Best method for weaving in ends

There has been no time for anything but work around here lately. No time for knitting, no time for taking photos, and most definitely no time for blogging. Since we are gearing up for an Easter holiday, however, I will not complain any further about the work load. I have been steadily, if very slowly, progressing on Brick. I will most certainly finish it just in time for the weather to warm up so that Doug won’t be able to wear it till the fall. Today I want to show you a brilliant design feature of Brick: the best method ever for weaving in ends – don’t do it! Here is a photo of the bottom ribbed band (before hemming):

The stitches were picked up along the bottom edge of the sweater and knit down in rib. The purl ridge that you can see halfway through is the turn line; the band is folded over on the turn line and hemmed down. Here is a photo of the reverse side (I have folded up the bottom to expose the reverse side):

See all the ends? Trust me, there are a lot of them. Normally, they would all be individually woven in, a painstaking process. But herein lies the beauty of a hemmed waistband. The ends will be knotted together and cut off shortish, and then:

the waistband will be folded over and hemmed, thereby trapping all of the ends to the inside of the waistband. No ends to weave in!

Now, for any of you readers who are thinking of making Brick for yourself and are reading this to gleam some tips, I make a small technical diversion regarding the sleeves. The pattern, though a little difficult to get the hang of at first, is pretty straightforward. I did find, however, that the instructions for the sleeve caps were really opaque (perhaps even wrong). I had to redo the first one. My advice: ignore the pattern and just knit the sleeve cap. Here is what you must do. The sleeve caps are knit back and forth in a modified rib – knit one row, and k2 p2 on the next row. The sleeve caps are made with short rows – you work 13 stitches past the middle and wrap and turn, then work 13 stitches past the middle in the other direction and wrap and turn, then repeat short rows, adding three stitches each time each side until you have made a total of nine wraps each side of center. Trust yourself instead of the pattern – keep the two center stitches as a knit rib (k2 on RS, p2 on WS), wrap and turn at the right spots, and then use your eye to keep the pattern as set. When I tried to follow Hanne’s directions I made a mess of things, but if I just knit it intuitively, keeping the pattern as established, it all worked out fine. Plus, I didn’t bother to pick up the wraps and knit them together with the wrapped stitch. The wraps didn’t show and it wasn’t necessary.

Two other sleeve tips: I thought the sleeves were too wide at the top, so I changed the decreases to add more at the top part of the sleeve. Then, I thought that they narrowed too much at the cuff so I made fewer increases all together. This is what I did (for the size medium): I decreased every 4th row 9 times, then every 6th row 19 times till I had 72 stitches (instead of the 68 in the pattern), then worked to desired length before cuff. The other modification (which I think reflected an error in the pattern) is that for the decrease rows in the sleeve, I started with a K2 and ended with a K2tbl. This ends the technical digression.

On another note: It just might have been the case that I was stranded with nothing to do earlier this week, having left my Brick pullover at home.

And, it might just have happened, that as a stroke of fate, I had a skein of Madtosh Pashmina in Flashdance, the appropriate size needle, and a pattern for Leah’s sweater, somehow tucked in my bag.