Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Knit surgery - or Do not try this without

confidence,
There are some things that sound like a good idea, and they are a good idea, but undertaking them requires a leap of faith. Even more so when the work belongs to another knitter.
This week there has been more knitting on the grey band around the blanket .. those seemingly never ending rounds ... so progress is slow and honestly the blanket looks much like the last post. But the end is in sight ... I'm now working the points at the top of the lace ... so counting down to a colour change and direction change.

Alongside that project .. I have spend some time with another knitters project, K's Balletomane. K was lovely enough to want to knit Balletomane before the pattern was ready .. and so didn't have the advantages of the photos and finished pattern and diagram. As soon as I shipped her the finished pattern .. she mentioned that the shape she had knit was not the shape in the photos. Opps - totally something I had missed, a sentence to the effect that when working the shoulder ... one needed to make sure one was at a particular side of the work .. before separating the two sections to work the yoke. If one was not .. then the shoulder would be constructed 'upside-down' or 'backwards'.

Opps.
But I'm not one to walk away from a knit problem, well I am sometimes but this seemed so fixable. In simple terms, there were two possible fixes, the shoulder section needed to be removed and swivelled 180 degrees, and then grafted back into place .. or the entire side of the ballet-wrap needed frogging and reknitting. Reknitting is kind of boring .. so I offered to perform the surgery. K was incredibly trusting, either that or she didn't fully realize what I was proposing to do to her beaded shaped knitting ....

Which was this. Here is her knitting once I had removed the shoulder but before I had rotated the shoulder piece. One I turned the shoulder section 180 degrees I grafted it into place the right way around.
So far so good, grafting garter stitch takes a wee bit of planning, making sure that one side is a purl row and the other is a knit row .. and then keeping attention as to where to thread the yarn to make the new stitches.

Tricky and fiddly but it is possible.

I'll show you the finished section once K has given her seal of approval.



Oh - and this is the first K has seen of it .. so K - remember to breathe :D

Na Stella

3 comments:

Knitting Linguist said...

Eek! I bet poor K about had a heart attack when she saw that first photo. But I also bet it turned out beautifully. That is a lovely Balletomane, too - the color is gorgeous.

otagogirl said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
otagogirl said...

I giggled- somewhat hysterically, but still an upbeat sound, as I know the surgeon's hands are swift and sure. And truth be told, I couldn't face ripping back those beads.
I'm so grateful that you offered to fix it- and I'm happy to be able to get on with the Balletomane now that it is fully recovered- you'd never know!