I thought I could do it all in one day. Not so.
Prepping for grafting
The prepping alone took a few hours and this afternoon I won’t have time to do the actual grafting as I have a scheduled Italian conversation session with a student. Mañana…
One stitch at a time
By the way, thank you for all the virtual chocolate and encouragement. :)
Rip, snip, pull, repeat.
I had not expected the undoing to take so long. For someone like me — irritable, impatient, and constantly sleep deprived — this has been a Zen exercise, close to what I imagine meditation must be. I say imagine, because I tried it a few times and never quite got it. Not even enough patience for meditation.
The beginning
I considered mounting the stitches on two circular needles, to keep the sweater flat for grafting, but I was afraid that the needle would get in the way during the ripping operation and also that it would pull the stitches and deform them. So I opted for threading them with contrast yarn.
Threading the live stitches with orange yarn.
I accidentally snipped one of the blue threads too close to the work and I’ll have to be careful when weaving in the ends.
Undoing the last few stitches
Finally done with separating the two parts of the sweater and counting my stitches.
I thought I'd better count my stitches to make sure the top part matches the bottom part.
In between pulling and snipping and keeping the cats at bay (they were very interested), I realized that the actual grafting will not be a straightforward affair because of a few complications:
1) two colors above and below the cut;
2) color changes in the grafting round (those pesky vertical bands);
3) a possible mismatch in the number of stitches that will involve a couple of increases or decreases;
4) the slight offset of loops that I am not sure how to handle at the color changes (the pesky vertical bands again).
But I will worry about that tomorrow afternoon, when I can get started.
I have a feeling that you will get tired of this sweater before it’s even finished.
Posted by Francesca
