I'm Karen, a professional tailor who knits. If you need help with knitting math, contact me at kwehrleATgmail DOTcom.
For a limited time (until I get some testimonials), I'll help you crunch numbers for FREE! Really? Yes, really. Don't let another sweater go bad! Email me today.
Karen Wilson Wehrle, professional tailor and knitting fool!
Hello, fellow knitter. Welcome to my knitting blog. Thanks for stopping by. I’m Karen Wilson Wehrle, a professional tailor who knits.
Did the world really need another knitting blog?
Maybe not so much, but here I’ll share my enthusiasm for the craft and help other knitters or would-be knitters who might need assistance with knitting math, knitting mistakes, fitting tips or whatever else comes up.
Knitting is an adventure.
Even the best knitters have failed projects or things that don’t turn out quite as expected. Please let me know what you’re knitting. I’ll show you mine. I hope most are successes, but you’ll see the mess-ups, too. Then I’ll show how I fix them.
Thanks for spending time with me. I’ll do my best to make it worth your while. Please share your thoughts on the various posts in the comments. Happy knitting!
Best,
Karen
P.S.
I’d love it if you would opt-in for my free report, Knitting Mistakes–Top Ten Easy Ways to Ruin a Hand-Knitted Sweater. It’s there on the right. Don’t let another sweater go bad!
Once upon a time, men who knit were not unusual. Back in history, knitting was exclusively a male activity. Sailors knit their wool ganseys as a way to pass time on voyages and wore their sweaters as protection against bad weather on the open sea. Today, truckers who encounter more extended layovers while they wait for a load for their return trip fill their wait-time with crafts.
Real Men Knit
Eighty percent of truckers are men. The man in the photo is Kevin Abraham-Banks, a Sioux Falls, S.D., trucker who likes to knit while waiting. Here he’s knitting a sweater for his wife.
I would have guessed he’d knit a watch cap for himself–in black, maybe with skulls or a truck logo.
Other truckers have sewing machines in their rigs and spend downtime creating quilt tops. Some tour quilt museums or hunt up fabric stores on their routes.
Be nice to any gentleman who enters your shop with a faint trace of diesel fuel about him. Don’t assume he’s lost or was sent by his wife. He needs yarn for his own next project. If you’re too snooty or ignore him because you can’t imagine him as a customer, he’ll go elsewhere for his yarn. You just lost a customer. And he’ll tell his friends. You just lost them as customers, too.
What Goes Around Comes Around
History buffs know better than anyone how radically things change over time. I welcome men knitters–just as long as they don’t try taking knitting over again as an exclusive boys club. I don’t see women these days standing for it. We’re armed with pointy sticks and aren’t about to give up our Malabrigo and other luscious yarns, no matter what.
No worries. It won’t happen. Did you know women account for about 80% of all purchasing decisions in America? This includes buying cars! Women account for 40% or so of new car purchases. I read it in the news.
Since 80% of truckers are men, 20% are women–who maybe buy or lease their own rigs. I’m sure some of those women truckers are knitters, but their knitting isn’t news. How long will it be before the number of men who knit equals female knitters, so they’re no longer headline news?
The most challenging sweater seam of all is when you sew a set-in sleeve into an armhole. Two things can trip you up, even when you use the mattress stitch that can join sides, tops, and mismatched pieces of knitting. Use these tips for success.
This Curve Goes Into That Curve…How?
One reason sewing a curved sleeve cap into a sweater armhole offers trouble is because so often it seems like there’s too much sleeve or too big an armhole. If you pin or clip your sleeve into the armhole, you can ease any excess evenly. Plastic stitch markers shaped like a safety pin work great. There are special clips for this, also. Clothes pins, safety pins, or straight pins work.
Divide and Conquer
If you fold your sleeve down the center, you’ll find the center point at the top. Pin this spot to the shoulder seam of your sweater. Pin the front corner of your sleeve cap to the underarm corner of your front piece. Pin the back corner of your sleeve cap to the underarm corner of your back piece.
