The Big Reveal

Remember the Miette Knit Along I hosted with my friend Jo?  Well, we're both done with our sweaters now and we finally got some pictures of them!  I got Alicia to take my pictures when I was over at her house on Sunday, so one of my photos includes her adorable cat, Pluto.

Check it out!  How cute is Jo?  And can you believe that this is the first sweater she's ever knit?!  Here the zoom out:

Jo is going to be posting some pictures on her blog today as well - although I'm not exactly sure when "today" is in New Zealand!  I have a hard time wrapping my head around that International Date Line.

I know a few of you KALers are still working on your sweaters, but if you joined us and finished, and you'd like to have me add your picture to this page as well, just drop me a line with your photo and I'll add it in!

EDIT  7.12.12:  Linda L. sent me a picture of her finished Miette this morning - love those red buttons against the celadon sweater!  And she's got a brand new blog to go along with her new sweater!!

Miette 15: The Buttons!

Mostly pictures this time!  Just to show you how to get the buttons placed correctly. You may want to click to enlarge some of the pictures so you can read the captions better.

         And you're finished!  Wear your new sweater proudly!

Miette 14: Button Bands

OK - I know I said this was going to be the last Miette post, but I think I'll have to do one more to keep it from being too long.  I'm also going to format this a little differently, because there's so much information. I did make a few more videos the other day, and rather than post them here, I'm just going to give the links and send you on your way to YouTube if you care to watch them.  I've also got lots of photos I want to share here, and I'll be giving you the most important steps for the button bands, so that the videos are really just supplemental.

The videos are:
Miette Button Bands, part 1
Miette Buttonbands, part 2 - inconsistent, I know!  I really ought to fix that . . .
Miette Button Bands, part 3

Before I move on to the photos, I want to confess that I made a mistake both on my sweater and on the video.  When I got to the point of picking up the stitches for the button bands, I didn't even look at the pattern, I just picked up my sweater and did the first one with no buttonholes.  Then when I got to the second band (the left one), I did look at the pattern, and I got confused because there were no instructions in the pattern for making the buttonholes!  And I said so in the second video!

Well, I was wrong of course!  There are instructions for making the buttonholes, and they are on the RIGHT button band, as they should be for a woman.  I was confused by that too, because I know that buttonholes go on the right side for women.  How do I remember that?  With this little mnemonic:

                     WOMEN are always RIGHT!

So don't be like me.  Read the pattern, even if you don't intend to follow it!

Now, some of you may not be following the pattern for the button bands either, because a lot of us have made adjustments to the length of the fronts, so the number of stitches stated in the pattern won't work for us.  And to be honest, even if I haven't made any changes, I only use the number stated in a pattern as a guide - I want to be somewhere near that number, but many times it doesn't matter if I hit it exactly.

So the rule of thumb when picking up stitches along the vertical edges of a piece of knitting (as for button bands) is this:

                Pick up 2 stitches for every 3 rows.

What this means is that you pick up a stitch in each of the first and second rows, and then skip the third row, and repeat across the work.    This works because knit stitches are wider than they are tall.  It gives the picked-up stitches a spacing that is almost always just right, and it's the easiest method I know of.  If you're not sure how to pick up stitches, I show it in the 2nd button band video.

The first group of photos shows the stitches all picked up, and the work has been turned to work the first row of ribbing.  Note that you will need to figure out how to evenly distribute the K2, P2 rib along the number of stitches you picked up for your button band.

The picked up stitches sit backwards on the needle.*  What this means is that the left side of the stitch is in front and the right side is in back, opposite to how they usually are when knitting.  I like to knit (or purl) into the left side of the stitch in this first row to twist the stitches - I feel this makes the first row much neater.

Another trick I wanted to tell you about is this:  when you bind off the right button band, keep the last stitch live on the needle, and let it become the first stitch of your neck band.  This will make the edge very neat, and eliminate two ends to be woven in.

After you pick up stitches across the button band, you'll come to a straight section on the front neck (remember those ten stitches we cast on in row 25?) followed by an angled section at the side neck and then straight sections across the sleeve top, back, and the other sleeve top, finally angling again down the left side neck and straight across the front neck again.  

On the straight sections, pick up one stitch in every stitch from the body - these will look like vertical "rows".  On the angled sections go back to the 2 stitches for every 3 rows rule, knowing that you may need to add in an extra stitch here and there if the spacing looks too far apart as compared to the stitches you've picked up on the straight sections.

