Wednesday, February 7, 2007

A Short Row to Hoe

The collar to the Debbie Bliss Baby Bolero uses short rows to widen the collar around the neck. I tried just following the directions (k8, turn, etc.) but it created a monstrous hole. Rip.

To review short rows, I looked in my bookmarks (don't you love del.icio.us?) and found Nona's entries on 3 short row techniques.

From bottom to top:
(Sorry about the poor quality of the photo - I'd annotate it, but drawing on photos is not yet in my bag of tricks.)

My situation varied in two ways:
  • There are 2 short rows before joining it together with the rest of the row.
  • This is in garter stitch, not stockinette.
Like Nona, I decided on the Japanese - it just seemed neater. But I was bothered by the "stockinette" look at the end of the short rows. If you look closely at the photo, this is the "flat" section of the topmost short row (probably the only thing drawing your attention to this one). This was easily fixed: On the last stitch of the second short row, I perl instead of knit. On the collar where I did it, it looks like proper garter stitch, and you can hardly see the short rows. Perfect!

Thanks, Nona, for documenting your great experiment!

2 comments:

Rhonda the Stitchingnut said...

That's great! I saw it once & forgot about it ... I think I might try all 3 just to see how each of them works. And then it'll be easier to remember. Well I have done the wrap method mostly.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad my tutorials were helpful and that you found an excellent solution for your garter stitch dilemma.