Leigh's Fiber Journal: knitting techniques

Showing posts with label knitting techniques. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Shetland Sampler Cardigan Complete!

By Leigh

I'm delighted to announce that at long last it's done!

It's the best fitting sweater I've ever made for myself.

Project Particulars:

Fiber - Shetland, both American and British, from both fleece and roving. I had a total of 20 samples to work with and I have several people to thank for this:

Cathy, who donated a lot of fleece, both locally obtained and from Riverbend Farm.
Tina, who donated some of her own.
Sharon, who did the same.
Mim, from whom I got a sample via Sharon!

Yarn - 2-ply handspun measuring 16- 18 WPI. Photos of all 20 can be seen at this page of my Fiber Gallery. If you click the links under the photos, they will take you to blog posts with photos of the raw fleece and spinning details for most.

Sweater Pattern - Measurements were copied from my Rare Breed Sweater, with an adjustment made for the neckline. Though technically not true Fair Isle knitting, I did use a Fair Isle Stitch Pattern.

Stitch Design - From Anne Field's "Dyepot Fairisle Sweater," The Ashford Book of Spinning, pages 98 - 99. This required calculating yarn amounts for the color rows, details on how I did that here.

Knitting Details -

Gauge - 6 stitches/inch and 8 rows/inch
Technique - stranded knitting in the round
Needle size - US 2 circular for sweater body and sleeves, US 0 for K2P2 ribbing

Techniques Used -

I started the spinning for this project in June 2007. Swatching started in January 2008. I took my time and did not do any knitting during the heat of summer. I also set it aside at times to ponder various things I needed to figure out or calculate. Does it seem like it took that long? I can't tell. I lose track of time with a project like this. But I've learned a lot and I'm very happy with the outcome.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

SSC: Finishing Touches

By Leigh

Two things remain to be done before I can wear my Shetland Sampler Cardigan:

1. Sewing on the buttons.

2. Finishing the raw edges left after sewing and cutting the steeks.

You can see all the cut yarn ends on the left when I fold back the front band. Apparently there are several ways to deal with these cut edges. In her Essential Techniques for Serious Knitters Peg Arnoldussen described knit-in facings to cover them. When I read that part of her booklet however, I didn't really comprehend what she was saying until now (sort of an "Oh! So that's what she meant" moment.)

Another option would be to handsew a ribbon facing over the raw edges, but I was concerned that these wouldn't have the give that the knitting does. The edges can be covered with crochet, but I wasn't certain how to do this. Finally I opted for the method Alice Starmore describes in The Celtic Collection. This involves a cross-stitching over the raw edges.

Tacking down the raw edge with cross-stitch.

The raw edges have been trimmed and I'm tacking them down with cross-stitch. It's not easy to get a self-explanatory photo of, but hopefully you get the gist of what I'm doing.

OK. I'll finish these little things up and then get a photo of the finished garment!

Friday, December 19, 2008

SSC Shoulders

By Leigh

Progress!

Front and sleeve steeks are sewed and cut, and the shoulder seams are finished.

I used the "knit and bind-off technique"on the shoulders

Front and back of shoulder are placed on needles one size smaller than those used for body of knitting. Using a needle of the larger size, the front and back shoulder stitches are knitted together. Right needle through both, then knit together.

After two stitches, bind off one and continue until seam is complete.

Someone else can probably explain that better than I, but hopefully you get the idea.

Here's a view of the inside of the finished shoulder seam....

And here's what it looks like from the outside.....

I didn't plan it to look this way, but I'm not dissatisfied. At least both shoulders turned out the same!

One thing I didn't do was shoulder shaping, as I don't have a clue of how to do that in the round.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sewing & Cutting The Steeks

By Leigh

Do I need a drumroll for this? Here are photos of sewing and cutting the neck and front steeks of my Fair Isle Shetland Sampler Cardigan.

The first thing I did was to test stitch tension on my sewing machine with a small knitted swatch. When I was satisfied with that, I sewed the actual steeks.

I followed the instructions in Peg Arnoldussen's Essential Techniques for Serious Knitters (see my review in this post). The stitch is straight and small. I think I set my machine at about 20 stitches per inch.

The line of machine stitches had to go either down the middle or between stitches.

Stitch lines on either side of where opening will be cut.

My front steeks were six stitches wide. For these I sewed three rows of machine stitches on each side. For the wound neck steek (which I actually did first), one row of machine stitches went down the center of the edge stitches, and another along the outside of the edge.

Then came the cutting between the stitched lines. It actually wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I just reminded myself that this is only fabric after all.

Finished neck (wound) & front (checkerboard) steeks.

Here is the left upper front of the cardigan. You can see how both steeks turned out. I'll repeat this process the sleeve openings and my Siamese Sleeves.

The next step is to block this piece. Then I'll sew and cut the armhole steeks, stitch the shoulder seams, and then I can begin on the bands!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Siamese Sleeves Done!

By Leigh

I'm even amazed at this myself, because usually once hot weather arrives, I tend to abandon sweater knitting. But here they are:

The sleeves for my Shetland Sampler Cardigan. One of the steeks goes right up the center in this shot.

For some reason, it seemed that this was faster than knitting the two sleeves separately. This must be psychological, as I had to knit the same number of stitches either way.

