A Learning Experience

Five row stripes. I liked how they looked. It was the right width for what I was looking for in my sweater, and I had carried up the yarn while I was knitting my vest (in the round). Well at some point it is necessary to split the sweater to the front and back and knit the pieces independently and flat (back and forth). I never thought my five row stripes would be an issue when I started. But for any of you knitters you may know that odd rows end with the yarn on the "wrong" side of the knitting. Which basically would make it necessary for me to cut my yarn after every stripe. I was NOT interested in weaving in all of the ends this would have created.

The fear of weaving in ends led me to a logical yet scary solution. Steeks. I have never knit with steeks before when following a pattern, let alone just invent my own steeks. But I read. I read blogs, and books, and other patterns. Then I just made a decision and kept on knitting.

This is the vest, with 3 steeks in place. One for each arm and the center one for the v-neck. I used five purl stitches to designate my steeking zone. And because the yarn was not knit at a very tight gauge nor was it fair isle I knew I would want to reinforce the steeks and decided to crochet. Since I could do that on the road.

That is my blurry crochet rows... the road was bumpy and proper photos were difficult. Especially with the husband mocking me from the drivers seat. Next came the scary part. Up until the next step I always had an escape plan- frogging. But unless I cut the steek I wouldn't have a vest I could wear. So I finished my coffee....
and got to cutting! EEEK! No scary scissor photos. I wasn't brave enough to stage one while in the car. But this was my end result.

I had some trouble, the cast on edge and cast off edge wasn't as secure as I had wanted. Some knots were tied. I need to figure out what went wrong, but in the end I had a good steeking experience. It was pretty fun to be honest. My definition of fun is pretty lame though.