steeks!

As I’ve been sitting about keeping Tom company, the weekend saw a lot of craft time. I’ve been knitting like a . . . like a what? Well, I’ve been knitting a lot anyway. And this evening I attempted something new and rather scary knitting-wise: steeks! The steeked garment in question is an ad hoc cardigan made up as I went along. You know the kind of thing: I found 9 skeins of mirasol baby llama for half price in a sale and loved it so much I had to cast on something right away. But I rather failed to think through the whole design process properly: It’s been a vexing sort of a knit mostly because it needed more planning at the outset (I’ve ripped back the yoke three times using different stitch patterns).

I’ll say a bit more about the, um, ‘design’ when I’ve finished the whole thing off (its blocking now), but, if you look very closely in the middle of the photo at the top of this post you’ll see the two lines of sewing I used to reinforce my STEEK. Because the llama yarn is so loosely spun, and so damn slippery, I lacked courage to just chop away at my cardigan front in case the whole thing just fell apart. So I worked two rows of back stitch with quilting thread to reinforce the cutting line. I made the back stitch through the middle of the previously-worked stitch (splitting the yarn) and under the next stitch forward (scooping it from underneath). Each stitch was thus both scooped and split — they weren’t ever going to unravel if I had anything to do with it! Then how I STEEKED! I waved my shears in the air and gaily chopped up my cardigan.

You can see the sewing line there again — its nicely hidden now I’ve picked up stitches down either side of the front for the button bands. The steeks are folded away inside, and will be properly secured with a whip stitch once the whole thing is dried and blocked. Steekin fabulous! Whether the whole finished garment will be so remains to be seen.