Even though I measured him and measured my knitting every step of the way, when I had finished the body, I realized it was just too short by only about 2 inches. What to do, what to do.
I had one ball of the grey yarn left which is the colour of the bottom half of the sweater. I decided to cut the sweater in two just below the two-colour work, pick up the stitches around the bottom half and knit up using the remaining ball of grey yarn. Then I would graft the bottom half to the top half. I had done it before on a glove I had knit and it worked out well.
So today at my Wednesday afternoon sit 'n knit, I began separating the top half from the bottom half. First, I snipped the yarn at a side seam. Then I unpicked this yarn all the way around, thus separating the upper and lower half. It took about an hour and a half. I then 'spit joined' the beginning of the last grey ball of yarn to the bottom half and started knitting. Once I got a few grams short of finishing the grey yarn, I cut the yarn and began grafting the two pieces back together.
Here you can see where the two pieces had been separated and I've got about 1/3 grafted back together.
And here's the front.
Can you tell where I grafted it? Click on the photo for a closer look. The grafted round is a couple of rounds below the single red stitches where the two-colour work begins. You can see a stitch that the safety pin has caught. That's about where I began knitting after separating the top from the bottom. I'm pretty sure after I've wet blocked it, no one will be able to tell where the graft is.
Pretty neat, isn't it? I now have an inkling of what a surgeon must feel like after a successful operation.
Skip's birthday is on Monday. I kinda don't think I'll have the sleeves steeked, the shoulder stitches seamed, the facings tacked down and the neck knit by then, but I'll do what I can. I certainly should be able to have it done for him by Christmas.
That is REALLY impressive! I bow down to your grafting precision!
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