I’ve been knitting the button bands on Doug’s vest. I put the project down and noticed that it looked like this:
Because I haven’t yet cut the steeks which will create the armholes, and because the 450ish stitches of the button bands and neck are all squeezed onto a circular knitting needle, it rather resembles a toddler-sized fair isle batman cowl and cape, complete with ears.
Granted, there are no razor-sharp blades on the edges of the cape, which as we all know are useful when dealing with corrupt officials. And while Shetland wool has considerable shape memory, this cape is unlikely to have enough rigidity to allow one to glide over the buildings of Gotham. Furthermore, there is no antenna in the left ear capable of scanning police radio frequencies. Sadly, the cowl is not shielded to protect against mind control.
However, it is hand-knitted using the Fair Isle technique, and is thus both more stylish, and considerably more woke, than all that boring black vinyl. Perhaps just a bit of Kevlar….
I have started knitting the ribbing around the front edges and neckline of Doug’s vest, after my successful steek, and am busily contemplating buttons. The green buttons, while the right colour, are only 15mm across, and this felt a bit small for this type of project. Unfortunately, they aren’t available in a larger size. So, I ordered two different buttons at 18mm. What do you think?
Here are the green ones:
Here are a slightly larger set of grey ones:
And here are some deep pink ones, with a light rim:
Seeing the photos, I still think the green ones are best. Though the pink ones are pretty cool. Decisions, decisions….
I have been sick all week, but have still been working hard, so that I could get everything done before I take some annual leave time. My leave starts today, and I have clearly over-exerted myself; now all I want to do is sleep. We’ll see if any knitting gets done over the next few days. In the meantime, some slow progress on my Dyemonds pullover. I am happy to see that it fits:
This morning we went for a walk and discovered that the lambing season is in full swing.
The little one on the right, all curled up with its exhausted mom, has the cutest markings. He looks like a little llama.
Momma sheep has the right idea. I’m going to follow in her footsteps and take a nap.
Today I cut the front steek on Doug’s vest, and it was a glorious thing! I can’t even begin to tell you how much I fretted about the steeks over the last few weeks. (Fair isle knitting patterns are easiest to knit in the round, so that the sweater is in the shape of a tube. The steek is a column of extra stitches which are designed to be cut open once the knitting is done, producing the arm openings or the open front of a cardigan. If you are not accustomed to this, the idea of taking a pair of scissors to your knitting is quite scary.) I finally realised that much of my fretting was actually about the ribbing, rather than the steek itself. That is, I wanted the button band stitches to be picked up perfectly and evenly along the edges of the steek, and I wanted the alignment – both the alignment of one side of the vest to the other, but also the alignment of the columns of rib to the bands of the fair isle pattern of the garment – to be equally perfect. Call me a perfectionist.
I know me, and that means I know that I will pick up the stitches again and again and again, and fiddle, until each one is placed exactly right. I worried about doing this on a cut edge. I posted a question on Ravelry – can I pick up the stitches before cutting the steek? Well, it turns out that the answer – like with most answers in knitting – is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. I determined to pick up the stitches along the steek edge first, and then to cut. This was not only to allay my anxiety that something would go wrong, but also because I didn’t want to be worrying the edge if I ended up ripping stitches out multiple times.
If you are not a knitter and are somehow inexplicably reading this post anyway, or if you tend to get easily bored, please skip this paragraph! For the knitting nerds out there, this is for you! I spent many hours plotting and thinking and measuring and trying to determine the best rate of picking up stitches to allow the rib to lay flat along the button bands, but also to make sure that each button lined up exactly with the middle of each band of colour. The ribbing is 3×2, so the first determination was whether I wanted the buttonholes to be in the troughs (the 2 purl stitches) or along the tops of the knit ribs. This also meant that I needed to know the size of the buttons, and thus the size of the buttonholes. I determined to put the buttonholes in the purl columns. Each band of colour in the pattern was 10 rows high, with two stockinette rows in between, for a total of 12 rows per band. I picked up stitches at 3 per every 4 rows at the bottom ribbing, and then at 5 for every 6 rows for the body of the garment. This meant that I picked up 10 stitches for every band. I made sure that the two stitches at the exact middle of each colour band were purls – these would be where the buttonholes would be placed. That left 8 picked up stitches between each of the buttonholes – 3 knit, 2 purl, 3 knit. It worked out so perfectly!
In the above photo, you can see how I picked up stitches along one side of the steek. Those are on the top half of the photo. This photo is taken along the v-neck, so there are decreases, making the bands of pattern appear at a slight diagonal. I used the little closing markers to mark every group of 2 purl stitches, so I knew exactly how the rib would lay against the fabric. Between every group of two purls, are the three stitches destined to be the knit columns. I picked up stitches along the entire left side of the garment, to where the back neck stitches were held live on a second needle. Then, I used a third needle to pick up stiches all the way down across the other side of the steek. You can see this on the bottom half of the photo. I am picking up stitches from left to right because I am left-handed. I have continued to mark each of the groups of two purls, and this way I can check (obsessively!) to make sure that the purls are directly across from the purls, the knits are directly across from the knits, and furthermore that the middle two stitches of each colour band are always ending up as two purls. Thus, everything is in alignment.
