À Stretchy Bindoff and Kitchener Stitch

Poppy has been knitting like a fiend, finishing her Icelandic sweater for our upcoming trip. She recently consulted with me about how she should do the collar as she was modifying it from the original pattern. She decided to do a crew neck by knitting a ribbed collar and folding it, anchoring the edge inside where the yoke meets the collar.

Her first attempt yielded too tight a bindoff so we had to figure something else out. I invited her over to my place so we could solve the issue. After another failed attempt on my part, I realized we needed to do a stretchy bindoff at the same time we were attaching the edge of the collar to the inside. This is the bindoff we used:

Knit 2 sts, slip the first stitch over the second one, do a yarnover and slip the remaining stitch over the yarnover, leaving one stitch on the right needle. *Knit another stitch, slip the first over the second, then yarn over and slip the stitch over that. Repeat from until all the stitched have been bound off.

The final task was to graft the stitches that were on holders under the arms. I showed, then taught Poppy how to do Kitchener stitch (grafting) joining two swatches together. 

Next I put the stitches from the two holders onto the two needles and started grafting a couple of stitches. I taught her the little chant, “Knit, slip, purl; purl, slip, knit”. Then let her do the rest of the stitches on the first underarm. We then got the stitches for the second underarm onto the needles and she did the whole graft by herself. Brava!

Then I showed her how to darn the holes on each side of the graft, running the darning needle around like a drawstring, then weaving the end in. 

She’s so proud of her beautiful Icelandic sweater!

 

All that is left to do is to weave in the ends and block it. We’re getting so excited for our trip to Iceland and Norway!

March Stitch Day

My guild has a stitch day the first Saturday of every month, all year long - even in July and August when we don’t have our business meetings. Yesterday I worked on two projects.

Cardinal’s Winter:

And Autumn Quaker:

Since I got the framing done on Live on Little, I can start a new project. I have The Light of Winter all kitted up and the fabric selected. 

I’m pleased to have found someone who wants to take my piano. I dreaded having to send it to a dump as it had sentimental value for me. My mom had purchased it from a friend when I was in high school, heading to post-secondary music studies, and needing to upgrade my piano skills to an acceptable standard. My mom gave it to me when I moved into my first house - glad to have it out of her house. It has been in my houses for the past 43 years. 

I have already found an electronic keyboard on Marketplace that is very portable and won’t take up a lot of room wherever I put it. I still have most of my sheet music and look forward to hauling it out again and noodling a bit on the keyboard. There is so much stuff to get rid of. I’ll keep plugging away it it bit by bit.