Now two more pins: one center front, one center back. They’ll connect a midpoint of the sleeve and a midpoint of the armhole together at both front and back. How’s it going? Need more pins? Another pin midway between your existing pins will help close each gap. By now your sleeve and armhole opening may seem well matched for a happy marriage.
Ready, Set, Sew
With a good length of yarn on your darning needle, push your needle up through the end of the shoulder seam and pull half your yarn through. Leave the other half dangle until you sew down the other side later.
Up the Down Staircase
The second challenge about sewing in sleeves is how the direction of your knitting changes as you go. At the sleeve top, you join vertical columns of sleeve stitches to side edges of sweater stitches. Slide your needle under both legs of a sleeve stitch, then slide it under a bar between sweater stitches.
After a few inches, your sleeve cap curves so you’ll join sides of stitches like it’s a side seam. You can slide under bars here. When you reach bound off stitches at the underarm, you’ll join vertical columns like it’s a shoulder seam. You can slide under both legs of stitches here.
Besides the mattress stitch, other knitting finishing techniques include the whip stitch, running stitch, back stitch, a crochet join and more for seaming. Some give your knitting a different look, or serve a different purpose, like making a handle, or give your knitting a decorative touch.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Here are two videos for you from BerrocoKnitBits. The first shows how to set in a sleeve.In the other Norah Gaughan demonstrates mattress stitch with an eyelet near one edge. Enjoy!
Have your poor knitting finishing techniques ever ruined a hand-knitted sweater? Then you already know there’s a radical difference between a beautiful hand-crafted sweater and one that screams home-made because of bad seams. One secret to success with seams is blocking your pieces before you join them. Your edges will lie flat so they cooperate with you as you stitch. Let’s examine how the mattress stitch joins side seams and shoulder seams.
Side Seams Can Vanish
The mattress stitch (odd name, eh?) can join two pieces of knitting side-to-side as you join a back and front of a sweater. Because knit stitches run vertically on both pieces, this seam is so invisible, it disappears.
Bar Hopping
If you pull on one edge of your knitting, you’ll see little bars connect columns of stitches. You can use bars inside the edge stitch or between the first two stitches. Whichever you choose, use it on both pieces. This ensures your seam will disappear with no odd half stitch in sight.
Most often you seam with whatever yarn you knitted with. Exceptions include very heavy yarn, which makes too bulky a seam, or novelty yarn that’s either so breakable or lumpy you can’t pull it through stitches. You can choose embroidery or sock yarn instead, whichever best matches your sweater in color and washability.
Working from the front with a darning needle threaded with yarn, slide your needle tip under the bottom bar on one piece. Pull your needle through, leaving a tail you’ll weave in later. Now slide your needle under the bottom bar on your other piece and pull it through. One strand of yarn loosely connects both pieces.
Go back to your first piece, slide under the next bar up. Back to your second piece, slide under the next bar up. Back and forth you go as you work upward bar by bar, leaving your yarn somewhat loose for now. After you’ve done an inch or two, you can tug the yarn so it snugs both pieces of knitting together. It’s magical how your seam disappears, eh?
Shoulder Seams Have Legs
When you join a sweater front and back at the shoulder, you join bound off edges. Instead of sliding your needle under a bar, slide it under both legs of the first knit stitch on one piece. Ignore the bound off edge. On your other piece, slide your needle under both legs of the first stitch, again ignoring the bound off edge. Work back and forth as you connect both pieces of knitting. When you tug the yarn, the seam closes over both bound off edges making them disappear inside the sweater.
These two ways of using the mattress stitch will join most of your sweater pieces. What’s left is the worst seam of all: sewing a set-in sleeve into an armhole. Conquer this knitting finishing technique and you can do anything.
Two great books on finishing techniques are Nancie Wiseman’s book “The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques” and Janet Szabo’s “‘I Hate to Finish Sweaters’ Guide to Sweater Finishing.” Here’s a video from KnittingHelp.com teaching the mattress stitch. Enjoy!