Now, I have picked up along both steek edges. I ran out of stitch markers at some point, so ended up not marking every single grouping of purl stitches, but I can guarantee every picked up stitch along one side of the garment will align with the other side, so that once I have knitted the 3×2 ribbing, there will be no buckling, or stretching, or buttonholes that are in the wrong place. Here is a close up of the top end of the garment:
The back neck stitches are held live on one needle (with a green cable) and there are two long needles (with red cables) holding the picked up stitches along each side of the steek. You can see the shoulders, which I also dealt with in a slightly unconventional manner, having used a three needle bind off on the reverse side, instead of grafting them together. The whole thing looks strange and out-of-shape, because the decreases for the v-neck are worked along the edges of the steek and pull the two sides of the vest together. The v-neck shaping will not emerge until after the steek has been cut.
Now, I am all ready to cut, and you can see that instead of being apprehensive, I am excited and relaxed! This will be fun!
Snip! I can’t describe how satisfying the sound of the scissors was; snip snip! I had knitted the steeks with alternating rows of colour, so there is no guesswork involved in where to cut, and the fabric parts so easily. Now, I am approaching the neckline:
It all goes so fast! Here just seconds later, I am about to make the last cut, just as relaxed and happy (and perhaps a bit maniacal) as the first:
Yay! A steek! I did it! What was the fuss about, again?
You can see the v-neckline has suddenly emerged, now that the steek is now longer holding the edges of the two sides together. The cut edges are incredibly neat and tidy – this is the result of using the right wool. This is Shetland wool, and it is sufficiently “sticky” so that it won’t unravel. Nevertheless, I am so happy that I’ve already picked up the stitches for the button bands, and will be able to start knitting them right away. Look here as I fold back the two sides. Isn’t it lovely? Be still my heart!
Finally, a close-up of one of the steeked edges. You can see that it naturally folds itself to the inside of the fabric:
Next up will be knitting the ribbing for the button bands. This will be followed by two more steeks – one for each armscythe – and the ribbing around each arm. I haven’t decided yet whether to pick up those stitches first or not. I am not so worried about aligning the stitches between front and back of the armscythe, as you won’t see this when the garment is worn, so I suppose that I could cut first and then pick up. I am also less worried about this beautiful Shetland wool unravelling now that I’ve cut this steek. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I will repeat what I’ve done here, given how successful I found it to be this time.
After weeks of fretting in the back of my mind, cutting the steek was a breeze. It took me over 3 hours to pick up all of the stitches and carefully align the whole thing. It took about 30 seconds to cut the steek. No tears in sight.
When we first moved to Reading, I was always a bit amazed to drive past Reading Gaol. It’s right there, in the middle of town, still a functioning prison at the time. We had to drive by it every day, to get to the girl’s school, or to the campus where Doug and I work. It is easy to not notice it at all as one drives past, busy negotiating the roundabout and lots of traffic, and trying not to get stuck behind a bus as it slows for the bus stop. Yet this is the infamous prison where Oscar Wilde was imprisoned, and which inspired his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
If you drive by it today, you would notice it. It is now the site of the newest Banksy artwork, and even in these days of Covid, it is drawing crowds of admirers. We went to see it today. After a year stuck at home, it took a Banksy to get us out and about.
It was fun watching the crowd interact with the piece. Doug tried to catch both escaping prisoner and typewriter:
I settled for smiling:
While it was fun to watch the crowd engaging with the artwork, I was also quite struck by how lovely it is. It is quirky, and funny, and moving.
This is a short post, but I couldn’t resist. This morning, I opened the Guardian, and what did I see:
The embroidery article, which you can find here, concerns a “a bitter internal row over proposals to try to save the 115-year-old institution from liquidation”. Apparently, despite embroidery seeing a huge boom in sales, brought about in part by the popularity of Bridgerton on Netflix, the Embroidery Guild is financially strapped nonetheless.
Photograph: Liam Daniel/Netflix
I am, however, quite bemused, Bridgerton or no, to see the Embroidery Guild sharing the headlines with Covid, Brexit, and other topics of national and international import at the top of the front page. That said, Wisdom the albatross is there, too.
I am very stressed, and this evening I took a short period to zone out, and as I often do, I looked through Ravelry’s index of “Hot Right Now”, defined as “designs with the most visits in the last 24 hours”. I have commented here before about the need for more diversity in knitting, and have occasionally pointed out companies and designers who are using more diverse models. Very slowly, we are seeing an increasing use of models of colour, and also an increase in age and size diversity. Today, however, I was really struck by the lack of black models in the patterns that are hot right now. Not all of these patterns have models, by the way, but I think the facts still speak for themselves.
The first black model was on the 144th most popular pattern (patterns change position constantly). Of the top 500 patterns, there were 9 with black models (3 of them the same model, with the designs all from the current issue of Pom Pom magazine, as pictured below).
