After much cussing (and I do mean a LOT of cussing!), My January Chemo Cap is finished (yea, it’s way late).  It’s only as late as it is because I was 80% done with a different hat and I decided it was entirely to sucky to finish.  So, I frogged and went to work on another.

Well, that one proved to have it’s own challenges.  I ended up with Coronet from Knitty.  The band around the bottom is knit horizontally, then grafted together, and stitches are picked up along one edge to knit the body.  That all sounds easy, and until this project, I’ve enjoyed doing the Kitchener Stitch.  However, that all changed here.

 I finished the band, and I went to graft away.  I put the stitches from my provisional cast onedge onto a needle, untwisting the twisty stitches.  I grabbed my tapestry needle, and grafted away.  What I ended up with was, well, sucky.  So, I ripped out the graft, and tried fixing it.  I tried all sorts of things.  I spend DAYS working on this silly graft.  I ripped the cast on edge back a half patter repeat, I knitted the same amount back on the other edge, nothing worked.

Finally, I found a link to an alternate method of doing a Kitchener stitch.  I can’t seem to find it now, but the essence of it was to knit to the point you are ready to graft, then switch to an alternate color, and knit in pattern for a few more rounds (this was done for the toe of a sock).  Then you line up the stitches as you want the graft to look, and use the stitches in the contrasting color to guide the direction that your graft yarn should follow.  Once the grafting is done, simply rip out the contrasting color from the back, and fix any tension issues with the graft.  This worked very well for me and the graft looks great, even with purl stitches and the fact that I’m grafting to a cast-on edge.

If I were to make this hat again, I’d save myself some time, forget the provisional cast-on.  It really only gave me trouble.  I would just cast on with the contrasting color, and knit a few rows, in pattern (don’t need to do the cables, just the knits where the knits go, and the purls where the purls go).  Then switch to the working yarn and go to town.

 I wish I had taken some pictures of the grafting process, but I was so frustrated at that point, I was ready to rip some more and start a different pattern.  Maybe next time.

Here is a picture of the finished hat:

Here is a picture of the one I ripped out:

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Cable, Capathon, Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.