Do you know this new knitting technique for three strands of yarn? Before, if you didn’t have three skeins, you’d make three balls with a scale, calculator or guesswork. Or use two ends of one skein. While you knit, balls would roll, strands tangle and an intrigued cat added more trouble. Try Navajo knitting.
Wait, Don’t You Mean a Spinning Technique Called Navajo Plying?
Yes and no. People who spin yarn do Navajo plying as they spin, which turns a single ply into triple-ply yarn without using three bobbins or for saturated color repeats. Navajo knitting uses the same technique, except you create tripled yarn while knitting.
How Does It Work?
Make a slip knot in your yarn and leave a loop big enough to put your fingers through.
Reach into the loop, grab your strand of yarn and pull out a nice long loop.
If you hold your two loops of yarn like you’re stretching out a rubber band, you’ll see three strands all along the way between your hands, with a little link connecting two of them.
Knit a few stitches with this tripled yarn.
When you come to the last little bit of the loop, reach through it and pull out another long loop.
Continue knitting and making new loops as needed.
Make your loops as short or long as you like, but making fewer links may be preferable.
Do Those Links Show in My Knitting?
Lucy Neatby, genius originator of this knitting technique, says these little links don’t show much at all. Therefore there’s no need to pull out a loop from here to eternity. You may make each loop an arm’s length or whatever you (and your curious cat) deem most enjoyable.
Is This Series of Loops Like a Crochet Chain–on Drugs?
Exactly. A crochet chain is a series of loops, each one pulled through a previous loop. The size of each loop is determined by the size of your crochet hook.
In this case, there’s no crochet hook, just your fingers. If you want super-sized loops, have someone hold your knitting while you run down the hallway as you make each new loop. It could be good exercise.
What Are The Pitfalls?
You might knock over the cat or blacken the eye of someone sitting too close as you pull out a loop.
You might experience dangerous stash enhancement.
How’s that possible?
Do you have a cone of yarn you stashed away? Maybe it’s some fine-strand silk so gorgeous you couldn’t resist buying it, but can’t face winding it into multiple balls for knitting?
Well, now you can use that yarn or any other nice, affordable knitting machine yarn for any number of delicious projects. Oops, do you suddenly have more projects than you could knit in a lifetime?
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Now that you’ve been warned, here’s Lucy Neatby’s video showing how to do Navajo knitting. And a big thank you to French Press Knits for hooking me up with this knitting technique.
How many times have you invested money and hours of your time into knitting a sweater that made you look like Cinderella’s carriage–when it was a pumpkin? Or a horse’s hind end? Yeah, me too. The trouble wasn’t our knitting, but choosing a style unflattering for our shapes. Here are tips for how to dress for your body type so your next hand-knit sweater makes you look like a dream.
If You’re Top Heavy
You’re bigger on top at shoulders and/or bust than at your hips, so what style of sweater looks great? One with vertical elements minimizes the top, plus horizontal elements at the bottom bring balance. A sweater with a V-neck, scoop neck, vertical lines or details reduces your top visually. A hem detail, pattern or different color at your hipline brings balance. End sleeves anywhere from elbow to wrist.
If You’re Bottom Heavy
You’re bigger at hips or thighs than up top, so what brings more visual balance to your body? A wide neckline, yoked sweater or horizontal detail at your upper body makes you look wider there. Look for vertical elements at the hem, which should end either above or below where you’re widest. Sleeves should end anywhere except where you’re widest. Wear your cardigan unbuttoned entirely or open only at the bottom for a vertical element.
If You’re Balanced
Your top and bottom match so keep them balanced. If you make a yoked sweater, add design at the hem as well. Three-quarter sleeves can draw attention to your waist, whether you have one or not. Vertical elements like cables top to bottom with neckline and hem details can look great.
Keep these tips in mind as you decide which sweater pattern you’ll knit next out of the millions available. When you dress for your body type in a hand-knit sweater with balance-enhancing features, you’ll look and feel like a fairy godmother waved her magic wand over you.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Here’s something that will blow your hair back. Amy Herzog gives complete information, photos and a terrific commentary on how the patterns in the Spring 2010 Twist Collective work for each body type in the third installment of her Fit to Flatter tutorial at stashknitrepeat.com!
