Going All the Way

I recently finished knitting Simo and wanted to talk a bit about the construction. This is a really cute pattern for a girl's tunic/dress. The pattern calls for you to knit the front and back separately, bottom-up. The sleeves (which are really just sleeve bands) are also knit separately, and then everything is joined for the yoke, which is knit in the round. Well, you know me: if there's a choice between knitting plain stockinette back-and-forth vs. in the round, I'm going to choose in the round every time.

So I went ahead and knit the bottom part of the skirt in the round. When I got up to the armholes, I wanted to be able to keep going without stopping for the sleeves, so here's what I did:

Instead of binding off the stitches for the armholes, I placed them on stitch holders (ie. safety pins).


I then got some scrap yarn and temporarily wedged the tail of it in between some stitches, just for a bit of traction.


Then it's a simple matter of making a long-tail cast-on of the number of stitches that would normally be contributed by the sleeve. The working yarn is held with the index finger, and the scrap yarn is held with the thumb.


And then I knit on as I normally would.

After the main body was done, it was time to go back and pick up for the sleeve bands. Keep in mind that when you do a provisional cast-on in this method, you can't "unzip" the scrap yarn like you can with some other techniques--you have to pick it out to retrieve your live stitches.

I've had problems in the past with holes around the armholes. See that big gap between the sleeve stitches and the underarm stitches from the body?


Here's where it helped to pick up an extra stitch.




The other thing that helped is crossing the sleeve stitch *over* the underarm stitch from the body when working the first row.


No more hole!



Here's the finished result.


And yes, the 10-year-old can still wear it.


And no, I can't anymore. More pics on Ravelry.

One Size Fits All

I've finished the bulk of the knitting on Simo. Wanna see something funny?




Now that is a versatile pattern! The armholes are a little tight on me, and it probably won't fit anymore once I actually knit up the bottom part of the sleeves, but I guess this means that once the little one has outgrown it, I can repurpose this thing if I wanted to without too much effort!

Had Me at "Hello"

Last week, when I went to my LYS for some yarn for my afghan, I was in a bit of a rush, but that did not stop me from getting distracted by some irresistible things! As soon as I walked into the shop, I noticed the display for Helga Isager's pattern book, Strikketoj. There is a representative pattern from each decade of the last century. Although the available sizes are very limited, I really didn't care. You can preview all the patterns if you'd like, but I'll just share with you my favorites:



The main reason I bought the book was for the pattern on the cover. I've been wanting to try brioche stitch, and this is the perfect excuse to do it!



Then, just as I was leaving, one of the employees unpacked a knit sample of Simo, from the Berroco Remix pattern booklet. Honestly! How could I resist such an adorable thing?! I snatched up the booklet and came back the next day to pick out some yarn. Remix is a very interesting yarn, made from a mix of recycled nylon, cotton, acrylic, silk, and linen fibers. It's got a tweedy look and I like it better than Rowan Summer Tweed.



I'm already about 8" into the skirt. One thing about the pattern to really pay attention to is the finished dimensions. Though the pictures suggests it's a dress, the length is really more of a tunic. To compensate, I'm adding 6" in length. Since I didn't start out with a swatch, I'm pausing now to block what I have so far and will figure out whether any additional adjustments will be necessary.


In the meantime, I found something else to fall in love with: Nuno Magazine. This is a new magazine, published in pdf format by 2 incredibly creative sisters, Elizabeth Abernathy Graham and Rachel Abernathy Braff. It's an impressive venture, filled with all kinds of cool craft projects using found, reclaimed, and recylcled materials. There are some projects that involve felting old sweaters to make cool pebble jewelry or new hats. Another couple of projects find new lives for old sweater sleeves. There's an article on how to unravel a sweater for yarn, and repurposed yarn was used to make this absolutely charming pillow project:



The sisters' interests and talents seem far-ranging and there are lots of non-fiber crafts. My favorite is a twig diorama made in a wine crate. Awesome!

(Photo credits Elizabeth Abernathy Graham)

The digital magazine is only $5, and you can even get a free preview. Oh, and did I mention that some of the proceeds go to a charity that helps send Liberian girls to school? What's not to like?