Saturday, March 20, 2010

I'm either really brave or really stupid...

These are pictures taken last Sunday when I decided (at midnight) that I wanted to try to cut this baby up the middle before I went to bed.  As my post title suggests, I was either really brave or stupid because I know that if my crocheted steek failed, there was absolutely no way I was EVER going to get to sleep that night.  Did I happen to mention, that I have NEVER crocheted a steek before and that I learned it watching demos on YouTube?  I'm leaning more towards stupid right now....  And here's a link to the demo video I used, in case you ever wanted to know how to crochet a steek.

 

So, this is a shot of the completed steek.  I was able to follow the demo pretty well and thought it looked pretty good.  It took we a good couple hours to finish it and I started at 10:00pm after finishing knitting the final portion of the collar on the neck.  So, anyway, here's a action shot of me cutting my cardigan. 


While I wasn't feeling too nervous at the time, I did ask Brian to come in and offer bother moral and photographic support.  It was so strange cutting between the stitches and watching them almost pop apart.  I'm telling you, this techniques is not for the faint of heart!


So, here she is!  All cut down the middle and no, my cardigan didn't unravel slowly before my eyes.  My goal was to get her done so I could wear her to work on Tuesday and knitting that night, but that goal was a complete failure.  I still had to close up the arm holes and pick up and knit stitches on both side of the steek for the button bands and those proved way too much to do in one evening.  I did manage to graft the arm holes together using the kitchener stitch, a great technique for knitting two pieces together virtually without a seam.  A good video for how to do the kitchener stitch is here.  And I also knit one button band and got a few rows into the other one before calling it quits are a ridiculous hour (probably 1am).

 However, at this point, she's been done for four days.  I just haven't been able to get any good pictures to share yet.  But, with this lovely change in the weather and me having a couple days off to enjoy the daylight hours, I should have some final product pics in the next few days.  More importantly, on Wednesday of this week, I was finally able to wear my beloved cardigan :D

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jo, it looks incredibly beautiful. Hope you enjoy it for many years. Also enjoy this beautiful weather.
Love Janet

jjphotoFTW said...

Thanks! I hope to get to wear it a few more times before the weather gets too warm.