The last thing I want to mention in this post is that you may notice that my button bands are wider than the pattern calls for.  I made my button bands 9 rows deep rather than 5, because I knew that I wanted to use slightly larger buttons.  To accommodate those buttons, I changed my buttonholes as well.  Instead of working them k2tog, yo  I did  k2tog and then a double yarn over, simply passing the yarn around the needle twice rather than once.  This makes the hole a little bigger.

I also had to change the spacing of my buttonholes.  I talk about how I figured it out for my sweater in the videos, but each sweater will be different because of differences in gauge and number of stitches - you may even want to change the number of buttons on your sweater.  To help figure it out, here's a great online buttonhole calculator.  Just plug in your information, hit enter, and all the math is done for you!

*  Jo brought it to my attention that this is only true if you pick up the stitches with the yarn in your left hand like I do, or with a crochet hook.  If you pick up the stitches with the yarn in your right hand, they will be oriented correctly on the needle.  In that case, I would twist the first row of stitches by knitting or purling into the back loop of each stitch.

Moar yellow, pleez

Yesterday afternoon I wore my new Miette sweater for a very special occasion:  I had my first blogger buddy meet-up!  It was so fun!  I met new knitter, blogger, MMMer and Miette KALer Alicia from Iron-On Maiden - seriously, isn't that one of the best blog names ever?  Alicia is sweet, funny and articulate - all my favorite things - and she's practically Sewing Royalty because she has met and been fabric shopping with the one and only Peter of Male Pattern Boldness!

I had meant to take a couple pictures, but we tore through almost 2 hours talking and comparing notes about knitting and sewing and I completely forgot!  Oh well - next time!

So instead you get some pictures of the new sweater I started the other day.  This one is actually from my list too!  Meet the beginnings of my Antibes:

Have I mentioned I love yellow?  This is some 4-Ply Cotton I stashed a couple years ago when it was discontinued.  Since that time I've been working my way through all I bought, and have so far made six sweaters.  This is number seven, and I've got enough for one more after this.  I do love this yarn and wish it hadn't been discontinued.  The new version, Siena, isn't quite the same.

Anyway, this is a short-sleeved polo shirt, and the stripes are somewhat textured:

Which is nice, because it keeps the work from being too boring, but it's got enough stockinette to keep it from being too "thinky" also.

This evening's knitting, however, will be some swatches to use in taking macro photos to show you all a couple things about picking up stitches for the button bands.  I thought it would be easier to show on plain stockinette - and also, I was just dying to finish my sweater!

The Miette post I do on buttonbands will probably be the last of the KAL, unless someone has a topic they need help with that they'd like a separate post on.  I'm also considering moving questions to the flickr group discussion board after the last post.  I think it will be a little easier for me to keep track of that way.  Anybody have any ideas or requests regarding this?

Sneaky McSneakington

Miette 13: Sleeve TV!

I spent yesterday making and uploading some movies.  They're pretty long!  If you're not a knitter, you might want to skip this post!

Miette 12: Sleeves!

I'll warn you right up front:  this is going to be a long and picture-heavy post.  The good news is, once you've gotten to the sleeves, you're almost done!  Each sleeve is only about a third of the stitches of the body, and they decrease from there, so they're much quicker to knit.

I have a lot of pictures because I'm trying to show you a couple of my tricks step-by-step, and now that my beloved Picnik is gone, I can't edit them into a collage.  I'm hoping to try these again in video when I do my second sleeve, which may be easier to follow.  But I'm not 100% sure that will work out, so I'm going to put up the pictures today.

First let's take a look at the body so far:

I worked a couple extra rows of ribbing, because I liked
the proportion better.

I omitted the purl ridge before the rib, and I didn't do the kbl
rib the pattern called for, I just did plain 2/2 ribbing.

Once you've finished the body, it's time to pick up the stitches for one of the sleeves. The best way to do this is with your circular needle, threading it through the live stitches that are held on the yarn.  Thread your needle through all your sleeve stitches before removing the yarn - you never know when a stitch will get dropped, so it's nice insurance to leave them on the yarn until you're sure they're securely on the needle.

Once they are, you can cut the waste yarn and slide it out.  Now you've got this:

See that big gap under the arm?  The pattern tells you to pick up two extra stitches there, which will fill in that gap and be decreased in the first row, to get you back to the number of stitches you started with.

Now, I diverged from the pattern here, but you may not need to.  Here's why:  I have big biceps!  (I do regular weight training.)  In my size and with my gauge, my sleeves would only be 9.5" in circumference if I followed the instructions.  My biceps are 10" when not flexed and I really don't like my sleeves to be too constricting.  So I decided I wanted 0 ease in the sleeves.  Zero ease means I want the same measurement in the work as my body measurement.