If you’re itching to knit, but comfort is an issue due to arthritis, you may prefer knitting needles that are warm and somewhat flexible in your hands versus cold, unyielding metal. Here are the best knitting needles for arthritis nowadays.
Wooden Needles
Warm in your hands, quiet while knitting and light weight, they may make for slower knitting as yarn doesn’t slip against wood as it does against metal. Choose from bamboo, birch, walnut and ebony as most widely available. They could split at the tips when worn, break more easily, and some beloved cats and dogs will chew them given half a chance.
Casein Needles
Casein needles are made from milk protein. Swallow, a company in Australia makes them. They’re lightweight, smoother than wood, warm, comfortable with a good combination of flex and firmness, and they’re quiet when knitting so you won’t disturb others. They have a range of colors that sometimes look plasticky.
Plastic Needles
Bryspun and Pony Pearls are made of warm, smooth plastic. Bryspun are a dull gray, more available online than at your local yarn shop. Pony Pearls are colorful and reinforced with steel wire that can rattle inside.
How Do You Know Which You’ll Like?
Trial and error. Each person’s hands and knitting movements make the choice of which needle feels best very personal. Each yarn you use changes the feel also. How much slip or grip does each combination make? Which do you like today, which tomorrow?
Most knitters enjoy having many needles on hand. Some needles get held hostage in an unfinished project for a spell. You may enjoy one size best and have several projects going at once. Who doesn’t like grabbing a spare pair or different size from a stash for casting on when inspiration strikes? May you find your best knitting needles for arthritis among these choices.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Clara Parkes at KnittersReview has more excellent information and comments from users. Check it out.
What makes one sweater look hand-crafted and another one look home-made? Good yarn and good stitches help, but often the real difference is in the finishing. Even a premium yarn and most careful knitting can be wrecked with slap-dash blocking or seams. Here are four tips for making knitting look professional.
Knitting Techniques Count
You want a beautiful, functional fabric well-suited to your pattern. Not too tight and stiff for comfortable wearing. Not too limp or saggy so it has no shape. Even tension helps, but no one knits every stitch like a machine. Thank goodness blocking helps smooth out minor imperfections.
Pay attention to “rowing out” caused when your knit rows have one tension and your purl rows have another, perhaps looser, tension. Alternate tensions form a subtle stripe across your stockinette fabric. If you can’t hold your yarn tighter when purling, maybe with an extra loop around a finger, try a size smaller needle when you purl back.
Take care not to split plies while knitting. Of course you fixed any dropped stitches or other glitches as you went, right?
Blocking Makes a World of Difference
If you’ve ever knit lace, you know the magic of blocking can turn a lumpy mess into angel wings. Blocking other knits may have less dramatic results, but still make a significant improvement in your fabric. Tensions even out and relax, sometimes yarn blooms, becomes plumper and fills out any empty spaces.
Investigate how many ways you can block. Sometime you dunk it, squeeze out excess water and pin it out to dry the right size and shape. Sometimes you steam it, stretch it this way and that, then let dry. Other times pin out, spritz with water and let dry does the trick, or hit it with steam from an iron.
Seaming Can Be Killer–in a Good Way or Bad Way
There are many good seaming methods. Find which one bests suits each garment you make, based on fiber content and stability of the fabric.
Great knitters plan ahead from the day they swatch whether they’ll slip edge stitches–or not–for whichever method they’ll use for seaming. Others add an extra stitch at each edge, then absorb them into the seam. Some hand sew with mattress stitch, running stitch or back stitch. Others machine stitch. Others crochet their seams together. Just take care with your tension and placement of each stitch.
Buttons or Zippers? Oh My!
If you want a button that will never fall off, sew it on with good thread, secure the tail, and clip it. Then, do it again. Yes, sew your button a second time with another length of thread. One may fail, but not both.
