This yarn is getting tired
It’s been very busy… getting ripped out and re-knit. And again. And yet again. Not ALL the way back to cast-on, but far enough.
After that last time, I decided if I needed to rip it out any more, I was just going tostart with a new ball and keep this yarn as a last-ditch reserve ball lump.
But I think all the false starts have finally paid off. (And that doesn’t even count the swatch-knitting with another ball!) I’m <fingers crossed> happy with the way it’s turning out this time.
So what was the problem? The main issue was trying to figure out how to make a subtle-yet-obvious seamline at the seamless set-in sleeve… uh, line. Yeah, I know. It sounds pretty backwards. But knitters who knit in the round put in fake seams all the time, for a variety of reasons. And most of the time, that’s really simple – just do a purl stitch at that point on every row, and that column of purls will sink into most stitch patterns and almost disappear, leaving a nice little line of demarcation.
The tricky part here is that the body of this sweater is in reverse stockinette. Purls don’t disappear into purls. And knit stitches stand out. A lot. That’s the whole point of using purl stitches (reverse stockinette, seed or moss stitch, garter stitch, whatever) as the background for cables – to make them ‘pop’.
Here’s a lesson that all knitters learn sooner or later: You cannot change the character of knit and purl stitches, no matter how much you will it to happen.
I swatched, trying out lots of different one- and two-stitch options. When I finally had one that looked okay on the swatch, I’d give it a go on the sweater – only to find that it did NOT give me the look I wanted on the real thing. For a little while, I would live in denial, thinking that it would all magically fall into place after the next row or two. I really knew this all along, but guess I just had to prove it to myself. *sigh*
But I WAS going to find a solution. (Our daughters came by their stubbornness naturally. I always told them that stubborn can be a good thing – it all depends on where you turn it.) I looked and asked, but no one I found had a good answer, either.
There is probably a better technique out there somewhere, and I may very well run across it just after finishing this sweater, but I did find a solution to satisfy my requirements:
And the winner is… slip a stitch. Yup, that’s all. To be more descriptive:
Right side row: work across the front to the stitch before the marker; move yarn to back, slip st purlwise. Slip marker, make 1 stitch with backward loop, move yarn to front, continue purling. And so on, slipping the stitch next to the marker on the body side, and increasing a stitch on the sleeve side of the marker.
Wrong side row: knit the slipped stitch and knit through the back loop of the increased stitch.
Only time will tell if it will continue to be the solution, or if I will need to rip again!
Comments
This yarn is getting tired — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>