Knitting Stripes & Weaving in Ends

As you all know, I do lots of charity knitting, usually children's sweaters for various agency's. My favorite sweater to knit is a striped raglan. I want to tell you about a method that leaves you with only a few ends to weave in, rather than tons of them, which just discourages you from knitting stripes. 

 Here is a striped sweater that is going to the shelter. It is a striped raglan using 3 colors, 2 green shades & 1 gray shade. 

 As you can see, the stripes are a series of thicker & thinner stripes. If I cut the yarn at every color change I am going to have a very discouraging number of ends to weave in. To solve this problem, I am not going to cut the yarn. Instead I am going to carry it up the right hand side of the knit.

This picture shows how it looks on the purl side.

Every so many rows I will hook the contrast color on the end needle so that I don't have a bunch of long floats on the side of the knit. This technique works for hand knitters as well as machine knitters. The trick is to keep the yarn that is being carried, loose. If you pull it too tight it will pull the side of the knit up on that side. 

Shelter Sweaters & Garter Carriage Cams

Here are some sweaters for the Women's Shelter. I always tell them to let me know what they need, & they said some bigger children's sweater would be much appreciated, if possible. These sweater are size 14, 12, & 10. I am going to be making some more of them in these sizes. Hopefully the bigger kids will like them. My experience with the older kids is that they don't like hand made clothing. 

I have forgiven myself for buying all the yarn. But......I have renewed my resolution to reduce my stash again this year, as I did last. 

While using my Garter Carriage I ran over the last of my GC one stitch cams on the left hand side. I am always so careful, or try to be anyway, but it is completely gone now. I haven't run one over for several years. Anyway, I decided to try to convert a 2 sts cam to a 1 sts cam. I took my fingernail clippers & VERY CAREFULLY used it to clip the little bar at the top of the cam in half, in the middle.  Then, I used the clippers to again, VERY CAREFULLY clip off the right hand side of the bar. I had to clip it again, closer to the base of the cam, but it does seem to be working. I have several 2 sts cams so maybe this will work out. I wanted to take a picture of it but it is soooo small that I couldn't get a good one. 

Years ago I bought a spare motherboard for my 965i. That was truly thinking ahead as the motherboard went out today & I had to replace it with the new board. I am going to talk to Shawn Dolan @ Knit & Sew to see if he can repair the old one. I am keeping my fingers crossed that he can.  

Cut & Sew Instructions

1. Here on the left you can see where I have drawn my neckline. You can see the yarn tags at the first & last neck stitches. I did not have a big enough template so I printed out a template from the 'KnitWare' program. (You can do that for any size neck if you have the program. I will describe that in another post.)

2.  I marked the neckline with washable marker in a contrasting color. 

3. Then I sewed 2 rows of zig zag stitching on the marked line. I was very careful to not pull or stretch the neckline while I was sewing it. You can put some tissue paper or embroidery backing behind the neck if you want to. I don't do that anymore as I have learned to sew without stretching the fabric

.4.  Before you cut, be sure to eyeball the neck to make sure it is even on both sides. You want them to match as closely as possible. You do not want one side higher or deeper than the other side. I used to measure them before I cut, & that might be a good idea for the first couple that you do. Then, with a pair of sharp scissors I carefully cut just outside the marked line. 

5. Here is the neckband for the sweater, & the sweater hanging on my machine. I knitted the neckband separately, with waste yarn on either side. After I cut out my neck I joined one shoulder, & rehung the sweater, just under the rows of stitching, on the machine with the right side facing me, easing in any fullness.

 6. Then, I brought all the needles out to holding position. I rehung one neckband side into the hooks on the machine, closed all the latches & pulled the stitches through the neckline.

 7. Then I brought the needles out to holding position again, making sure that the cut edge of the neckline was underneath the needles. 

8. Rehang the other side of the neckband & push the stitches behind the latches. When I am binding off a crew neck I will bind off over 2 gate pegs, but since this is a scoop neck you can just bind off normally, making sure that you don't drop any stitches while doing that. You should wind up with an attractive neckline that is even all the way around the neck. 

   

Here is the finished cut & sew neckline. The picture on the left is the knit side & the picture on the right is the purl side. The neck looks just as good on the purl side as it does on the knit side. This neck came out perfectly shaped & looks great. Now I need to join the sleeves & make up. 