Buttonholes may need extra stability with a grosgrain ribbon backing. Sew it on so the ribbon lies smooth, no loose puckers, no drawing the knitting too tight, with buttonholes in ribbon and sweater matched up.
Sew in zippers with special care so you don’t stretch or shrink the knitting or get the yarn too close where it will get caught in the teeth when zipped up. Sometimes ribbon, binding or a knitted facing inside makes a wonderful finish.
Do these tips make you sigh? Some knitters enjoy finishing, others would rather eat worms. If making your knitting look professional will enhance your enjoyment, hire someone who knows how to finish off a sweater. Meanwhile you can knit another!
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Oh, look. Someone must be off mousing, because there’s no cat lying on that damp sweater being blocked. Tsk, tsk. Every cat knows a garment can’t look professionally finished without cat hair!
If you’re a short person interested in knitting a sweater to fit, how do you adjust your knitting pattern? Your primary problem with store-bought clothes is excess fabric in the upper part of a shirt, blouse, top or dress. Straps are too long. Necklines are too big. Clothes fit you better if you pinch up your shoulder seams as if to hang them on a clothesline. This same alteration works with knitting a sweater to fit. Here’s how to adjust your pattern.
The Crucial Part
The distance from your nape to waist is shorter than your pattern’s. If you need less fabric from armhole to waist, just knit fewer rows or rounds. You also need less fabric as you knit from armhole to shoulder seam. If you reduce this distance by one inch, for instance, you must also reduce the sleeve cap height by one inch. This ensures the sleeve will fit into the armhole.
Easiest Adjustment Comes in a Drop Shoulder Sweater
For a drop shoulder sweater, knit a shorter body, shorter sleeves, and sew them together. If you have waist shaping or sleeve shaping, you’ll adjust the decreases. Say you cast on at the wrist and gradually increase to the sleeve top, but want one inch less in length. If your swatch says eight rows equals an inch, you want eight fewer rows. Maybe you’ll increase every seven rows instead of every eight. This forms a gradual line from wrist to upper arm, as your pattern expects.
Next Easiest is a Sweater Knit in the Round
A raglan or yoke sweater, whether knit bottom up or top down, will need fewer rounds between neckline and underarm. Maybe you’re told to decrease (or increase, if working top down) one stitch each side of body and sleeves every other round. You may need a double decrease several times along the way from neck to underarm. Maybe every second or third decrease would be doubled. Or you could skip a plain, or non-decrease, round every second or third time. Either way makes for a smooth transition from neck to underarm.
Most Challenging is a Set-In Sleeve Sweater
The back, fronts and sleeves will all be affected. However much you shorten one, you shorten them all. Your pattern might say to decrease a stitch each side eight times after you bind off some stitches for the underarm. You’ll still need those eight decreases, but maybe do one less row between decreases.
If you figure a good way you’ll knit those decreases over one inch less of distance on the back, the front decreases will be rather similar. You want the same smooth, gradual angle the pattern expected along your armhole edge.
Plan your sleeve decreases next, omitting eight rows evenly spaced from armhole bottom to sleeve cap top. Again you want a smooth, gradual angle.
Make notes on your pattern, or a photocopy of your pattern, so you know before you cast on exactly what your changes are, where they happen and how. Then cast on with a smile, knowing you’re knitting a sweater to fit you just right.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Make sure you keep enough wiggle room in your new, shorter armhole. A sweater that cuts you in the pits? Not a good fit!
Have you found a new knitting pattern you can’t wait to cast on? Hang on a second. Would you leap onto a horse you never met and run a race? Not unless you like bucked off, bitten or run in circles. Let’s approach this set of instructions like a potential skittish horse, get to know each other a little.
It’s Cute But Is It Cute On YOU?
What sense does it make to knit a sweater that detracts from everything wonderful about you? There are good things about every person’s body shape. A good pattern for you enhances good things about your shape while it minimizes things you’d just as soon not have seen. Check finished projects on Ravelry and discover how your pattern looks when worn by a wide range of body types and sizes.
