For Knitters Only

Unless you are a non-knitter who is bored or someone who has a little free time to fill.

I am finally making progress on the sweater I bought yarn for in 2014.  I think it might even fit, miracle of miracles.

 However, when I got to the sleeve cuffs, the instructions said to use the Kitchener bind off.

Oh sure.  I'm on three needles, y'all.  How the $%^&* does that work? Do I need six needles???  Why not just tell me to fly a plane while I'm at it?  I don't know how to do that either. 

Google to the rescue.  I found a video on using the Kitchener bind off in the round, which is what knitting on three needles actually is.  

For those knitters out there, here it is:

It is genius!  And easy, as long as you pay absolute attention to what you are doing.  I had a couple of spots where I couldn't tell what I had just done, because I looked away AT THE VIDEO while I was knitting.  Don't do that.  Watch it, bind off a few stitches, and watch again if you need to.

I don't understand the technical part of knitting, so I could never have created the Kitchener stitch in the first place, and whoever figured how to do it in the round must have, as my grandson claims about himself, a very big brain.  (He's right about that, says doting grandmother.)

My finished result.  Not as smooth and perfect as the bind off in the video, but this is only my first attempt.  I have one sleeve to go.  Which I now must knit.

Mistakes Were Made

I am making the Knit Chicken from Blue Sky Yarns and designed by Susan B. Anderson. It is really cute - at least hers is - but boy, did I ever mess up the Kitchener Stitch last night. Where it worked, it worked well, but where it didn't - what a mess.

I tried, I really did. But the chicken has to be stuffed before it is grafted closed, and so the fabric fights back. Somehow I ended up with a messed up closing and I didn't dare to take the stitching out in order to try and get it right. The tension on the stitches as I worked would have unravelled the stitches, I think. Today I will try to fix this by using matching (I hope) thread and pulling the loops and holes into some sort of decent-looking fake Kitcheners. But if all else fails, Henrietta will live on top of the refrigerator, where no one will see her back.

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: The Universe does NOT care what I say or do. There is no bad Karma. (I still hope there is good Karma) How do I know this? Take a look at the repaired stocking and look at yesterday's before picture. Jan, our knitting guru and GENIUS, repaired it so well that the repair is very close to invisible. Yay!!! I do not have to knit my half-millionth and one(th) stocking. Whew....


Lesson #2: How to repair a large hole. I watched very carefully as Jan used sewing thread (less visible) rather than yarn to weave through all the loops. She then pulled the two ends of the broken yarn to the inside, tied them, and sewed them down to the inside fabric so that they will never come loose again. She also had a second method she would have used if this hadn't worked: pull out a bit more of the knitting at the bottom of the hole, knit however many rows necessary on those few stitches, and then use the kitchener stitch to graft the top and bottom of the hole together. Wow! I would never have thought of that.

It's good to know very clever people who are generous enough to want to share their skills!

AND, I was tagged by Calicobebop, so now I have to do some thinking in order to write that post....that gives me something to do while I'm knitting.