Mother of Purl by Eig, Edith (best desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

from the bottom edge and finishing 3 stitches from the top, with the rest of the buttonholes spaced evenly across the border. Let’s say, for instance, that you need 5 buttonholes, each made of 2 spaces, and your border is composed of 92 stitches. Your calculations should be as follows: 3 stitches from the bottom, 3 stitches from the top, 5 openings of 2 stitches. You will need to deduct 16 stitches from the total of 92 stitches, leaving 76 stitches. For 5 buttons, you’ll need 4 spaces. Divide 4 into 76 and that will tell you that you need to knit 19 stitches between your buttonholes.

To make a buttonhole of 2 or more stitches:

STEP 1: Leaving the yarn untouched on the right–hand side, slip the first 2 stitches of the left–hand needle purlwise.

STEP 2: With your left–hand needle, lift the first stitch over the second and slip it over, then repeat this process one more time.

STEP 3: Place the remaining stitch back on the left–hand needle. Turn your work.

STEP 4: Placing your right–hand needle between that stitch and the next stitch on the left–hand needle, draw a loop, twist it, and place it on the right–hand needle. You now have replaced the first bound stitch of your buttonhole. Repeat this process until all your stitches have been replaced.

STEP 5: Turn your work and continue knitting or ribbing until your next buttonhole has to be made.

[EDITH KNIT TIPS]

Adding Length or Shortening a Finished Sweater

After you’ve completed your sweater, you realize your garment has turned out either too long or too short. If it’s too short, determine whether it can be blocked to the correct size. If this doesn’t work, you can still salvage it with a seemingly dramatic but really quite simple technique.

You’ve sewn your sweater together, blocked it, and it is still two inches too short. Here’s what you need to do. Take a knitting needle and insert it into a stitch a couple of rows above the ribbing. Gently pull at the stitch to create a loop and then cut the loop in half. Gently tug at the top and bottom of the sweater, which will separate neatly along the “pull line.” Use a smaller–size knitting needle than the one used to knit the garment, pick up the stitches on the main body, transfer to the original–size needle, and start knitting. Though it may seem odd, knitting doesn’t have an up or down direction. Even though you are now knitting in the opposite direction, your new stitches won’t look any different from your original ones. Knit until the body of the sweater is your desired length, then change your needle size, work your ribbing, and cast off.

If your sweater is too long, you’ll follow the same process, taking into account that you will need to add the ribbing so you will need to shorten accordingly.

TO THE RESCUE

Knowing how to reknit sections of your sweater, as I just described to you, is an invaluable skill. Recently, a client of mine, Laura, went on a family weekend to a log cabin in a state park. Bliss! She took her knitting, parked herself by the lake, and worked on a beautiful angora sweater for her daughter. That night an animal sneaked into the cabin and dined on the sweater, leaving a huge hole in the sleeve. When she showed up at my shop on Tuesday she was hysterical. Her hard work was wasted and her daughter was disappointed. They don’t call me the guru for nothing! I showed her how to separate the sleeve as shown on the previous page, then pick up her stitches and reknit the sleeve. Crisis averted.

If you are making a vertical border on a cardigan, I suggest that after you have finished the bottom border for the front, you leave the first inch on a holder then continue in pattern for the rest of the sweater. When you are ready to make the border, place the stitches that are left on hold for that border back on your needles and proceed in the stitch of your choice. When making a vertical buttonhole, split your work in half, attach another ball of yarn, and work the two sides separately for the desired length of the buttonhole, then cut one of the balls of yarn and join the two pieces back together. Repeat this process for the desired number of buttonholes. When the border is finished, simply sew it to the body of the sweater.

[EDITH KNIT TIPS]

Buttonholes for Men and Women

Here’s a simple phrase to remind you which side the buttonholes go on for a man’s garment vs. a woman’s: “Buttonhole on right side as women are always right!”

MAKING THE BORDER OF A V–NECK

For V–neck borders, you will need a 24–inch circular needle. When designing a V–neck sweater, you will need an odd number of stitches in order to divide your work equally. Put the center stitch on a plastic safety pin when shaping the neck, placing a stitch marker on either side of that center stitch. To make the border, start at the right back shoulder; pick up and knit your stitches in the same manner as for the crew neck. When ribbing your border, the stitch in the center will always be worked as a knit stitch, and it is on either side of that stitch that you will decrease by either knitting or purling two stitches together to form a mitered edge, the slant that forms the neck shaping.

Chapter Five

PERFECT FINISHING

I love to see my knitters discover their abilities and explore their imaginations. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a knitter find the art in their craft.

As important as it is to master the basics of knitting—knit, purl, make one—none of your hard work will add up to anything if you don’t understand how to finish your knitting correctly.