knitabit

Cutting the Steek

I finished the body of Roscalie, grafted the shoulder seams, and contemplated the cutting of the steek:

(click on the image for an appropriate sound effect)

Then I got out the scissors and did it:

(The red you see underneath the scissors is a magazine I placed under the knitted fabric, so fearful was I that I was going to cut into the back side of the sweater by accident! Sorry for the blurry photo, I was in a state of heightened panic at the time!)

All went well.

The instructions suggest that you move on to the sleeves next, but I'm following along with Wendy's archives. When she knit up Roscalie, she did all of the finish work on the body of the sweater before moving on to the sleeves, and that makes sense to me. I would get nervous having the back neck stitches on a stitch holder, flailing around with all the turning and spinning you do while going around on the sleeves.

I had to pick up more stitches on the neckband/button band than the pattern called for, given that I extended the length of the sweater considerably. So before I start the sleeves, I'm going to weigh how much yarn I have left in each color. When I finish the first sleeve, I'll weigh my leftover yarn again and then I should have a pretty good sense of what I'll need to reorder.

Before cutting that steek, I finished the Baby Surprise Sweater only to find a major error:

(I "posed" it so you could see its odd shape on the left, and the way it folds into an actual sweater on the right.)

As you can see, I forgot to do the decreases for the neckline. And you know what? I'm not going to go back and fix it. This sweater is just too ugly to be worth the effort. It looks very homemade. I fault the yarn - it's nice enough yarn, just not right for this project.

Comments

Rosalie's beautiful..I don't think I'd ever have the guts to do that ~.~
Dig the peewee clip.

Posted by: rmily at November 14, 2004 07:15 AM

Ok I'm more of a lurker than a commenter but I had to tell you that I nearly choked on my Diet Coke when I clicked on your sound track!!! OMG that was hysterical!! and so appropriate for the action you were taking!!

Posted by: Lynn at November 14, 2004 12:09 PM

WowieWowWOW! Roscalie is looking very good, and look at you, just cutting right up that steek! It's only scary the first time :-) From now on, you'll be rather ho-hum about future steek experiences. Try the crochet finish for steeks too, sometime...I love it! I have Roscalie in a box in my yarn closet...I'm going to have to pull it out pretty quick now after seeing yours!

Posted by: Lisa, Mike, Jack, Della at November 15, 2004 07:18 AM