Knitting

Still Needs A Bit More

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Responding to my reinforced / visible mended sweater Donna DeCourcy wrote:

“I think your darning is wonderful and you really have created a unique item with more life for the garment. My comment is this: I think your friend has a good idea with adding a little more darning at the shoulder, only because it will draw the eye upward rather than linger in the middle. I had an art teacher once who taught us to be conscious of where the eye travels through an art object and my eyes stayed on the darning you already have.
That is it! That is my 2 cents, for what it is worth.”

I wasn’t going to anything further but Donna’s argument made sense to me – instead of keeping the eye at my thickened middle, I should add further reinforcement closer to my shoulder to draw the eye toward my face, which I did last night.

Further Embellishing on Right Shoulder

With the sweater on, it’s obvious I still need to do more! I need more darning closer to the center – a couple of small patches like the ones just at bust level yet attached in some way to the work I did last night.

I can see this project may have no end! Once that’s done, I’m sure I’ll decide I want some darning on the back as well!

Maybe Not Finished But Wearable…

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Sweater With Visible Mending

You certainly can see the wear pattern on the sweater – worse on the back of the right sleeve and right front. A bit more concentrated just below the boob on the left front.

Yesterday, I wore it to show a friend; she suggested a bit more darning on one side closer to the shoulder. But I think I’m leaving this where it is, for now.

A One-of-a-kind Garment!

Other wear spots aren’t jumping out at me with the white turtleneck shirt beneath. The knitting in the sweater isn’t looking obviously threadbare anywhere else.

I think this job has been a success. I averted holes, save the garment from the garbage bin, and have myself a new interesting wearable sweater.

When You Can’t Throw It Out…

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I have a peachy/red sweater in my closet – I’ve owned it for at least 40 years – bought it at Mills Brothers when 100% wool sweaters were the norm. I have worn it a lot as the wear patterns attest. There are no holes – yet – but I haven’t had it on recently because my white turtlenecks highlight the worn spots.

I’m not sure what prompted me, but yesterday I looked at the sweater, thought about putting it in the garbage, but instead went through my yarn stash and found a ball of variegated sock yarn in shades of peach/red and decided to try repairing the sweater, instead. I thought about darning the worn sections but in the end decided Swiss darning was more appropriate.

Wear on the left front
Repair started on right sleeve
Both sleeves reinforced
Beginning of repair on right front

When I placed a piece of white paper inside the sweater the wear spots jumped out! There’s actually a LOT of reinforcing needed. Because I don’t actually have holes that need fixing, I am able to “duplicate” stitch my way through the thin sections, reinforcing the stitches in the sweater. It’s a slow process with lots of yarn ends needing to be woven into the back of each reinforced section.

At the moment, I have both sleeves “done” (I may do more). I’ve started on the right front – rather than one very large patch, I’m planning to create several smaller sections – I can always join them up if I need to.

I’m not sure what the repair is going to look like when I’m done or whether I might actually wear the sweater when I’m finished! I just need to get back to my darning and see what happens.

Jeddore Variety

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New Socks

On November 19, a friend and I did the annual Eastern Shore Annual Seaside Christmas trail – starting with a visit to Harbour Breezes Day Lilies where I picked up some delicious home made cranberry/orange compote. We visited a bunch of craft shops but our best stop was Jeddore Variety just before you get to Jeddore (from Halifax). One of my friends in the building who lived in Jeddore for many years raves about the store; she always comes back from shopping there with lots of goodies.

I made some amazing finds there – my best buy was sock yarn for $13.99! I bought two balls, including this one. Should have bought more! Lots of interesting gadgets and arts and crafts supplies. Prices were unbelievably low for quality goods! Definitely worth a trip of its own.

I liked how this pair turned out. A good colour combination, too.

On to the next pair – probably the same pattern in greys and rose shades. Should be satisfying to make. Maybe I’ll even keep them – the colours fit with my wardrobe.

Repair and Wear

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Sweater Front
Sweater Front
Repair
Repair

I have no idea how long I’ve had this wool sweater. I bought it from LLBean at least 40 years ago! It’s warm, versatile, comfortable to wear. It hasn’t shown signs of wear until recently when I discovered I had worn through the left elbow, so I repaired it. At the time, I didn’t notice any other wear, so I put the sweater back into use. [BTW, I use the sweater as a pullover, so I stitched up the front binding shortly after I bought it so it wouldn’t pull between the buttons – it looks better that way.]

The other day I discovered the front binding (between the second and third button from the bottom) was seriously worn and ready to lose stitches! Just in that spot where my clothes rub against counter tops! Yesterday I mended it.

I though all I had to rework was the top binding, the edge of which was coming apart; but once I’d done that fix, I saw the damage was more extensive – both front panels were thin extending about 1 1/2″ from the midline. I dug out sock yarn leftovers in colours as close as I could get to match the existing yarn and got to work with some Swiss darning.

Not a bad job, if I say so myself. Look closely at the repair and you can see where I did the reinforcing stitches, but from a distance you can’t see anything was wrong.

