23.06.2007 | 18:20

It's all in the details

Here is an ordinary beige cardigan made of Novita Olivia: knitted in one piece to the armholes and then divided into three, raglan sleeves, seed stich edgings, nothing fancier than a shaped waist, just plain old stockinette until you get bored of it and then more. At the moment the first front piece is ready and the back is just started.

Here's the same cardigan in the same phase traditionally under a cat.

But look at this! It's a waist shaping!

Oh, you've seen waist shapings before? Right. I just wanted to tell you that "slip two stitches knitwise at the same time, knit one and pull the slipped stitches over" looks really nive. Why haven't I tried it earlier?

Because the waist shapings turned out to be good and after decreasing you should usually increase, I had to think how to make the increases equally good. Thanks to the book Victorian Lace Today, I ended up using the "pick up the yarn between stiches" increase because I had recently learned that there are two ways of doing it: one way leans to the right and the other to the right. I had done it in the the left-leaning way and now I learned the right-leaning way and kept patting myself mentally on the back for that. (You just pick up the yarn the other way round to the needle and that's it.)

I apologize for the messy stiches. Olivia does split easily. Besides, it's summer and time for balcony knitting. And it's Midsummer. Anyway, once I started with the finesses, I also decided to abandon the good old "slip one, knit one, PSSO" as well as "knit two together through the back loops" decreases and try SSK (slip, slip, knit) instead - and it looks nice.

Yes, this Midsummer has opened my mind and offered new experiences.

The same goes for Frank whom we took out for a walk so he could hide in the grass and we could forget-him-not when he's among the forget-me-nots...

« Nöf nöf | Blog | Yksityiskohdat ovat tärkeitä »