Lets Knit Readers
Let’s Knit is one of my favourite magazines. As a new feature for the
Bulldog Krafts website I will knit up a project each month.
Photographs courtesy of John McLoughlin (www.johnmcloughlin.co.uk)
Issue 43, June 2011
From Green Party to Pool Party
This month I’ve knitted Fern in Super 10 Aqua!
This pretty top knits up really well in Butterfly Super 10 and the
bright bold colour is excellent for summer. I think this looks great in
Aqua but it is also nice in Sage and Teal so we have all three colours
on offer this month.
The two colours on special offer this month are Strawberry
and Regal.
|
Size:
|
8-10
|
12-14
|
16-18
|
20-22
|
|
|
Skeins of Yarn Required
|
2
|
3
|
3
|
4
|
|
|
|
Tips & Hints:
Lace knitting is looser than plain stocking stitch. If your
tension is normally a bit loose you might want to knit a test
square – if you have too few stitches per 10x10cm try using a
4.5mm needle.
When knitting patterns with a regular construction, everyone
knows that you need to match the number of rows on the fronts
and back. With Fern this is even more important because the seam
is going to be on the top of the shoulder and sleeve. When you
finish the first piece lay it out and work out how many rows
will need to be knitted for the second and third pieces (28, 30,
33, 36 cm). This means you will leave a 20cm opening in the
centre for the neck (another lesson I learned through
experience!).
I really don’t like sewing so I used ‘pick up and knit’ and
knitted piece four directly onto the other pieces. Since this
fourth part is rib there are actually more stitches needed than
there are rows to pick stitches up from – in my case it work out
that I needed 5 stitches from every 4 rows of the slip stitch
pattern (see below). This wasn’t actually a difficult task.
Because of the slip stitch pattern I was able to pick up two
stitches in the row with the psso – one before the slipped
stitch and one after.
How did I figure out that I needed 5 stitches for every 4
rows?
After assembling the first three pieces you count the rows
around the bottom edge. You already have the number of stitches
that you need to pick up from the pattern. I knitted the second
size so I needed 156 stitches and I had 124 rows. The difference
between these is 32. We want the extra stitches to be evenly
distributed around the bottom edge. If you divide 124 by 32 (I
round things off to make it easier : 12 / 3 = 4) you get about 4.
So, for each four rows you need to pick up one extra stitch!
Video
If you would like to see how to knit the Openwork Slip Stich,
I have a video of me knitting it.
Click here to see the
video.
|