the whole thing, winding it into a cake as I went. Then I used my swift to turn the ball into a hank that I then washed and dried to remove some of the kinks. I’ve now rewound into a cake and I’m knitting another Easy Eyelet Yoke Lite, a style that I know I will wear. The yarn is @hobbii_yarn Twister, a great choice for warm places like Sydney! 🧶 #knitting
A closeup of the Autumn Gingko Leaves scarf… ❤️🍂🍃 #knitting
Blocking. Now that it’s opened up, you can really see why the pattern is called “Ginkgo Leaves”. 🍃🍂 #knitting
One of the hardest skills for new knitters to master is recognising and fixing errors. If you catch something quickly, you may be able to just un-knit (or “tink“) the last few stitches and fix it. But if you spot it a few rows later and you can’t face the thought of tinking all those stitches, you’ve really only got a few options: you can pull the needle out and rip several rows, but then you’ve got to pick all the live stitches back up. This can take a while, and depending on how thick/thin and fuzzy/smooth your yarn is it can be a real chore. (If you’re knitting anything complicated like lace where you have a high change of screwing something up, it’s highly recommended to put in lifelines every so often.) The other commonly used option is the nuclear one – ripping out the whole project and starting over. If you’re near the beginning, this may well be the fastest method.
But there is another way. Let me illustrate.
I spent a big chunk of hours yesterday working on a baby sweater. The body is stocking stitch, and then the top half has a pattern with columns of cables and garter stitch motifs. Here’s the photo I took at the end of the day:
When I was looking at the photo, I suddenly realised I’d screwed up one row of the pattern. Can you spot the mistake? Here I’ve isolated the two diamond motifs, outlined by the yellow and red stitch markers:
Even if you’re not a knitter, you can probably spot that they don’t match. I’ve somehow missed 4 purl stitches right through the middle of the motif on the right, which include the points at either side of the diamond.
The error occurred like 8 rows back, and while this yarn (Morris & Sons Empire 8ply in Aquamarine) would be relatively easy to pick up if I frogged those rows, reknitting the motifs would be a pain… and I’d be just as likely* to make a mistake again. So I decided instead to use the surgical method of dropping just the columns of stitches with the missing purls to correct them.
I don’t think this technique has a pithy name like tinking or frogging, but it’s often called “laddering down”. To illustrate, I’ve fixed 3 out of the 4 missing purls already and this photo shows me ready to correct the last one, the missing point of the diamond on the left. I’ve highlighted it in yellow. That knit stitch (looks like a V) should be a purl (looks like a horizontal bump). I’ve also shuffled my stitches around so that the column of stitches with the error is at the end of my left needle.
Now it’s time to drop that stitch and allow it to “ladder down” to the spot of the error. (It’s called laddering because each row you undo leaves a horizontal bar.) This wool likes to stick to itself, so I encouraged it where needed with the use of a spare needle.
And here it is, down to the spot of the error. I’ve caught the live stitch that needs to be fixed with a crochet hook.
Now it’s just a matter of changing this knit to a purl, and then working my way back up the ladder again. For each stitch, you pull the lowest rung of the ladder through the current live stitch. For knits, you go in from the front and pull the ladder through from the back. For purls, you come in through the back and pull the ladder through from the front. You can use spare needles for this, but a crochet hook makes it really fast. (The photo below looks like I’m about to knit the stitch, but rest assured I moved the hook around to purl instead.)
Here it is halfway along, showing the corrected purl and then the column of knit stitches above:
I made a short video showing the last couple stitches:
And here’s the completed motif after the repairs:
The only tricky bits are making sure you don’t drop down too many rows, and ensuring you don’t skip any rungs of the ladder on your way back up. I’ve even used this method to fix miscrossed cables! (Just drop down all the cable stitches, catch the live stitches on a spare needle, rearrange them correctly for the cross, and then ladder each one back up.) This technique can result in some wonky tension either side of the repaired column of stitches, but I find that a couple tugs on the work will fix it (and it’ll resolve itself during blocking anyway).
Much faster than tinking or frogging!
* The reason I made the mistake is that the damn pattern is an older one and it’s written out row-by-row without a chart. A chart would have taken up way less space and allow me to visually check for errors must easier. 😠 But this is something I’ve ranted about in the past…
I think these socks win the prize for the longest time from start to finish, and they probably also set a record for the number of times I frogged and restarted! My initial cast-on was way back in April 2021 – back when I was still livestreaming my knitting – and I finally handed them over to the Snook yesterday.
