And She Knits Too!

Hate Honey Hems

I'm glad that my mini-tutorial about hems was so well received.  I wrote it before I was actually done my hems.  Before I put it on and found out the sweater looks like ass (to borrow a Harlot phrase that is a perfect descriptor). 

It wasn't that the hems were awful, but that the sweater was a bit too short and was missing something.  It was the wrong sweater to hem, it needed some kind of border to give some definition to the reverse stockinette.  Kim Hargreaves is a good designer, I bet she considered that in her design deliberations. 

I disliked it enough to forget to take photos before I jumped in and fixed it.

And I also forgot to take photos while I fixed it.

Nonetheless, here's what I did. 

Since I had a nice row of purl bumps at the edge, I picked up those stitches and knit a garter stitch border equal to the button bands.  Then I carefully unpicked all that half-kitchener (watching Stranger than Fiction for the second time helped pass the time--it's a delightfully charming movie) and frogged the hems until there were 2 rows left and then I casted off. 

I'll show you when I show off the finished sweater (that I like!) next post.  I love my new job, but uploading photos at work is probably not a good thing to do (we won't discuss the whole blogging at work thing).

Hemming Honey

I finally got around to doing the finishing work on Honey.   I decided to change the pattern a bit and do a hemmed edge instead of the garter stitch borders.  I didn't knit in the hem because I found it hard to do with the slippery silk and bigger gauge.  Vanessa suggested I use a provisional cast on and then do a "half kitchener" to sew down the edge.  A great idea and since I had one piece finished before I had this advice, I could compare and contrast.

This is the first one with the regular cast on:

There is a bit of a harder edge on this one--it doesn't really show differently on the front side, but it is less elastic.

This one is grafted on and runs along the bottom of the needle (I don't have a program that puts arrows onto photos).  It's completely seamless.

I should add that this sweater is in reverse st. st. so I did my hems by making the knit side the right side for 10 rows and then changing to the purl side which makes the fold line and the neat hem on the inside.

Here's how to do the grafting.

First unzip your provisional cast on and put the live stitches on a needle.  Run your sewing needle through a stitch on the body of your sweater:

Then put your needle through the first live stitch as if to knit and drop this stitch off the needle.

And then through the next live stitch as if to purl (just like kitchener).

Then through the next stitch on your sweater.  Easy.

I'll show you what it looks like when I'm finished.

I Love Summer

Long holiday weekend, sunny days, a big lake, sand...

 

and socks.  (Vesper sock yarn in a watermelon colourway) 

Oh and beer, but that was after the beach.

View from the laneway

My neighbourhood, like many in downtown Toronto has a winding path of laneways behind the houses. They're good to bike on since they're pretty quiet and they have their own charm. Mostly you see garages in various states of good repair and a few yards--nothing fancy since most houses are quite old and the yards are very small. I bike by this yard every day and am always bemused by les poulets (click to embiggen).

 

I discovered this place when Emma told me their were chickens at one house. While it would be a bit odd for someone to have poultry in the city, it's not totally impossible. I was pretty surprised to see very realistic chickens on a stone surface. What's funnier is that the owner brings the chickens in at night (or when there is bad weather) and they all huddle together in the sun room their beady eyes looking longingly at their pecking grounds.

I keep wondering if they are real stuffed birds brought from their homeland in an attempt to re-create a pastoral scene.  Whatever the rationale, it's pretty frickin' weird.