Any major knitterly repairs had to wait until tonight, since we had a birthday party this afternoon. One of my best friends' son turns 2 this week, and our little family was invited to his party. I'm not going to post photos of them since I forgot to ask permission, but I am going to post a different photo (hi Debbie!) to my friend Debbie who is one of the very few non-knitters who reads my blog.
 Jakob's friend Taylor was at the party too, since we've known her father since high school, and her mom for the last few years. Taylor is exactly one day older than Jakob.  Hey baby...come here often? After supper tonight I decided to brave the Superman repairs. I took photos and will break down what I did, step-by-step. It turns out that while I've councelled others to do this same repair, I don't think I've actually done it myself before. It was much easier than I'd thought! First I took a circular needle and wove it through the stitches, making sure to pick up the left bar of every stitch, and verifying that I had the correct number of stitches on the needle. You can also pick up the right bar, it doesn't matter as long as you consistently pick up the same side of each stitch.
 Next, I grabbed a dpn and "picked up" stitches 2 rows below the one on the needles. I only picked up 6 sts at a time so the fabric wouldn't pull too tightly. Once I had the first 6 sts on the needle, I CUT one stitch on the middle row...the one in between the two rows on needles. I used a spare needle to unpick the yarn from those 6 sts, then took another needle and picked up the next 6 sts, unpicked the middle row, etc... (Yes, I left the scissors in the photo on purpose. Looks ominous, huh? LOL).
 Once I'd done that all the way around the row I had the two parts of the leg separate. I was then able to add another 12 rows (1.5") in length to the foot part of the leg.
 With the knitting done, I "tidied" up the two parts by arranging them on 2 dpns each, making sure that I had the front and back aligned properly (wouldn't want to sew the foot on crooked!). I left a really long tail for grafting, then cut the yarn.
 Finally, I Kitchenered (grafted) the foot part to the leg. You can kinda see here how much length was added. I'm breastfeeding (and don't drink anyways) so I had a cup of Earl Gray as my fortification instead of the typical glass of wine. ;) I was about to do the second leg when Yannick suggested that I wait until after Jakob wakes up tomorrow so that I can try it on him first and be sure that I didn't add too much...or need to add more.
 So there you have it. One leg lengthened by an inch and a half, with my first not-too-sucky graft. One more leg to go.
Labels: Superman Costume, WIP |
Wow! I would have ripped, so goon on ya! Did you find that book of knitting techniques useful?