Tag Archives: pull

Better late than never

This is one of my favorite/least favorite genre of project. It’s one of those tasks that I know I should get done right away, because if I don’t do it right off the bat, then it’ll sit in my “to be mended” pile for months.

And that’s exactly what happened.

At the beginning of Fall, my big kid was wearing their favorite stripey sweater. It’s a cute, scrappy project that I made for them about a year ago. It’s getting a little “well loved” but still has plenty of life in it.

Anyway, I was sitting, chatting with them, and they were wearing the sweater inside-out (because that’s something that 4-year-olds do, I guess). They noticed the ends poking out of the sweater, and since it was a “use up all the scraps” project, there are quite a few ends. Before I could say anything, they grabbed one end, said “What’s this?” and yanked with all their might.

Sigh.

It doesn’t look that bad from the outside, but it’s turned into a weird, 4-inch-long lump. (It’s the blue stripe right at the top of the red section… It kind of pulls in and makes the blue disappear).

But if you look to the inside… it’s pretty obvious that something’s wrong.

So, I thew the sweater in my knitting/mending pile and figured I’d fix it when I had the time.

Long story short… that was probably 3 months ago, and I’m not even sure if the sweater still fits the kid.

Anyway, in a fit of productivity this afternoon, I sat down for 10 minutes (with the kids crawling all over me, so I probably could have gotten it done in 5, had I been alone) and fixed the whole dang thing. I used a big needle to unpick all the super-tight stitches and redistribute the yarn. Simple.

The sweater is good as new! (I mean, not new. There are plenty of stains and the elbows are a little threadbare. But still.)

Why are the simplest tasks sometimes the hardest to finish?

Pulled out of shape

I have a sweater that I totally love.  It’s flattering and a really pretty color.  It goes with just about everything. I love wearing it.

But.

It gets pulls in it if you look at it wrong.

I don’t know if it’s the yarn or the stitch pattern, but something about this sweater makes it super easy to pull.  Velcro on my backpack  will totally mess it up, and I’ve accidentally zipped it in my rain coat more times than I would like to admit.

Luckily, pulls aren’t too hard to fix, if you’ve got two minutes and a tiny bit of patience.

First of all: Don’t cut them off!!  (I’ve had folks offer to cut off my pulls, and that makes me freak out.  There’s nothing scarier than a non-knitter coming at my favorite sweater with a pair of shears.  Holes in my beautiful sweater?  No!  *Shudder*)

OK, so here’s my pull.  It was kind of fluffy, because it got velcro-ed, so I tugged on it a little bit to straighten out the fibers in the pulled ply so I could see what I was doing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis pull is only one ply of yarn, so I have to get the rest of the plys out of the knitting to match this problem one.  Look at the knitting at the bottom of the pull to find the rest of the strand of yarn.  See it there?   (If your pull is a whole strand of yarn, skip this step.)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI used a tiny sock needle to really yank on the yarn to get the whole strand to match the single ply.  This will seem wrong, disturbing and uncomfortable.  It will look worse before it gets better, but I promise, it will get better.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANow, here comes the fun part.  Look to either side of your super-duty pull.  See where the stitches are all tight from all your yanking?  Use your needle to start moving yarn from the pull to either side and loosening up the stitches.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAKeep moving along, tugging the tight stitches and evening out the yarn to make them match the rest of your knitting.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOnce you’ve gotten most (if not all) of the pull redistributed, give your knitting a good tug in a couple of direction to set the stitches.

And, voila!  Your sweater is good as new!

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