Kathy has been working on her sweater. Here is her report.
The sleeves were all done, but I wanted to lengthen the body. Ripping back all those stitches, including cables and twisted stitches, was not something I was looking forward to, so it sat in its bag for a week or so. Finally this week, I bit the bullet. Now, I could have just ripped the stitches back and then gone back and carefully tried to put them all back on the needle, but we are talking over 230 stitches. Instead I took a route that takes a little more time up-front, but if done right means you have all the stitches on the needles when you are done ripping.
What I did was thread the needle through the row I wanted to rip back to. I made sure to pick up the right leg of knit stitch so the stitches wouldn’t be twisted. Picking up the purls in the cable was a little trickier and some of those came out twisted, but they were easily fixed. Once all the stitches were on the needle across the row, I just had to pull the yarn to unknit the stitches in the rows before. Then I was ready to keep on knitting.
Since then I have added two more inches to the body length and has now restarted the cable ribbing at the bottom. This sweater could actually be done this week!
I cut the steek last week, and this week was picking up stitches. The pattern calls for picking up ALL the stitches at once, around the neck, down the front, around the waist, up the other side front to the neck.
(A LOT of stitches.) The pattern tells you how many stitches you should have, but I have added two inches to the length. So I have been picking up stitches in the ratios that they suggest. It is SLOW going .
I want to be meticulous, because the front band and the neck are places that are worth your time and attention, because people who look at you in your sweater will see those areas especially. No one will notice if there is a mistake in the middle of the back of the waist band. But by your face is much more noticeable.
In this picture, you can see where I move from picking up stitches in the selvedge stitch, and then, where the needle is sticking out, that is where I started the steek, so there are 2.5 extra stitches there as a boarder.
Both Kathy and I showed great restraint, and admitted that we had not bought new yarn this week. We are BOTH going to just keep working away to finish.
I will keep you posted on my progress.
© 2005 – 2012 Kathy Lewinski & Susan Cornish
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I’m all done with my knitting. At least I hope I am. I’m a bit concerned about the bottom of the sweater rolling up. I hope the blocking will sort that out. Otherwise I’ll have to rip back 10 rows to double the garter stitch rows at the bottom.
Other than that I just have to crochet the button holes and sew the buttons. But first I’ll have to buy the buttons. It’ll be tough but I’ll really try to squeeze that in this week between work, christmas card making, riding lessons, christmas shopping and anniversary dinner with my guy (12/12/12 we’ve been together for 12 years. 🙂 That calls for a celebration.). Wish me luck!
Lotta – If it still rolls after blocking & you don’t want to rip back you could sew a ribbon to the inside. It’s a nice finish.
Congrats on the anniversary. That has to be good luck!
How clever! I would never have thought of that. Great tip. Thank you!
I may have to do it on my sweater too.