theraineysisters knitting and so much more

I work one day a week in a yarn store, sometimes more if they need me. I do it for fun, for the contact with other knitters, and for the discount. Ahem. One of my favorite things to do is to help a knitter solve a problem. Some are easy, some are hard, and some demand to be shared.

Earlier this week, I helped a very sweet elderly woman who was trying to knit a top down raglan cardigan for her granddaughter. One reason she had apparently chosen the pattern was that she wanted to do something a bit different and learn something. She had done the collar and started the sets of increases for the raglan shaping, but she wasn’t sure she was on the right track. Something looked “off.” The first thing I noticed (my vision is not what it used to be, but still) was that she had used ring markers to indicate where the increases should go. Unfortunately, she had knitted them into the sweater. They were embedded into the base of the collar and would not be removable without cutting them or unraveling all of her knitting. Unraveling is what we did because, without the markers, she had been guesstimating where to do the increases. Instead of four straight lines radiating out like spokes, she had a spiral thing going on.

I helped her unravel back to the markers. Then I picked the stitches back up, went over the directions, and watched her knit several rows to ensure she understood how to do the increases and slip the markers so that they would not longer be a decorative addition to the sweater. The underlying problem was that she hadn’t understood the true purpose of the markers or the construction of the sweater. Once I explained what the directions meant and how that created the sweater shaping, it all made sense to her. It goes back to my earlier blogs on mindful knitting.