Phoney seam

[celticdragonfly]

Last night I did the row that splits the sweater into five sections - the two front yoke pieces, which are sitting on spare circular needles, the underarm sections which are sitting on spare yarn, and the back yoke piece, which is on the main needle and I'm working on it now.

When I did that, and came around to the underarm section, I got to do the phoney seam. This is a knit stitch at the center of the underarm, which when I got there I then dropped the stitch - allllllll the way to the very bottom. A formidably disturbing prospect, that. Then I take a crochet hook and pick it back up, but instead of one bar each time, you hook TWO bars through, then one, then two again, etc, all the way back up to the top. The purpose of this is to help the sweater hang straight and fold properly.

And it works. The whole sweater now wants to fold neatly along that line. It's really cool. And I figured I would have to post about it, because anyone seeing the sweater, unless I told you and had you look or you were an experienced knitter looking in detail, you'd never see it. It's subtle.

One exciting thing - now that the sweater is on three needles and two sections of yarn, I can stretch it out to its complete width. (Well, excepting the width of the button and buttonhole band I'll add later.) It fits around me nicely.

I'm GOING to complete this sweater!

Comments

Phony Seam

[bkseiver.livejournal.com]

Credit for the "unvention" of the phony seam is to Elisabeth Zimmerman, who firmly believed that it would do what you say. You have a formidable knitting authority who believed in your technique!
Carry on, knitting boldly!

Re: Phony Seam

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

This was in the directions for the sweater. So far I am actually following the directions exactly. It's spooky.

I'd prefer to do the nice slipped stitch edges like we do for sock flaps, except later I have to do stuff like pick up 3 stitches for every 4, and such, so I'm not.