I just finished up the last touches of dismanteling and remanteling my Roslin. I chronicled the entire disemboweling in pictures and none of them turned out, but I feel the need to include some pictorial evidence of my entrails travails (entrails — get it?: disembowel…oh, never mind!)! The pictures could not be retaken because these were one-time photo opportunities.
Per Surly’s request, here is a crappy picture of Rossie before I took a scalpel to her:
The surgery required removing the ribbing and grafting on the newly knitted bottom portion (knitted like the original pattern this time ;)). I know a lot of people hate to do grafting (aka Kitchener stitch) and would rather give up knitting than graft 268 sts! It does not bother me, which proves I’m an oddball.Â
Here I slipped a smaller needle through the row I wished to keep — everything below will be removed (the color in the picture is absolutely horrid!):
The above white marker was used to mark the center stitch. I had to make absolutely sure that I grafted center stitch to center stitch. In the next picture you can see that I snipped the yarn of the row below the row on the needle and pulled it out all the way around — this picture is both ugly and blurry!!:
Here, I’m grafting the new bottom half to the old top half. I started at the center front stitch but left enough tail to graft back the other direction (from the center out to both sides). I did not bother doing that on the back. On the back I worked from right to left across the entire back.
 Here is the finished job (the color is much closer to true):
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The last step was to attach the top of the kangaroo pocket. I counted rows, centered the stitches again and “sewed” it to the sweater — a close up:
The back:
And a close up showing the back grafting line:
I think it turned out as expected and will improve with blocking, when I get to that point down the road. The only difficulty was due to the tendency of shetland wool to stick to itself — the grafting yarn and the sts were trying to “become one” as I went along!
Will it fit better? Will it look better on me? Who knows (and who cares!!)? I’m not about to reknit the bottom a third time, so it will have to work!Â
Now it is on to the sleeves — which means a trip to the yarn store for knitting needles — can you believe I don’t have the Size 5’s I need?!? Bummer! ;) In the meantime, I have picked up Lyra again, so the time is well spent.Â
I was heading to St. Paul today anyway. The Minnesota Knitters Guild annual Yarnover event is on April 12 this year (the website lists all of the instructors). I am on the planning committee, and we meet today. Yarnover will be held at Hopkins High School for the first time — it is a beautiful venue. We are really excited about the program this year.
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