In a few months I will have been knitting for 2 years (yay!). During this time I’ve had the fun, and challenge, of knitting a variety of items- mostly sweaters, hats and socks. Like this hoodie:
I haven’t had much experience darning – ok, until the sweater below I had no experience but it seemed doable and it would be a shame to let a perfectly otherwise nice sweater to unravel into oblivion.
The original problem was that the sleeves had become to long and tattered. I offered to fix that. Then seeing all the yarn I salvaged I figured I might as well fix the other holes with said yarn.
Sleeve- during- I started right in before I thought to take a before shot.
Here are a few before shots of the other damage:
An unraveling
A hole
A mess
and so on….Each spot was treated in a case by case basis. Not having darned before I made up my own approach. A few spots just needed a stitch, that had come apart and dropped, picked back up with a crochet hook and secured.
Larger holes required reattaching some yarn and picking up and re-knitting some stitches. For this I found double pointed needles to work best. Once the stitches where ready I either kitchener stitched the two sides together or wove them together trying to follow the same pattern of over, around and under as the knit stitches.
With the exception of the hole in last photo, the holes where rather easy to fix and weren’t too noticeable. The smaller the problem the easier and better looking the fix. Now the last section was mostly gone except for a few strands running across. I decided to pick up the stitches and try to knit back down – Incorporating the strands running across and weaving in the sides with a tapestry needle. It required a lot of rebuilding and the salvaged yarn was a little rough but it came together- albeit a bit more visible.
The results:
Sleeves - bound off.
You can see that a few places look a bit wonky. I think blocking would fix it some although there’s no getting around the fact that it needed repairs. At the very least the holes won’t be growing any more.
mossy_stone
this post is part of:
homemaker monday, savvy homemade, make-it yourself, homestead blog hop, frugal days sustainable ways, farmgirl friday
There hasn’t been a lot of knitting going on around here; few stitches here, an occasional row there were all I had time for. Since I’ve been working in fingering weight yarn progress has been nearly unnoticeable for way too long! I needed a quick gratifying project – in other words: bulky yarn, large needles,simple pattern and for me! I had a single skein of Knit Picks Robin’s Nest Wool of the Andes, size 13 circular needles, and the Dolores Park Cowl pattern to jump off of (although I started larger for a looser cowl so the pattern is essentially cast on 72 stitches and knit (plus 5 rows of seed stitch to start and finish)). Just right to get me motivated. Ezra’s pullover (or this post) is coming along!
