Afterthoughts in Knitting

Again, the spoiler alert is just for my sisters. (I think at least one of them is still honouring them!)

I wanted to give you an update on the mittens I'm working on. I have finished the first one, and am well on my way for the second. It's been a bit of a slog, I must say. I haven't had "second sock syndrome" hit me before, but I think "second mitten syndrome" is trying to take root. I am fighting hard.

I'm getting concerned about finishing on time, but I did buy myself a little more time by arranging the gift exchange for Boxing Day (December 26). I'm not working the 24th or 25th so they are my emergency knitting days if I really need them. But meanwhile, I try to keep working on them to minimize the last minute panic. (And I do have to give time to block them.)

I have two things to share about the mittens today: the first is finishing the top point and the second is preparing for afterthought thumbs (and heels, in socks).

The directions call for you to decrease to eight stitches and then just pull the working yarn through the stitches. This would be how you'd normally finish a round piece like the top of a hat or fingertips on a glove. But these mittens aren't round. They come to a flat point.

So what I did instead was to work to four stitches. That left a coloured edge stitch from each side and a brown stitch from the center of both the back and the front.

After cutting the working yarn (leaving about 5 inches), I pulled the brown yarn through first one brown stitch and then the other, and pulled snug.

And then did the same thing with the coloured yarn:
Now the mittens come to a definite point and the coloured edging travels continuously around the edge of the mitten. Much better, no?

The second topic concerns afterthoughts. I first read about them in Elizabeth Zimmermann's book, The Opinionated Knitter. She suggested it as a method to add pockets to a sweater. (Remember when sweaters had pockets?) It's kind of handy to not have to decide exactly where the pocket is going to go until the garment is done. She suggests snipping one thread in the knitting and pulling out stitches in both directions. As you pull the stitches out, you catch live stitches both above and below. This will yield live stitches to work the pocket on. It's really quite ingenious.

With these mittens, the method is adapted for the thumb. It's not exactly "afterthought," however, because you prepare for it by knitting certain stitches at the base of what will be the thumb with a piece of waste yarn:

15 stitches knit in pink waste yarn

Then you slide those stitches from the right needle back to the left needle:
And then knit them again (in pattern) with the working yarn. You end up with the body of the mitten knit according to the pattern, with one extra row knit in the waste yarn:
This waste yarn will be pulled out later and once again live stitches are picked up both above and below. Putting these stitches onto a needle while you unravel the waste yarn gives you the stitches to knit up the thumb (picking up a few in the "corners" to avoid gaps and to give you enough stitches).

This is the first time I've done a thumb this way and I have to say it beats what I used to do--putting stitches onto a holder, casting on stitches to continue working on and then later picking up stitches from the cast on edge.

Funny thing--it's the same method used for the heel on the Outside In socks I'm working on:
I've never done a heel that way either! We'll see how I like it.

What My Honey Gave Me

Happy Valentine's Day!

A couple weeks ago I was talking about Elizabeth Zimmermann and saying I couldn't believe I had none of her books. I think we would be kindred spirits (not equals, I wouldn't claim that, but I think we think along the same lines) and I'm hearing/reading more and more about her lately. I happened to say this around my husband who immediately asked, "Oh, would this make a good birthday present?" (He is always trying to give me good birthday presents which lately has resulted in my getting at least one in all three of the months leading to my birthday!) I said that my birthday is months away but Valentine's Day is next Saturday so I thought it would make a better Valentine's present. (I'm learning how to work this system!)

So about four days later I find this

lying on my pillow. How wonderful! And isn't that a great title? (Elizabeth had a hankering to be called this and wanted it to be the title of her first book. The publisher, however, insisted on Knitting Without Tears, which is also a good title. But not as good.) I'm taking my time to read through this slim volume and enjoying the patterns from the old newsletters, the extra notes written by her daughter and fellow knitter, Meg Swansen, and the excerpts from Elizabeth's journals.

In my first glance I read this from a journal entry in 1972 about skiing

As a young woman I considered myself competent on skis, having been lucky enough to have enjoyed about a decade of Alpine skiing. Standards were gentle in those days. Snappy turns on a well-groomed slope were considered more meretricious than otherwise and the main attributes of a good skier were endurance, strong legs and a love of discomfort... (p 7)

I love this attitude! I learned the word, meretricious, during a game of Balderdash (played from a dictionary) so many years ago; what a joy to see it actually used! (Well-worth looking up.)

She goes on to say that "Lifts were for the rich and worldly" but I'm not sure I want to go that far! I rather enjoy chair lifts when I'm skiing.

I'm also learning that talk about Elizabeth is full of abbreviations I'm just expected to know, such as,

EZ = Elizabeth Zimmermann (in knitting, EZ will never mean "easy" but always Elizabeth)

EPS: Elizabeth's Percentage System, a system to calculate how many stitches to cast on for different parts of a sweater given the number needed for the full chest measurement. It allows you to adapt patterns to almost any gauge or yarn you may use.

BSJ: Baby Surprise Jacket, a pattern knit all in one piece that "surprisingly" turns into a baby jacket after sewing two seams. Very popular design for KALs still today. Classic.

And I'm sure there are more that I will learn about. I have a new nephew; perhaps getting this book which includes EZ's BSJ pattern will inspire me to make it for him. If I do, I'll let you know!

I feel like I am about to delve into a whole new world. Thanks, honey!

And I will leave you with EZ's own tagline:

Kint on, with confidence and hope, through all crises,

-c