I Figured Out Something Everyone Already Knows!

Time to sew my knitting. The knit fabric was curling, so I wet-blocked it and started to pin it out. The yarn bloomed and grew, something I've read about, but it was a first for me. Fortunately I had the schematic, so I patted it into place as close to the size I wanted as possible. After it dried, I pinned the knitted fabric to the woven fabric as specified, and sewed. The result was... uninspiring.

Halfway through the second one, it occurred to me that hand-basting it first would solve all the problems I was having with the knit fabric shifting around. As an added bonus, I stopped sticking myself on pins! It was tremendously easier to ease in the extra fullness as well.

I realize all the sewers already know about hand-basting, but for a while today I felt like I'd invented anti-gravity. It was completely worth the tedious time it took to pick out the first seam and a half.

 

 After hand-basting, machine-sewing the seams was a snap, and I am very pleased with the result.

Next up, embroidery!

Crayons

Finished my colorful project. Every time I picked it up, it was like opening a new box of crayons. When I started looking for a pattern for this yarn, which was a bit of an impulse buy, I was astonished at the number of people who paired it with something else to "tone it down." I bought it for the colors, I had no intention of toning it down. This person did I really nice shawl out of a single skein of this yarn, but I avoid triangle shapes when I can. I found a better shape from the same designer, but swapped out freely to get what I wanted - yarn-over instead of knit-into-front-and-back increases, stockinette sections instead of garter. I did about an inch of a picot bind off before deciding I wasn't loving it, and used the double-chain bind off instead, for maximum stretch.

I then lost nearly all my love for it when it came to blocking. It was my brain, not the knitting. I pulled out all the pins and walked away for a few hours. When I came back it took me no time at all to block out the shape I wanted. The wait made the garter tab stick up more, but it will settle down with wear.

It's pretty clear that this is going to look fabulous over a black clergy shirt, so I have gifted it to KD.

Needles: US 6 (4.00 mm)
Yarn: the utterly wonderful Cascade Yarns Heritage Paints in Rainbow Mix, which I bought from the Simply Socks Yarn Company entirely so that I could get the free project bag on offer. In fact, I've just bought another skein to obtain a different bag; this could become a problem.
Pattern: improvised well past the point of just calling it modifications

Knitting plus Sewing, Because Life Is Strange Now

The next legacy project is going to be... interesting. I think it was a kit. I have the pattern - and thank goodness, because it's not on Ravelry. There was no yarn with the project. Fortunately, the knitting is nearly complete. I couldn't match the  beautiful shade of blue that was used, so I bought some navy blue that at least doesn't swear with it. I also bought some matching DMC floss. Floss? Well.

There are two sleeves with side pieces -

- which get attached to the central fabric piece using a (gasp!) sewing machine, and then seamed up like any side and sleeve. Since mattress stitch is invisible, my navy yarn won't show.

At that point all that is left is the knit border around the bottom, neck, and front edges of the fabric. So how do you knit on to fabric? According to the instructions, it involves -  brace yourself - embroidery. That's right. You take the above-mentioned embroidery floss and a needle and make a line of chain stitch around the edges of the fabric, just inside the selvedge.  In case that's not enough mixed fabric arts for your day, you then take a crochet hook and yarn and work a row of single crochet into the chain stitch. Then, and only then, do you whip out your knitting needle, knit into the top of the single crochet stitches, and knit the rest of the border. (Wait. What if I used an afghan needle and Tunisian crochet? Then the stitches would already be on a needle for knitting.)

Head spinning yet? My sister chose to work regular twisted rib cuffs on the sleeves rather than the odd-but-interesting border pattern called for. I just worked up a little of it to be sure it didn't somehow magically look like twisted rib. Nope. So at least once I get through all the mixed fabric arts I can just work some soothing twisted rib for the border.

I might miter the corners. Can one do that in ribbing? It's tempting. It will eventually need buttons. Unless I sew on clasps. What's a little hand-sewing at that point? I draw the line at installing a zipper. That's in my future, along with learning to steek.

The Current Rotation

I'm working on some socks, which I originally intended for DH, but there wasn't enough yarn, so I'm remaking them for me (love the yarn, love the pattern, love the result).

So of course I have cast on another sock, trying out basketweave socks with separate colors, using leftover yarn, instead of the (to me) muddied result of using a variegated yarn.

I'm also working on something colorful -

- and something with barely any color changes at all.

So of course, I'm about to start something new.

