Arwen and more baby knitting

Top-down baby sweaters are really easy. This one was knit in 1x1 rib using Swish superwash and following the usual formula for a top-down raglan with cables from the harmony guide thrown in for the entertainment of the knitter.

Following EZ's advice to make a hat as a gauge swatch proved to be project-saving advice since my row gauge went from 7 stitches / inch to 8 stitches / inch when washed and dried (a loss of 12%, I think). Always, always launder gauge swatches in the manner that the garment will be laundered.



After finishing the back and left front, and using short-rows to subsequently widen the sleeves, the Arwen sweater got put on hold in November. I recently resumed work on the right front, sleeve and hood. So far, using my LK-150 to knit the stockinette sections of the sweater has been fairly easy: the only really tricky part to handle was casting on stitches for the sleeves, then weighing the newly cast-on stitches down so that no stitches get dropped when the next row gets knit. The cable panel is also a quick knit, so I'm hoping I'll actually get to wear this sweater this winter.





And finally, here's Miss Dashwood on Christmas morning.

So I promised a tutorial

on how to do the sk2p (slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over) decrease faster, in one smooth motion. Well, here it is, instead of pictures of current knitting. This is partially because I've been concentrating on top-secret gift knitting, so no blogging about it, and also because the progress on Tara is reallly slow, and it looks exactly the same as my previous posts, it's just a bit longer. In other gift knitting news, I found out another friend is pregnant, so I'll be making 2 Baby Surprise Jackets. These adorable baby garments have been popping up like crazy on the internet (check out brooklyntweed's here) so I have to make it. The first recipient knows she will be getting one, and the other dosen't read this blog (I think!). So this way both recipients will still be surprised because they won't know which one they're getting! Hah!

Well, here we go with the tutorial, demonstrated on the Tara stole. I will start with a few words. First, I have noticed that very few patterns tell you if you should slip the stitch knitwise or purlwise. So if there is nothing specified, do it this way if you have a need for speed. Or you could try it both ways and block your swatches to see if there is really any difference. These instructions apply to slipping the stitch purlwise, not knitwise. The time saving step can also be applied to the left-leaning decrease skp (slip one, knit one, pass slipped stitch over) without much difficulty. I figured this out because the sk2p was really driving me crazy and slowing me down. So here we go...
Step 1: Here I am, starting with the yarn forward to make a yarn-over (yo). If you don't want a yo, start with the yarn in the back. So first you pass the left needle purlwise through the first stitch on the right hand needle, which I will have highlighted in yellow for all these pictures. Also note that my right hand (yarn feeding hand) is taking the pictures, so you should pretend that it's actually feeding the yarn instead of my left index finger as shown.
Step 2: with the slipped stitch nestled on both needles, manoever it slightly to the left and stab your right hand needle through the next two stitches. Hold your yarn like you are going to knit those two stitches.
Step 3: Wrap yarn around tip of right hand needle.
Step 4: Scoop loop through. Slide the 3 stitches off the needle. Really, at this point the slipped stitch will just fall around the 2 just knitted together. Now I'm using a loosely plied yarn so I like to give the resulting stitch a tug to see if I missed a ply, because the scooping process can tend to miss a ply every now and then. If you are using a sigle ply yarn this is a non-issue and you are off to the races!
Here's the result. Now you may be concerned that slipping purlwise will look different than slipping knitwise. Here's the unblocked comparison...
It's not noticeably different, the twist makes the slipped stitch sit in a different way, but it's really not noticeable to the casual observer. I'll take more shots when Tara's done and blocked.

Ivanova

Shawl collar tips

The baby kimono jacket is coming along nicely.

The i-cord edge rolls a little, but I don't care that much since the line of picked up stitches looks fairly neat.

I wanted to share a lesson I learned while working out how to do a shawl collar in a contrasting colour:

First pick up the stitches in the main colour, then start working the collar stitches in the contrasting colour. I found that picking up stitches in the contrasting colour looked terrible because of the gaps left by using only a fraction of the rows of curved neckline and having the selvedge show through.

I used a couple of Knitty patterns (Starsky and Folly) to figure out how to shape the collar with short rows. I knit 1 row in k1p1 rib (including the stitches from the i-cord edging, however I knit the last i-cord stitch and the first picked up stitch together to join the edging to the collar more firmly), placed markers at the shoulders, then did short rows at 2 stitch intervals in k1p1 rib until I used up all the stitches. Be sure to pick up and knit the wraps if you use the wrapped stitch short row technique, or whatever you're doing to prevent holes, while you're making the short rows. I did a couple more rows of k1p1 rib, then used the crochet bind-off. I wanted a firm bind-off edge to help keep the shape, which allows the collar to fold over nicely. We'll see how this looks after washing.