Read It Or Weep
If you’re convinced this style will increase your allure, read your pattern beginning to end. Do you understand every construction detail? If there’s a special stitch, are directions for it included in the pattern? Do you understand them? When you knit your swatch, see if the stitch is any fun or if it gives you fits. Try needles made of wood, metal or plastic in case different material or sharpness of points makes knitting it easier.
Sometimes what the pattern DOESN’T say makes trouble. Does it slide right over a construction detail you could do three different ways? Does it assume you’ll deal with a tricky bit of math on your own? Can you tell which cast on would work best with this pattern? Your favorite might be too stretchy or not stretchy enough.
Highlighter Manhunt
Go through the pattern again with a highlighter or pen in hand as you look for tricky spots. Mark which size you’ll make all the way through. If you plan any alterations, mark where they start and note down what you’ll do differently. Look for this killer phrase: “at the same time!” Mark this phrase and draw big arrows pointing toward all crucial starting points. If you’ll decrease for the neckline, decrease for the armhole, and work a little intarsia on the left breast “at the same time,” Mark Them All!
Show of Hands
How many of us have ripped back miles of knitting because of an unseen or forgotten “at the same time” instruction? Come on, fess up. It can’t just be me! Yeah. Hi there. Cried buckets did you? Yeah, me too.
If you use these knitting tips, you’ll learn your new knitting pattern’s good and bad points. Check for errata online, scribble in your own notes for waist shaping where none is provided, and mark where you’ll make your neckline deeper or shallower to better suit you. Now you’ll have more fun and less grief. No more getting bucked off head first into a barbed wire fence for you.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Some knitters follow a pattern to the letter every time. Some can’t knit any pattern without changing something. Which kind of knitter are you?
In continental style knitting, a knitter holds yarn in the left hand like a crocheter. In combination knitting, Annie Modesitt teaches us how to make purls like knits in reverse, which gives them a different stitch mount. I use continental combination knitting. Here are my pros and cons.
What’s Good About Continental Combination Knitting?
Continental style knitting is fast for me. My yarn is right there ready to scoop into a new stitch, just like when I crochet. English knitting has yarn in the right hand and you throw it over the needle for each stitch. I first learned English, but switched to continental for greater speed.
Combination knitting seems odd at first with knit and purl stitches mounted differently on your needle, but it has five distinct advantages–the last one something I just discovered.
A purl stitch is made just as quick and easy as a knit stitch–like a mirror image of a knit. No extra motions.
A purl stitch has the exact same amount of yarn as a knit stitch, not an extra long loop for the regular stitch mount.
Because a purl stitch has the same amount of yarn as a knit stitch, knitting back and forth produces no “row out” which happens when purl rows are a looser tension than knit rows.
When ribbing, the different stitch mounts prevent mistakes.
When doing cables, there’s no excess looseness between the last cable stitch and the next stitch.
While knitting an Aran sweater I read two comments about how to deal with the problem of looseness at the left of each cable. I studied my knitting, watched for looseness as I worked–and there was none. I credit combination knitting.
What’s Bad About Continental Combination Knitting?
At first the different stitch mount for purl stitches feels a bit strange. What feels even more strange is how stitch mount changes again when you purl back. Knit and purl stitches get remounted so when you work the right side again, they’re not sitting on the needle as before. This can take some getting used to.
Why bother?
It’s wonderful when you do ribbing in the round, because if you try to knit a purl by accident, or purl a knit, it won’t work at first. The needle doesn’t go in, you look down, realize you’re trying to mess up, then put the needle in the correct way. No mistakes. It speeds knitting twelve inches of ribbing for Socks for Soldiers.
These are my thoughts on continental combination knitting. It’s great for faster knitting with fewer mistakes. If you want to learn more, check out free tutorials on AnnieModesitt.com.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
My knitting doesn’t have the “row out” problem any more. My ribbing is smooth and even because my purls aren’t bigger than my knits. I’m delighted there’s no looseness alongside my cables. Paying attention to stitch mount has only enhanced my love of knitting. What’s not to like? Thanks, Annie!
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