Sunday, September 30, 2012

Craftsy is Killing Me!

Okay, so I signed up for the "How to Sew with Knits" class a few months ago at Craftsy and actually watched the first lesson and printed the knit top pattern. (No, I haven't taped it together yet, but at least I printed it, right?) I just keep forgetting about it because if I get a chunk of time, I want to finish the cardigan I'm knitting....or the yoga pants I started. Well today I got another email from Craftsy about a pants fitting class with Sandra Betzina.

Stop it, Craftsy! You KNOW I have to take that class because it involves getting a free Vogue 2948 pattern, which has been discontinued and got 3/3 Highly Recommends at PR.


So I guess I'll check out Power Sewing and see if Sandra's given a discount thru her site like the other lady did for the knit class. And then I'll be signing up...and bookmarking the site so I can go back in a year when I get time to finally do it. (Which is so nice of Craftsy to have indefinite access to your classes!)

Okay, and one knitting topic. I'm making the cardigan that has a back, right front, left front, then you sew the shoulder seams and add sleeves and trim. So for right front, you've knitted 9.5 inches. Then it says "Bind off 14 stitches, knit to end of row, purl a row, knit a row," to start the neckline shaping. For the left front, it says, "Repeat same as right front, reversing all shaping."

Uh, okay, I can't bind off 14 stitches at the beginning of the row because it will slant the wrong way, so what do I do? Well, I'll bind off at the END of the row - I'm brilliant! So I knit over 25 stitches then start binding off....then realize I'll have that one stitch left and be far away from where I'm supposed to start purling.

I placed a frantic call to my mother, who took an evening to ponder it, then said something about binding off on the purl side to get back to where I was. That made me realize I should bind off 14 stitches on my PURL row instead of my knit row! Hooray, it worked! And instead of K1, K2tog to decrease every 4th row, I'll P1, P2tog to make it symmetrical - yay for me! Plus I backtracked that whole bound off row without losing a stitch or screwing it up, so I've currently got the big head about my knitting skills - forgive me.

And isn't ANYbody going to recommend a color for the Trinity stitch trim? Black cardigan - white trim? Silver trim? Tan trim? Purple trim?

4 comments:

Amy Bailes said...

Yay! You've figured out a secret in knitting! A little less hand-holding is needed everytime you knit.

Sorry, I can't recommend anything for the trinity stitch cardigan.

gwensews said...

Have a great time with those classes. I love the Craftsy classes and have taken a few. For your black knitted jacket, I think tan would is a fabulous color to go with black. A deep tan though, like "army" tan.

Pam said...

Good for you - Craftsy looks super flexible for taking classes - that's the good part!

Well, I too will take a beginning knitting class starting next week (I think) - I have to start from the beginning I think (I've never made an actual knitting project - outside of knitting aimlessly).

I'm on day 3 of my sew-cation!!

Dr. Fun (AKA Sister) said...

Amy, you're right - I feel like I understand the stitches better with each project.

Gwen - hooray! Deep tan sounds very elegant with the black - thanks for your input! I hope to buy yarn this weekend...working on shoulder seams currently...

Pammie, enjoy your sew-cation, and I can't wait to hear about your knitting class! I'll take pics of a great book I bought for knitters later this week...