Afghans for Afghans

Here is a true Hero of the A4A program, Linda Graves. You can read her story Here

As you can see, from the condition of my den, that I have fallen off the wagon. I did get a good buy on the yarn.(!!) but that is not an issue here. I really am trying to be good. I am somewhat disappointed with myself, but after I committed to buying it, there just wasn't any way out. I have learned this about myself, if I can resist the temptation when I get the first impulse to buy, I am usually okay. I know maybe in a day or two I will be ready, but I am NOT ready to laugh at this just yet. 


My g'son says I am a yarn hoarder. It is an addiction, for me. A compulsive addiction to own as many beautiful cones of yarn as I can. I'm sure all machine knitters that have a large stash are compulsive too, but I have so much. My only saving grace is that I knit at least 2 hours every day but Sunday, so I am using it, not just collecting. 


I get a lot of hits for 'cut & sew' necks. I am going to consolidate my posts on C&S & re-post them in one long post. I think it will be easier for readers to understand it, if it is all just one post. 

Better get busy, I have some knitting to do!!

Ribber Cast On Combs

Using the ribber cast on comb can be such a hassle sometimes. Either the comb is too big or too small for the job. This problem annoyed me for many years. Then I decided to buy some extra cast on combs & have them cut to the size that I wanted. I tried to buy them from the dealer & have him cut them to size, but they are not really equipped to do that, so wound up with a less than satisfactory result. I did a little research & found out there are machine shops out there that do things like that all the time. (Who knew!!)

I decided to do my mid gauge combs first. I bought a long ribber comb for the mid gauge machine & marked on it where I wanted it cut & where the holes should be. I took it down to a small machine shop & explained to them what I wanted. It cost me $20 to have the comb cut & the holes drilled. Now I have combs for my mid gauge in sizes 150 sts, 100 sts, 80 sts , &  50 sts. The perfect size is always available. 

This works equally well for any size ribber comb. 

Last Years New Years Resolutions

How did you do with last years resolutions?? I didn't do too bad. I finished a big box of children's sweaters for the Women's Shelter. As for my resolution to lose weight, I lost the same 10 lbs several times!! LOL I sent 2 wool sweaters to the Afghans for Afghans program. I have 5 pair of socks that I will send this week. (Better late than never) Used up one whole bin of worsted & sport weight yarns. (Still have lots to go.) I managed to keep from buying boxes of new yarn, so I didn't do too bad. This is the first year in I can't tell you how long, my stash has actually been reduced rather than gotten bigger. 

My goal for this year is to make a box of children's sweaters for the Clothing Bank. Maybe lose that 10lbs a few more times + more. 

I am keeping my fingers crossed that my store with do better. Since the economy went south my store has been limping along. I am only doing about half of what I did the first 6 years that I was open.  

Here's a sweater that I made for my granddaughter. I made a pair of long pants to go with it. It is a size 2 (she is 5 months right now) so she won't be wearing it for a while.  The yarn is a sport weight & embroidered very nicely on my Brother 750D. I am looking for more yarn like this in my stash as my DIL liked it & would like a couple more outfits made from it. 

Charity Knitting Thick Wool Socks & How to Seam Them

Here are some socks that I knitted on my SR 860 for the 'Afghans for Afghans' program. Socks are desperately needed as the weather is very cold in the winter time. These are worsted weight socks made from 100% wool. If you like to knit smaller charity items these are great!!

Now.....I want to talk a little bit about these socks. They are knitted flat on the machine & then seamed up the side by latching up the bars at the edge of the knit. To make this work you have to think ahead a bit. I am going to talk about a sock that is 36 stitches wide just for the purpose of my demonstration. Your needle arrangement will be like this.....

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The first stitch is placed on needle #19 left, & the last stitch is #19 right. Needle #18 on each side is left empty so that when you get ready to seam you have a looser bar below the knot on the side of the knit. (I am assuming that you know that the side of the knit is an edge of knots & bars. You will have a bar, then a knot, then a bar, then a knot & so on. Like this

-x-x-x-x with the dashes being bars & the x's being knots.) When you get ready to seam you will be using your latch tool to pull one bar, skipping the knot, through the next bar on the opposite side. Pay attention to the bars & knot because it is easy to get confused when you first start learning this technique. You don't want to use the same bar twice as it won't make a good looking seam. Keep latching one bar through the next bar on the opposite side, going from side to side. You always want the bar above the next knot.

This gives a very flat & comfortable seam that you wouldn't get if you used a different seaming method with this thickness of yarn. Although the seam is very obvious, comfort is the wanted result. If you look closely you can see where the bars have been latched from one side to the other in a zigzag fashion. The seam will lay flat on the wearer's leg without rubbing at all.