Last year I made Leon Stra Boy, from Contemporary Irish Knits. While I really like it, it was too long from the very beginning
and it hasn't become magically shorter over time. Leon mainly wears it
around the house, because it looks a bit like a dress. So I decided to
shorten it. Since it is knit top down, I knew I was going to have to cut
it, but for some reason I thought I could
just hack off the bottom and magically the stitches I needed would be
free, I'd put them on the needle and then I could knit on down. I tried
that, and it didn’t work. I couldn't find the stitches. It all just sort of sat there...
Luckily, because
this is 100 percent Blue Faced Leicester,
the stitches were going nowhere. I discovered that I needed to snip just
one thread and then unravel it. It was rather time consuming, sort of
like kitchenering in reverse, but I eventually I had all the stitches on
the needle, and I reknitted the seed stitch
border.Now it fits him like a jumper should and hopefully he'll get a lot more wear out of it.
I'm really glad I made the effort to get this jumper 100 percent right,and now I'm looking at some other jumpers and things, trying to see how I can make them better. the first thing i am going to do is hem a pair of suit trousers that have been waiting for a cuple of weeks, and then we'll see what else can be fixed.
Hi Sharon, I want to knit the Straboy but I can't afford the $30 CANADIAN pattern book in addition to the yarn... Was wondering if you would be willing to scan & share it? I contacted the author of the book (Carol) and she said she wasn't allowed to sell patterns separately because of an agreement with her publisher but wouldn't mind if I tracked someone down to share it with me... Let me know if that's a possibility for you! eloquentellen@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteHow frustrating. I got rid of the pattern book as part of a huge cull a while ago. Maybe have a look at Drops Designs. they do free patterns, and I think they've got quite a lot of cabled designs.
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