Tag Archives: sewn

A little more mending

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You know how I was so proud of the visible mending I did the other day on my favorite sweater?

I was totally patting myself on the back, pleased with how well it turned out and how much I liked the little red patch. I even was thinking that I should add some decorative bits of visible mending on parts of the sweater that don’t strictly need mending yet. You know, for aesthetic reasons.

Well, in a real Icarus moment, I went to further admire my handiwork yesterday, and I realized that… I hadn’t actually fixed the cuff. It turns out that I had only patched up part of the thinned-out section. Sigh.

Oh well, I guess it’s an opportunity for me to get a little more color introduced to the sweater, albeit not for “aesthetic” reasons. Ah well.

I picked up the dropped stitches with a little sapphire-blue wool, reinforced the cuff edge with some fairly random stitches and then locked the whole thing down with a little blanket stitch.

It’s not as tidy as the red patch was, but I was pressed for time and this should hold well enough. Fingers crossed that I’ve got all the loose ends this time around. But, if I don’t, well, then I guess I’ll just keep adding colors.

Have you ever had to go back and re-mend something right after you thought you fixed it?

Don’t ever stop knitting: Joining part 4

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We’ve been talking about joins for a while now, and we’ve already got a bunch of options.  But, because you can never have too many options (or skeins of yarn), I’ve got one more for you.  It’s at the upper end of fiddly-ness scale, but in specific instances, it’s totally worth it.

Check it out:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAUnravel three or four inches of the end of your old yarn.  (This works best with multi-plied yarn, rather than single-ply.)  Separate the plies out.  Leave the new yarn intact.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATake a thin tapestry needle and carefully sew each of the plies one at a time into the end of the new yarn.  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATry to sew the plies into the new yarn along different paths, weaving them together to form a nice, sturdy join.  Be patient with yourself; this can be tricky to do. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPros: This join results in an invisible transition (no ends to weave in!) that doesn’t rely on getting spit everywhere.  This join also works really well with non-feltable yarns (like acrylic and cotton).

Cons: Probably the most complicated and tricky join we’ve talked about.  It doesn’t work super well with single-ply yarn (but you can make a bitchin’ spit join with single-ply wool).