At my gauge of 5 stitches to the inch, I needed 50 stitches to cover my hulking muscles.  I had 47 stitches already on the needles, so I decided to pick up four extra stitches under the arm, two on either side of center,  to give me a total of 51.  AND I didn't decrease these right away.  In fact, I didn't follow the pattern's decreases at all, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Here's how I picked up my stitches:

Here's that big gap . . .

and here I'm picking up the first stitch, using a new ball
of yarn and leaving about a 6" tail.

I picked up 2, placed a marker and picked up two more . . .

then continued knitting.

From there, I just continued knitting around and around.  I know some of you haven't knit in the round before, and are a little intimidated by it, but it's really easy!  No turning the work and purling, you just keep knitting and knitting around and around.  The marker is the beginning of the round ("row"), so every time you get back to the marker you've worked one row.  This is a good introduction for you to knitting in the round, because the stitches were already there for you - you just had to pick them up and knit them.  When you start something new and are knitting in the round from the beginning, that's where you'll have to be careful and not twist your cast-on row.  But we don't have to worry about that here!

Now, even though we picked up those stitches under the arm to fill in that gap, you're still likely to have some unsightly holes - I sure did.  Never fear!  I have a cheat for that too!

Here are my yucky holes, after I've knit a few rows.

I turn the work to the inside, and start pulling on some of
those loops from the back.   

Eventually you'll find one which, when pulled, will seem to close up a lot of the holes!

Pull it until the holes look as nicely closed up as possible,
without scrunching the work, and then tie it in a little
overhand knot.

Now here it is from the front - much better!  But I can still
fix a few of the remaining holes.

Go to the back of the work again, and using the length of
yarn left from when you picked up the stitches, start to
weave in and out around the remaining holes to close
them up a little more.

In and out . . .

and across . . .

and in and out . . .

and when you're happy with how it looks, weave in the
rest of the yarn to finish it off and secure it.

Et voila!  Isn't that so much nicer?

Ok, now here's how I shaped my sleeve.  The pattern has you work 35 rows, and then begin decreasing - if you're not adding stitches like I did, you can just follow the pattern from here on out.  But my sleeve had 4 more stitches than it ought to, to fit my big 'ole arms:

Perfect!  Not too tight, and not too loose!

So I worked the 35 rows straight, and then did paired decreases on the next row and every 5th row after that 4 more times.  What's a paired decrease?  Decreasing one stitch either side of a marker.  So my decreases went like this:  

          k2tog, k to last 2 stitches, ssk

          work 4 rows straight

          repeat these two rows 4 more times

The paired decrease eliminates 2 stitches per row, so working 5 of them decreases 10 stitches.  I had 51 stitches to start with, and I needed to get down to 40 stitches, because the lace pattern is based on a multiple of 8 stitches.  So after working the decreases above, I needed to get rid of one more stitch before starting to do the lace.  Here's how I did it:

          knit to last stitch of round, remove marker and slip this stitch to the left-hand needle, knit this stitch together with the first stitch of the next round

Here are my paired decreases.  You may
notice that I've switched to DPNs - the
circular needle I was using was too  short!

After I finished my decreases, I did the lace row as per the directions, again omitting the purl ridge before the ribbing like I did in the body.  I also worked 8 rows of ribbing, rather than the 10 the pattern called for, just because I like that proportion better.

When working top-down items, I find it best to do my bind-off with a needle one or two sizes larger than the needle I'm knitting with, to avoid having the edge too tight.

I also want to show you a little trick I use when binding off knitting in the round, to help it look a little neater.  The first bit of this is an old Elizabeth Zimmermann trick:  rather than just binding off every stitch, which will give you this at the end:

See how much higher the right side is compared to the left?

Instead, bind off to the last 2 stitches, then work those two stitches together (either k2tog or p2tog), and then pass the last loop over:

Quite a bit more even!

This keeps things more even, and also eliminates the unsightly loop you get from the last stitch.  I always do my binding off this way, both in the round and with flat knitting.

However, with knitting in the round, when you get to the end of the row, the right side is always going to be higher than the left side.  Why?  Because you're not really knitting rows - you're knitting one long, clockwise spiral!  So here's my little trick to make the very last bit more even still:

With the last loop from the bind off still on the needle,
go into the very first stitch you bound off . . .

and pick up a stitch there.

Now bind off that stitch as well . . .

and draw through a loop of yarn like you normally would
to finish a bind-off.  Now both sides are level!

BEFORE you cut your yarn, try on your
sleeve to  make sure it fits well.  If it does,
you can cut your yarn and weave in the end.

Ta da!  Here's the first sleeve!