Living at the bottom of a cliff suits me. Although the urbanities are not far away, I feel as though the cliff has my back, and keeps things wild and simple. I am content to get no phone calls, a cliff thing. Good friends come over, instead. The huge boughs that drop without warning, make great garden ornaments and, not one has landed on my car! In a perfect cliff dwelling world I would now be filling buckets with the blackberries that I, and every bird in the Lower Mainland, have been eyeing all summer. But instead, beautiful birds that travel in packs, descend, eat like piggies, then wobble off a few minutes later, leaving Lila the Labrador bewildered. Tweet to you, too! Tonight, however, they missed a few! Twenty blackberries! Twankyou!
The Autumn Mist Cardigan is ready to be steeked, the process of cutting a front opening for a cardigan. At the moment my sweater appears to be a pullover, with markers either side of the centre front steek stitches. Steek stitches are a margin of extra stitches knit into the area that will later be cut open. This allows the knitter to work on the right side of the fabric, knitting in the round, making it easier to view, and build the fair isle design.
The first step to prepare for cutting, is to crochet with a very sticky fine wool found here and a small crochet hook. The crocheting reinforces the area where the cut will be made and is done, in a vertical line, from bottom to top of the sweater, through each stitch. When both lines of crochet are complete, there will be a centre stitch easily identified for cutting.
I chose to reinforce the steek a little more with machine stitching. The zipper foot is perfect for tucking in close to the crochet on both sides.
I used my best sewing shears and slid a cutting board inside the sweater to prevent cutting the wrong fabric!
The next step is to fold back the facing and pick up and knit the stitches for the button band. An Addi lace needle found here makes short work of the pick up process! The cardigan is so colourful that the band may be brown. ‘still playing. On Sunday morning the fair isle students will cut open their precious knitting! Does this take courage? Oh yes! and chocolate! and inspiring music!