Someone Else's Turn to Sew

Once the waistband was finished, everything else was a breeze. Sewed the side seams, finished the strap edges, hemmed it, sewed on the pocket. I hate hems when the fabric gets wider as it gets longer. The solution seems to be small hems, cutting off the excess. I can see that wouldn't work for a child's garment, though.

The pocket turned out to be easier than I had thought because I had misunderstood the directions.

I wonder if one is supposed to remove the basting stitches?

All done.

Legacy Project: Woven Front Sweater

We left our readers with live stitches at an unfinished hem, one sleeve cap, and no sleeves. Finishing the last few inches of the hem went so fast I have no record of it. Attaching the sleeve cap was a matter of matching up stripes on the front and employing mattress stitch.

The seaming fell, by brilliant design, at a place in the color work that made it absolutely disappear.

I initially thought that the ends of the sleeve cap ended at the start of the underarm gusset, but when I realized I had exactly the same number of stitches for both, I attached them straight across.

Time for the sleeves. I began by marking the top center of the cap and then picking up every loop in sight at the edge of the cap, making sure I had the same amount front and back. I started knitting, and within an inch I knew it was too many stitches, because the fabric was puckering around the picked-up seam. I compared my stitch total to other worsted weight sweaters in the same size range. That was interesting because I was comparing my sleeve to cuff-up sleeves and had to decide that I wanted the number of stitches just before any shoulder/cap shaping. Yep, definitely too many. So I picked up every other stitch, and then knit, adding the missing stitch after every 3rd stitch, which resulted in the 4 out of 5 stitches that is so often recommended, and that worked out fine.  Another inch along and I realized I needed to go down a needle size.

Then it was time to decide on length. I looked at the average length of my comparison sleeves to decide what length I wanted. I looked at my row gauge. I did math. I wound up wanting to decrease 20 stitches, and halfway through decreasing every 6th row I realized my math was off. Before I could rip back, KD suggested just decreasing the second half every 4th row, and that worked out perfectly. I added a stripe of color to tie in with the color work in the pattern, matching the reverse stockinette used. I worked 2 inches of 1x1 purl in the next smaller size needle, and then tried several bind offs before realizing the one I wanted.

I love this bind off. It goes by so many names - tubular, invisible, 1x1, Italian. I think of it as the cuff bind off I could never figure out on store-bought sweaters. How do they DO that? Well, I’m doing it, but I still don’t know how. Unlike Kitchener Stitch, which I’m an old hand at, I don’t really understand how what I’m doing is creating the result. Just like my beginner days with Kitchener, I have to follow the instructions by rote, trusting that someone out there knows what they’re doing. Also like my early years of Kitchener, I have to be careful: it matters that the loose loop of yarn being drawn through the needles stays in front of and below the knitting needles.

Needles: US 7, US 6, US 5
Yarn: Berroco Vintage in Cracked Pepper and Dried Plum
Pattern: who knows
Destination: the box, unless someone knows who it would fit. It's a 40" chest and 18" sleeves, meant for 2-3" of positive ease. It's got a turtleneck-small neck. And I still have some ends to weave in.

That's Better

So much going on at waistbands! Finally this half has everything going off in the right direction and facing the right way. Now I just have to do it again on the other half. And I'm running out of time, someone else has put in a request for the table.

Legacy: Four-Color Socks

For this project, I had the yarn in a bag marked "socks for" the recipient. But no pattern. Four skeins of gorgeous color, fingering weight, washable wool. I searched on four-color socks in Ravelry and came up with a pattern in a book that I own, and that I know my sister owned a copy of. So it's possible she had this pattern in mind.

A lot of Ravelry commenters give this pattern grief, which is only half-deserved. Corrugated ribbing, as we have learned, can be worked in 2-row sets, working color A stitches and slipping color B, then reversing it on the next row. In practice, two such rows equal one row of knitting. So people reading through the pattern who have never done 2-color ribbing thought that the heel and toe would be comically long, when in fact they were just fine as written. That my heel flaps are a skosh long is my own fault, since I was off on the first sock by two rows and decided it was better to make them match than to rip out half a sock to fix it.

The toes, though, were another matter. The pattern is actually written in a very ambiguous way, and despite leaving clever notes for myself after the first sock, I had to figure it out all over again on the second sock.

But all in all, it was worth it. I like them a lot, and if they wind up a tad large for the recipient, they'll make nice slipper socks.

Needles: US 1½ (2.5 mm)
Yarn: a mystery Maryland Sheep and Wool purchase from another year
Pattern: Anna Tillman's Classic Fair Isle from knitted socks (which is out of print)