The yarn is Drover Self-Striping from Colagirl Collective that I bought from Convent & Chapel many years ago. I can’t find any record of the colorway name or number, but the lime/grey/black reminded me of Minecraft. My original plan was to do the Undulating Rib socks, but I realised after casting on that it was fighting with the self-striping. So eventually I frogged them and started over. I settled on a simple broken-rib pattern, which gave a sort of pixelation effect and kept me from being too bored. :
Row 1: *K2, P2* repeat to end
Row 2 & 4: Knit
Row 3: *P2, K2* repeat to end
I knitted them toe-up with a circular needle (using the Magic Loop technique). Normally I prefer to knit both at the same time, but the wool was pre-balled and I had no way to access the other end. That meant I had to knit them one-at-a-time, and of course I lost my notes during the long gap after finishing the first one. It was only really an issue on the heel, which I decided to knit using a traditional gusset and heel flap (but in reverse). I suspect that my numbers are slightly different on the two of them, but I was already knitting these as fairly baggy house socks so I figure a few stitches either way doesn’t really matter.
The Snook was pretty happy to receive these, as the weather has turned decidedly Autumnal and the floors are feeling a bit cool in the mornings!
A hot, sunny summer’s day! I rode my bike over to the @knittersguildnsw meeting, then across Alexandria Park and stopped to watch a bit of the cricket. Then over to @bracketbrewing to meet the Snook for a cheeky beer, before finishing up at the @thealex_hotel for lunch. ☀️🚴♀️🍻 (2023 beer garden count: 1!)
Huh. I just learned a new knitting technique from Reddit, of all places! Rather than weaving in all the ends from your fairisle colour changes, you leave them long and then you essentially French braid them down the seam on the inside.
What the video doesn’t show is what happens at the end. Presumably you have some length of braid from your last few changes, and you… what? Put a rubber band on the end and have it hanging outside your sleeve? 😂 I’m guessing it’s something like: “fold it back on itself and weave the last few bits back into the braid,” but it’s annoying that they didn’t cover that bit.
I actually did finish a couple long-gestating knitting projects in 2021! Above you can see the Snook modelling his new cabled v-neck vest. He’s decided in recent years that he likes knitted vests, as he can still wear a jacket over them and not be too warm. The wool is Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed from a packet that I bought in a Knitters Guild destash many years ago. It’s wonderfully soft and squooshy, and I knew it wouldn’t make him itch. (The colour is 419 Butternut, but to me it looks more like a golden cookie or a teddy bear.) The pattern is called Dr. G’s Memory Vest, and it was designed as a tribute to someone who suffered from dementia. I modified the pattern to be knitted in the round from the bottom up, and I worked on it off-and-on throughout the year. I also tweaked the length slightly as the Snook has a long torso. Doesn’t it look good against a blue shirt? More details over on Ravelry.
The other project I finished was the Digger Jacket. I actually started this project years ago when my cousin had her first child back in the US. I severely underestimated how quickly I can knit complicated intarsia though (or how frustrating dealing with hundreds of ends can be) so it took me a really long time to finish. By the time it was ready for the zipper, she was pregnant with her third son! I brought it to Germany with me so I could finally finish it off, and last month I was lucky enough to get to deliver it to her in the US. Obviously it’s a bit big for the little one right now, but he’ll grow into it. The wool is Morris Estate 8ply and I absolutely love the colours. As always, I tried to minimise sewing up by knitting the fronts and back together on a singular circular needle. The trade-off was that meant I had to knit all four machines at the same time, which got pretty complicated juggling all the different colours. I tried to simplify things a little by using duplicate stitch for the words and a few of the smaller details. I’m really charmed by how it turned out though, and the little one looks so adorable in it! More details on Rav…
I realised recently that, while I’ve been having a lot of fun streaming my knitting on Twitch, I’ve been pretty lax at actually documenting it on Ravelry and the blog. I’ve completed two big projects since I’ve been in Germany, but unless you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you probably haven’t seen them.
I learned about Susan Crawford’s new book Evolution through Twitter last year (there was some kerfuffle about her not being able to advertise it because of the name), and I immediately fell in love with the Lanatus pullover. My version is knitted out of Lana Grossa Cool Wool Fine in a beautiful teal blue and white. It’s knitted from the top down, and my first attempt at the fairisle yoke had to be frogged when I realised I wasn’t spacing the motifs out correctly. It was a fun knit though, and the yoke ended up beautiful. The only real modification I made was to knit the body a fair bit longer because of my height. Slogging through the endless stocking stitch body was a pain after the fun of the yoke, but I’m so happy how it turned out! I love wearing it. The wool is beautifully soft and not itchy at all. I’ve been wearing it over a long-sleeve tee, but I think in spring I could wear it just on its own. More details over on Ravelry…
This one is epic. I can’t remember where I first encountered Rowan’s Orkney by Marie Wallin (probably from Donna since it’s in her queue), but I know I bought the wool at Calico and Ivy’s closing down sale in March 2013 and started knitting the pattern sometime that year. My plan was to knit it as a cardigan, but modify the pattern to be knitted entirely in the round with steeks for the front opening and sleeves. It was looking a bit small as I knitted it, but in a fit of stubbornness and denial I knitted it all the way up to the shoulders before finally accepting that it was never going to fit me comfortably. Then I discovered the Ravelry comments for the pattern, most of which point out that the tension as stated is just really weird for this yarn. Well, crap. In a fit of pique I stuffed it in a bag and shoved it in the naughty corner, and it sat there for the better part of seven years.
