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From The Rainey Sisters Ravelry Group: March 24, 2018 Tip of the Week

This week’s tip is about sewing buttons onto knitted garments.  Buttons can make or break a garment and are an essential finishing detail.

We use matching sewing thread instead of yarn.  If possible, we prefer to buy buttons with shanks, but sometimes the perfect button doesn’t have a built-in shank, so you need to make your own with thread.  The shank lifts the button off the surface and should be deep enough to match the thickness of the buttonband.  This lets the button rest on top of the buttonband when buttoned, instead of unsightly pulling.

Susan’s Funky Grandpa

You can use anything as a spacer when making the thread shank – a dpn the thickness of the buttonband fabric works well.  Sew the button on using the spacer to create the required gap and then wrap the thread tightly to form the shank.

Because knitted fabric stretches, it is often helpful to attach the button with a backing button.  This is a non-ornamental button attached to the wrong side behind the actual button to create stability.  It keeps the button from pulling when in use.

Is the glass half full or half empty?  Is my Nadia’s Infinity Scarf too long or too short?  I say BOTH!!

I followed the pattern to a “T” but my gauge was off.  You start knitting with Noro Silk Garden, which had a larger gauge than the other yarns, so I think I started out with the correct gauge.  The designer even states that Lupita Nyong’o is tiny and you may need to add width and length.  I am not tiny, but did not add either!  However, Lettie has no arms and I still could not wrap this around her neck (Lettie, you have no arms, but you do have a lovely neck!!).

I did a 3-needle bind off to mimic the chain stitch in the photos.  There were several instructions in the pattern that did not seem to match the photos, so I did the best I could.  I will wear this when I go to the movie this weekend – I tried and failed last weekend.  The theater was old out!

Man, I am fickle…but I knew the detour would be very short!!  The latest Shetland Wool Week free hat pattern launched a couple of days ago, called Merrie Dancers Toorie.  And while it is no Baa-ble, it is a worthwhile knit for those who are serious about Shetland and fair isle knitting.  I used Jamieson’s Spindrift from my ample stash.

PS to Kathy: Kathy asked how difficult I would rate this hat.  I can’t really answer that!  It truly depends on your knitting experience.  If you have done fair isle hats in small gauge, it is not hard.  The top gets tricky because of the stranded colorwork on dpns with very few sts.  There is a little star or flower pattern at the very top, you are stranding on VERY few sts.  Quite awkward but when its done, it looks okay!

PS2: the hat looks a little better after blocking!  Smoother.

Tick…tock…tick…tock.  I am waiting until tomorrow when my last yarn arrives to continue knitting on my Nakia’s Infinity Scarf from Black Panther.

I am finished with the first two sections and ready to start knitting with Plaid Blanket (15% done 🙂 ).  I am loving this!  It is so “un-me!”  I am planning on seeing the movie this weekend, but doubt they will “pause” the movie during the infinity scarf scenes!!  No matter how loud I yell…

I am launching a new spring hat pattern and the introductory price is $1.  ONE DOLLAR!!!  For the first week, the pattern is one buckaroo.

Yoshino Cherry Blossom Hat

Jena agreed to be my model.  She looks so stunning in the hat!!  Beads and stranding, what could be more fun!  Get it now – the price goes up to $6 on March 17!!

I think I have a form of mental disorder.  My younger DD calls it FOMO.  Fear of missing out.  She and I also suffer from FORO (fear of running out – like my obsessive fear of not having enough half and half for my coffee 🙂 ).

What am I FOMO’ing about now?  Nakia’s Infinity Scarf from the movie blockbuster, Black Panther.  Have I seen the film?  No.  But I will once I get going on my scarf!!

Here is what did it for me.  You know how there is knitting in a movie and everyone on Ravelry goes crazy and starts a million discussion threads about reverse engineering the knitted item?  Well, in this case, a bunch of people also directly contacted Ruth Carter, the costume designer for Black Panther, and asked for the pattern for the infinity scarf worn by Lupita Nyong’o.  She contacted Jeff Gillies.  He is the person who actually made the scarf for the movie (with a knitting machine).  He kept detailed notes and was able to recreate the design, and then offered it free on Ravelry.   He used real knitting yarns like Noro Silk Garden, Malabrigo Mechita, and Madelinetosh Merino Light, so now there is a run on all of these yarns.  One has been discontinued, but I was able to snag them all with one acceptable substitute for a zillion dollars!