Knowing how to repair knitwear is a good skill to have in your repertoire. Flora Collinwood-Norris does a brilliant job of darning (and Swiss darning) to restore knit garments to a wearable state. She has written books, and gives online classes. I have neither the books, nor taken classes, but I can see from the photos on her website how this work is done. I’m nowhere as skilled as she is at rebuilding a worn patch in a knit garment, but this repair is definitely acceptable and will extend the life of my sweater for quite a while (until the next wear spot shows up and I’ll fix that, too).

Take a look at Collinwood-Norris’ repair work. It’s worth knowing how to fix knit garments (socks, included).

Latest Socks

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I finished these socks last evening. A nice yarn to work with.

The pink was on the outside of the ball which meant I’d never get to the second pink stripe for a size 7-8 sock! So I rewound the ball in order to have both pink stripes come through.

I enjoyed knitting with this yarn even though the transitions were so subtle. It was difficult finding the matching location – the ball label said the yarn would make two matching socks – the manufacturer just forgot to mark the begin/end in the centre of the ball. It took a bit of careful study to find a similar location for starting the second sock. I didn’t do too badly – the match is almost perfect.

These socks are in the gift pile at the moment – they may make it to my sock drawer….

A Close Match

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Remember, I described the challenge of working with this yarn? How the sections of colour were too long so the transitions were not going to allow me to finish with a blue toe. That I had to cut out segments of the various greens to finally reach the blue.

The difficulty was trying to judge the transition segments so the colour demarkations were more blended. I didn’t succeed entirely, I was better with the sock on top – the first one, I think, than with the second. However, the recipient of these socks won’t notice any difference – I’m just being an obsessive perfectionist! The important part of the sock is the leg, anyway. Nobody sees the foot inside the shoe.

The next pair I’ve got underway is definitely BORING – an alternating pattern of magenta, brown, beige, pink stripes.

I haven’t reached the end of the first repeat which seems to involve at least 10 stripes – I’m trying to decide what I can do to liven up the colour palette. This is one of the Hobbii “Silly Socks” balls of yarn I ordered a couple of months ago – I’m not sure what I have in the “leftovers” collection that might intersperse with this to make it more interesting – but I want to do something!

Half A Pair Of Socks

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This has probably been the most labour-intensive sock I’ve ever knit!

The lovely dark blue and canary yellow ball of yarn caught my eye when I saw it at LK Yarns a couple of weeks ago. What I couldn’t know was the rest of the colour pallet was dull. I knit the yellow cuff then I pulled out the yarn from the centre of the ball (which I always do), found a medium blue yarn and started knitting. I expected the colour to change within a reasonable number of rows – didn’t happen – 25 rows into the sock I was still knitting medium blue – no yellow or dark blue in sight! When I peered into the centre of the ball, I could see a range of pale greens, but it was clear the last colours I’d get to would be the yellow and dark blue.

This particular ball of yarn turned out to be exactly two pattern repeats – each pattern intended to be a single sock – there was a white segment in the centre of the ball to mark the end of the first repeat. So I was going to end up with a very dull sock!

I unravelled the medium blue back to 9 rows, then picked up the dark blue from the outside of the ball and started knitting. The leg turned out mostly bright blue/yellow – just turning into the soft green as I began turning the heel. But then I ran into more green and more green. A sock for a size 7 1/2-8 shoe was going to finish on a pale green and never get to the medium blue. So I started splicing the yarn. I knit small amounts of the various greens until I got close to the toe, the I picked up the blend into a pale blue, then spliced it again to get to the medium blue to finish.

One sock done. Now I have to watch closely while knitting the second sock – carefully counting rows, so I can work up a colour match for the second sock.

Not gonna buy that yarn again!

Silly Socks

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Silly Socks (Happy Clown 09)

These were fun socks to knit! I bought the yarn from Hobbii in Denmark a couple of months ago. I’ve purchased yarn from them for a couple of years and found it a nice weight and texture. The patterns have for the most part turned out interesting socks. These were the brightest I’ve ever knit!

The only challenge was the ball of yarn had some knots where during the winding process the yarn broke and it was joined manually – distorting the pattern. I ran into both knots while knitting the first sock. The first happened between the green and blue transition – I had to unwind quite a bit of yarn to find an approximate location for a match. The second knot happened just after the heel where the solid yellow was abruptly ended and joined to green. At that point I cut out the knot, threaded one yarn into the other knit 5 stitches, trimmed excess yarn and carried on.

I had to be careful on the second sock to match the location when I got past the heel. I was pretty successful making an approximate match – my two socks turned out the same! I didn’t encounter any further knots, thank goodness. It was also a good decision to knit the cuff in yellow (I didn’t know at that point I’d lose most of the yellow solid section). It gives a colour balance to the finished sock.

Socks

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Hobbii Silly Socks (Circus Princess 04)

Finished this pair yesterday while watching Wimbledon action – Alcaraz vs Jarry. Not Alcaraz’s best play – his first serve wasn’t working well so he was playing a defensive tennis against a competent opponent.

The socks are rather sedate – but I liked the soft colours and enjoyed working with them which is why I chose the soft pink as the complement colour.