In January 2021, I decided that dealing with Orkney was going to be a New Year’s Resolution. I got it out to double check the sizing, hopeful that somehow it had either grown over the years or I had shrunk. I even tried putting it on waste yarn to pull over my head and down to my waist to prove it had way less ease than I’m comfortable wearing. Well, nothing to do but to frog. I frogged the whole thing. The dust on it actually triggered an allergy attack! Then I skeined up all the wool (with the help of the Snook), washed it, dried it, and rewound it into balls. (You can watch the ball winding on YouTube!) Then it was time to start over.
This time I had a think about the garments I actually like wearing. I don’t wear twee little cardigans. So instead I decided to knit it as a pullover. I still wanted to knit it in the round, so I spent some serious time working out the maths so that all the patterns would repeat smoothly all the way around. It turns out that 336 stitches would allow every motif to repeat evenly* and, with my tension, would come out to the size I wanted. It was also close enough to one of the pattern sizes that I could still use the sleeve cap shaping. Therefore I got to work knitting the body in the round over 336 stitches. I started with a larger needle but dropped to a smaller about halfway along, figuring that would give it some shaping and a little extra room around the hips.
*There is a single motif that is 10 stitches wide – a 3-row motif of x’s and diamonds. I added two stitches to it – a little peerie dot in the middle of each gap. That got me to 12, which fits perfectly into 336. Yay!
The only bit of the body that gave me any trouble was the motif across the middle with brown X’s and aqua diamonds on top of a series of camel and red stripes. (See image below.) This motif requires you to juggle THREE colours in a single row. What a pain! I actually tried it out; I’m a pretty experienced fairisle knitter and I have no problem carrying one colour in each hand. But adding a third one in there while avoiding getting them all twisted… was really torturous. So I undid that part and then had a brainwave: I could embroider the aqua bits on afterwards! So I knitted that motif with just two colours per row, leaving off the little aqua diamonds, and then went back afterwards and used duplicate stitch to add them. (This motif also appears on the sleeves, so I did the same thing there.) This is much easier and faster, and you can barely tell the difference!
Once I got to the armholes, I switched to knitting the front and back separately. Of course, this required me to knit flat fairisle, so I had to deal with purl rows. It was tricky and slow going, but I got there. I did the back first because I hadn’t yet decided what the front neckline would be. Rather than follow the pattern’s instructions for a traditional “stairstep” shoulder shaping, I modified the pattern to use short rows and left the stitches live for a three-needle bind off.
For the front, I decided to go with a vee neck. (Partly this was driven by the fact that I do find Rowan Felted Tweed a bit itchy, and I didn’t want it right up against my neck.) I found a vee-neck pattern in a similar weight wool and size, and used that schematic and shaping to work out when to start the vee. I basically did a decrease on every right-side row until the point where the front shoulder width matched the back. Again, I did the short-row shaping rather than cast off stitches, and I then joined the front to the back with a three-needle bind off. Here’s what it looked like at that point…
Then I had to decide sleeves. Because of the itchiness factor, I knew I’d be wearing this over a long sleeve tee so I thought short sleeves might be cute. The plan was to use the sleeve cap shaping from the pattern and then just add on a little extra length for the ribbed cuff. However, I ended up having to go through several iterations to modify this. Again, the weird tension of the original pattern meant that my sleeve cap was too short for the sleeve opening, so I reworked it a few times to add extra rows for the necessary height. I also ended up increasing the number of stitches to 108. I also tried to center the larger motifs on the sleeves so it would look nicer. Once I finally got a version that fit, I pinned it onto the garment and realised I had another problem…
The sleeves use the same motifs as the body, but knitted in different colourways. When I pinned on my sleeve, I realised that they were too close, with a given motif on the sleeve almost next to the same motif on the body. I figured that for the contrast to work, it really needed to look more deliberate. So I again frogged the sleeve and started over, this time starting with a different point on the chart so that they didn’t line up so closely. Much better!
The last bit of knitting was the corrugated ribbing neckline. I realised as I was picking up stitches that most patterns and tutorials for a centered decrease vee-neck ribbing are for 1×1 rib rather than 2×2. I couldn’t find any examples of it, so I had to figure it out on my own. I think it looks pretty good in the end!
After a LOT of weaving in (and duplicate stitch embroidery on those 3-colour row motifs), I gave all three pieces a wash and a gentle block. Then I sewed on the sleeves and wove in the final ends. It’s done! Nearly eight years after I started… ❤️ Full details over on Ravelry.
