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Life-Saving Tips for Knitting Elspeth!

May 23, 2005

Maybe the title is a little melodramatic!!
I had an email from a lady called Julie (no blog) pointing a lot of this out to me, and hooray - painless Elspeth knitting from now on!
The main problem with Elspeth is the chart being for only the first 12 rows, but the stitch count changing a lot throughout each piece, and so it being really hard to see where to start the pattern.

If you look at the pattern, the first eyelet on the pattern repeat sloping the SAME way beneath the one above it lines up with the first leaning stitch in the upper pattern repeat.
Haha that sounds so confusing! I just mean things line up like in this photo:

So knowing this is a good way to check if what you've done so far is correct.

Now comes the useful bit. When you are about to start a new row where the pattern leans to the left, this is how to line up where you place the pattern. Knit along to the stitch directly above the first eyelet in the pattern repeat below - the one marked with a line, knitting that stitch as well:

Then you place an eyelet and carry on, (I don't want to say what you do next because it's not my pattern and I'm not sure it's allowed)!

Now for doing a pattern repeat sloping the other way. Knit until you are at the stitch directly above the last sloping stitch of the previous pattern repeat (and knit that stitch too) - this is the stitch marked with an arrow in the photo:

Then you k2tog and continue, and all is in place!
I'm about half way through my first front (they're TINY), and that was just from knitting a little in a few snatched minutes. Seeing as the sleeves are tiny too I'm tempted just to finish Elspeth before I do any more pieces of Gemma.....I'll see how I go!

Posted by jen at May 23, 2005 06:13 PM

Comments

Posted by: Laura at May 23, 2005 09:51 PM