Besides ripping out those two dark colors that I knitted too close together, I made one other color adjustment:

The two browns just didn't have enough contrast for that section of the pattern. Embroidering over the old stitches was quick and easy.

I'm not going to cut them apart until I finish the body of the sweater, which is knitted a little beyond the bottom of the sleeve opening. Then I'll do all the cutting and sewing at the same time. After I put all the pieces together, I'll do the cuffs and bands. The end if almost in sight.

Related posts:
A Contemplation On Knitting Sleeves - Which method?
Ready to Start Those Sleeves - Discovering Siamese Sleeves
Starting the Sleeves - Sleeve Increase Calculator
Technically Not Fair Isle - Defining Fair Isle Knitting
SSC Sleeves & Cuffs
Shetland Sampler Cardigan Complete!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Starting The Sleeves

By Leigh

The Shetland Sampler Cardigan sleeves are officially begun!

The first thing I did was to click on over the The Knitting Fiend's online Sleeve Increase Calculator. By plugging in the number of rows to be knitted and the number of stitches in the first and last rows, instructions for the sleeve increases were automatically calculated for me. Here's what I got (click on the photo for an enlargement).

Should enlarge if you click the image

My next stop was Lucy Neatby's website to double check the instructions for the Siamese Sleeves.

Since I am knitting both sleeves at once, I had to double the number of stitches to cast on and add steeking stitches between the sleeves. This number of stitches was cast onto my 16 inch US2 circs with waste yarn (see "A Shetland COWYAK")

After a couple of rows of waste yarn, I started knitting with the yarn for the sleeves. I decided that I'd better use stitch markers to mark the beginning and end of both sleeves "just in case."

As long as I keep track of which row I'm on to get the increases properly placed, I should have properly fitting sleeves.

The other thing I've started on is the steeks for the armholes. These are technically checkerboard steeks, though as I mentioned before, the checkerboard effect is lost with the one color rows. The blue yarn marks the beginning of the steek, which is six stitches wide.

Wool Enough commented that the pattern appears to have black faced white sheep facing a brown fence. Can you see it? I'm delighted with that observation because like her, I too am rather wool obsessed!

Related Posts:
Ready to Start Those Sleeves - Discovering Siamese Sleeves
A Shetland COWYAK - Casting on with waste yarn.
Siamese Sleeves Done!
SSC Sleeves & Cuffs
Shetland Sampler Cardigan Complete!

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Ready To Start Those Sleeves

By Leigh

I've been wanting to share my progress on the Shetland Sampler Cardigan....

... which now includes these freshly spun yarns from the rovings from Sharon sent....

Three of them are from Sharon's own Shetlands, and the gray is from Mim's.

I puzzled over the sleeves, until Gertieanne sent me a link with the perfect solution to my sleeve problem. It is for Lucy Neatby's Siamese Sleeves.

Why is it perfect?

I can knit both sleeves at once so that the patterns match
Which means I won't have to worry about running out of a particular color
Plus I can use a provisional cast-on and knit the cuffs later

I'll need my circular needle, but now I'm at a stopping place on the body of the cardigan, so the sleeves are next. I'm pleased with my progress so far.

The next two photos are per request. The first one is for Tina, who was curious to see the backside of the knitting...

Even though the floats are only three stitches long, I still decided to wrap the yarns to keep them neat. You can find good instructions for wrapping stranded knitting (with photos) at KnitPicks (pdf tutorial here.)

The second photo is for Janet, who asked to see the checkerboard steek that I'm using. Unfortunately, mine isn't a very good example, since some of my rows use only one color, obliterating the checkerboardish pattern...

However, Lucy Neatby has a good tutorial on that too. Unfortunately, her website seems to exist no more.

Related Posts: -
A Contemplation On Knitting Sleeves - Trying to decide on the right kind to knit
Starting the Sleeves - Sleeve Increase Calculator
Shetland Sleeve Update - A look at checkerboard steeks in progress.
Siamese Sleeves Done!
SSC Sleeves & Cuffs
Shetland Sampler Cardigan Complete!

Friday, March 07, 2008

A Shetland COWYAK

By Leigh

Those of you who are members of Ravelry may already know what a COWYAK is. I'm not a member, but I learned about this while searching TECHknitting for cast-ons.

Even though I worked through the formula to calculate how much of each color yarn I'd need, I'm still a little paranoid about possibly running out of one of them (remember my Rare Breed Sweater near disaster?). To keep my stress level down, I've decided to go ahead and knit the body of the sweater and the sleeves first, and then add the cuffs, neck, and button bands last. In thinking about this, I decided that a provisional cast-on was probably what I wanted. Not remembering the "how-to's" of this technique, I clicked on over to TECHknitting and browsed through the subject index. That's where I discovered COWYAK.

"Cast On Waste Yarn And Knit." What could be easier! Perfect for an all-thumbs knitter like me, as it doesn't require any fancy maneuvering of needles and yarn. After casting on with waste yarn, a couple of rows are knitted with it and then the regular yarn is started. When it's time to add the ribbing, the waste yarn is removed, leaving loops to be picked up by another needle. The ribbing is then knit down from the picked up loops.

Here you have it....

... my attempt anyway. You can also see the beginning of the checkerboard steek that I learned from Essential Techniques For Serious Knitters.

For full COWYAK instructions, as well as who gets the credit for this clever term, click here.

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