The colors aren’t even my colors 😉 , but my FOMO has settled down.  The yarns will take a while to arrive because some are back ordered.  I don’t care.  I have them ordered.  I can relax now…until another case of FOMO strikes!!

PS to Alison: I am excited to start on this, but the yarn hunt is still a work in progress!  I have two of the four yarns in my possession, and one more should arrive today.  The last missing link wasn’t going to ship until March 28, but I found a different source and hopefully it should arrive this week!  When I get all of the yarns, I will post a picture.

Just missing the Tosh Merino Light Plaid Blanket…it is ordered and hopefully on its way!

We tried yesterday to post our tip of the week on The Rainey Sisters Ravelry Group.  It just would not work!  The middle half would not show up.  So, here it is:

March 4, 2018 Tip of the Week
In our counting rows Tip of the Week video, we used the lifted increase.  We received some questions about that so we thought we could add it as this week’s tip.  It is always nice to have several tools in your knitting toolbox so you can use the best technique for the situation.

Lifted Increase:  These increases knit into the left or right leg (left leg of st –> V <– right leg of st) of the stitch in the row below.  They are easy to do and fairly invisible.  Like all increases, they can create some stitch distortion, but when spread out as in sleeve increases, it is minimal.  To reduce distortion, do not lift the yarn onto the needle, but simply knit the stitch in place.  We call the right leg lifted increase RLI, and the left leg is called LLI.

RLI:
Knit to the position of the next increase.  The right leg we will use is shown with a marker in the picture below.  Lift the right leg of the stitch in the row below, place it on the lefthand needle, and knit it like a regular stitch.  Then knit the stitch that is was next in line to be knit.  One stitch increased.

LLI:
The left leg of the stitch below can only be reached after knitting the next stitch on the needle.  This appears to place it one row lower than the RLI, BUT it really is in the same row as the stitch used to create an RLI.  The marker in the picture below is placed on the left leg of the stitch we are going to use BEFORE we knit the next stitch on the needle.  If you have trouble finding this when you are first trying to use this increase, keep the marker in place until you complete the inc.   Lift the left leg up and then knit it through the back loop because of the way it is positioned.  You do not want to twist the stitch.  One stitch increased.

The following pictures show the increases in the same direction they were worked (“right side up”  shown with up arrow) and also “upside down” shown with down arrow.  The really cool thing about these increases is that they look like k2tog and ssk decreases from the other direction!  This means that topdown sweaters with increases will look like regular decreases when being worn – crazy!

There are of course many youtube videos and other sources for information about these increases.

PS to Robin F. — Knitting terms are not always consistent, but we tend to think of a knitted make one “m1” (left or right) as lifting the running thread between two sts and knitting it with a twist (see PS2 for more).  This increase causes stitch distortion to the sts on either side AND to the sts above it in the next row.  To avoid this, you can do a YO in place of the m1 and twist it on the following row.  Of course, repeating m1’s stacked row after row (as in raglan shaping) can be a pretty design element.

PS2 to Shiphrah99:  You are right — left and right m1’s are determined by how you seat the running thread (RT) on the needle.  A right slanting m1 is made by lifting the RT with the left needle tip from back to front and knitting the st.  A left slant is created by lifting the RT from front to back and knitting it through the back loop.  The lifted increases we are showing are another type of increase.

The Weekender Designer Meet and Greet!!  Last evening I met Andrea Mowry, designer of The Weekender and Find Your Fade fame.  She is absolutely darling and of course very talented!!  I thought everyone would be wearing her Weekender but I was the only one.  Many were wearing fade shawls.

I will be taking her advanced brioche class tomorrow, so in preparation I did some brioche knitting this week to try to get back into the swing of it.  I have done brioche in the past but it’s been a while!!

Homegrown Brioche Hat

I used Malabrigo Worsted (feels like cashmere, honestly!!) and just kind of did my own thing.  The pom came from an Etsy shop that I had seen advertised on Instagram: Threadheadknits1.  This is the large pom and it is HUGE!!  Jena loved it!  I did use the button “Tip of the Week,” of course!

Jena now has a set of hats:

PS to Nell: The leather tags are of my own making, with help from friend Kim.  I created the design and she printed them on leather with a special printer they have at home!