Wednesday 20 January 2010

Me and Garter Stitch

The cardigan I'm knitting has garter stitch cuffs, bottom edge and front borders in garter stitch, as well as one of the two alternative collars. I have a strong aversion to garter stitch - I think it's because when my mother taught me to knit (over 50 years ago! I am so old!), garter stitch was the very first stitch I learnt to do. So as far as I'm concerned, garter stitch is what you knit before you know how to do anything else. It's childish and unsophisticated, to me. So I've used moss stitch instead, and I think it looks much better.

Another change is that the instructions call for the front borders to be knitted separately, once the bottom edge (4cm in garter stitch) has been knitted. The borders are knitted afterwards, to fit the edge of the front when slightly stretched, and then sewn on afterwards. That seems an unnecessary seam to me. What's more, with this shaded wool, it would be better to get the colour of the border to match with the main part of each front, which wouldn't happen if they were knitted separately. So I knitted the borders in moss stitch at the same time as knitting the rest of each front in stocking stitch, and that seems to have worked very well.

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