Friday 7 November 2014

Nearly done Puffining

The knitting is finished on my Puffin sweater.

Well, the 'live' stitches at the underarms need to be grafted and I don't like grafting - not just the actual stitch, but I find it stretches a bit as well - so I'll attach them together with a three-needle cast- (bind-) off instead as I find it gives a neat finish as well as adding stability.

I know there are a couple of my blog-readers who aren't knitters, so a quick note about the sweater's construction.  This is a sweater that's knitted in one piece (no seaming - hurrah!) from the bottom up to the neck, so the body and sleeves are each knitted up to the armpit and then the stitches are put on a piece of yarn until all three elements are at the same point.  Then, the stitches are picked up onto one circular needle, with a certain number of stitches put on waste yarn so they can be grafted together once the sweater's finished.  These stitches form the underarm 'seam' where the sleeves join the body,  If they weren't there, the sweater wouldn't fit very well and would be uncomfortable to wear.



Can you see the two pieces of cream-coloured yarn by the hole?  They're the two bits of waste yarn that are holding the underarm stitches.  It sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Before I knit the two sets of stitches together though, I'm going to sew in the ends of the yoke, plus the other ends from knitting the body and sleeves.  I'm estimating that there are 55-60 ends to be sewn in.


I'd best get to it, hadn't I!

I'm hoping to have this sweater soaked and laid out to block by the end of the day.

Apologies for the quality of the photos.  It's horribly dreary weather-wise today.  Windy and rainy - my least favourite kind of weather.

2 comments:

  1. A lot of sewing in there! That is the worst bit of any yarn project I think. I look forward to seeing it all done though as it looks very nice! xx

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  2. It's looking brilliant. Good luck with sewing in all the ends - never anybody's favourite job!

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