Why Don’t You Just Say What You Mean?

I’ve heard the knitting term selvage before. And, to be honest, I’ve never paid much attention to it. Until now. I just finished knitting a pattern that called for decreasing at each end of every 8th or so row. Being the literal person I am, I either knit 2 together or slip slip knit, depending on which way I wanted my decrease to slant, the first or last stitch of the appropriate row. This works out just fine... except... when you need to seam. I couldn’t get a straight line for a seam as every 8th row the line moved. This left a very crooked and unacceptable seam. See below.

Here’s a picture of my bad seam before ripping out and re-sewing 900 times.

So... rip out, sew, repeat - until you get something that looks better. In desperation, I googled, and I discovered the importance of selvage. When increasing or decreasing at the end of the row, you should do this inside of the selvage. An apparently implied direction that would have been helpful in print form. Why, oh why, doesn’t a pattern just say that if that's what is meant? Anyway, after ripping out my seam and some of my hair, I did manage to salvage my sweater in spite of lacking the proper selvage required for seaming.

Here’s a picture of my sweater before buttons and its Eucalan bath.

This really is a cute little sweater knit from Noro Silk Garden. If you want pattern information follow this link: Ravelry. I am looking forward to picking up some spectacular buttons to draw attention away from my less than perfect seams. Now onto knitting a pair of mittens for my mom whose birthday was in January. Thankfully she’s a patient woman, and we’ve had a mild winter!

Thanks for reading. And, if you're a knitter, I hope I've saved you some possible frustration and spared some of your follicles by sharing my mistake ~ Christina

Why Put off Until Tomorrow What You Can Tackle 3 Months From Now?

First, a glossary of knitting terms:

Frogged, ing - realizing a project isn’t going to work out and/or you’re in way over your head then completely ripping it out to use the yarn for something else

Hibernating, ed, ion - a project that is mostly finished but there is something hard left to do that you don’t feel like dealing with, so you avoid it

Now onto my post. 

I started knitting a jacket with... ahem... $96 worth of Noro Chirimen yarn, please don’t judge me until you’ve knit with this yarn. Noro is a Japanese yarn famous for its unusual color combinations. In layman’s terms it’s very cool. Anyway, I couldn’t get row gauge and the jacket had this curved front - for which you really need to get row gauge - so I frogged it. (See glossary above.) Sigh! Shortly after frogging, I found a pattern for a vest that would work with my yarn and off I went. Relieved, I mentioned the cost of the yarn right(?), I cast on and knit the front and back of the vest in no time at all. Before long, however, I realized I really don’t know how to seam. And, this was a pattern that had to be sewn together. Another sigh! So, the vest sat in my craft room, which used to be my oldest daughter’s bedroom but she’s been away at college for four years so I figured it was fair game, in hibernation (again, see glossary above) for three months.

Here’s a picture of my un-seamed vest hibernating.

Not sure what got into me, but yesterday I decided I was ready to tackle this seaming situation. I consulted a few knitting books, Youtubed and Pinterested, yep those last two are verbs now, and started sewing. Leave it to me to try and learn a new skill like sewing a seam with yarn that is nubby and with a pattern that increases at the sides. Anyway, within four hours or so, I completely got the hang of it, and, discovered it’s almost soothing.

Here’s a picture of my beautiful seam. See the colors and how the stripes don’t line up. Classic Noro.

I started this vest October 20something, 2011 and finished it today, roughly three months later. I guess if there is a moral to this post, and I’m not sure there is or should be, it’s that I think it’s ok to let a problem hibernate until you are ready to deal with it properly. 

Can’t wait to wear my vest to work tomorrow, although in hindsight it may have been faster to do a load of laundry ;) Thanks for reading! ~Christina