Judy's Grandmother's Baby Sweater

[Girlymomwithsons]

I am making Judy's Grandmother's Baby Sweater, from the book, Greetings from Knit Cafe, by Suzan Mischer. I am almost done, but now that I have picked up and knit the sleeves, I realized that I have a visible seam on both of them, one on the front and one on the back. The body and sleeves are all one piece, made by knitting some stitches of the stitches onto a dpn and putting point protectors on both ends, and on the next row, you cast on new stitches and keep going. When you come back to the held stitches, you pick up and knit some more, and the sleeve is knit flat. Is this making any sense? Does anybody know what I am talking about? My problem is that I don't know what I did wrong, and I don't want to tear out the sleeves until I know what to do. The sleeves and sweater are done in honey comb stitch. HELP!

[iowaorganic]

OK- not knowing the pattern and all.... When you pick up the stitches you have to start on the correct end. You will get a visible seam (at least I always do because I pick them up 1 stitch in- I just like it that way) but it will be on the inside IF you start on the correct side. So rip out the one sleeve and start picking up on the opposite side and is should solve your problem.

[texmati]

oh! I've done this pattern. IowaOrganic is spot on. Plus, it matters how you pick up the stitches, just the front part of the stitch or just the back or both. I figure as long as you are consistant you should be fine.

[Girlymomwithsons]

Ok, thanks guys. I followed what the pattern says, and picked up the front and the back of the stitch. So do you mean that I probably went through the stitches from the wrong side? Thanks so much.

[cristeen]

Yeah, it depends on which direction you picked them up from. The first time I picked up stitches I did that too, the two legs of the soaker were different, and I had to frog it and keep trying until I managed to do it the same way. It took a couple tries, but if you watch what you're doing and compare the outcome, you can fix it with only having to frog a couple stitches instead of the whole thing.

[Girlymomwithsons]

Ah, it's the watch what you are doing thing that got me. I was trying not to do that, so I could see the big picture all at once!

I did manage to fix it all at once without frogging though! I double stitched over top of the rows that were wrong, really they were only half rows, just one side of each sleeve. I think I stictched over 14 stitches. Way better than tearing out two whole sleeves! And then, following directions, I used the three needle cast off from the wrong side, and now it looks funny, because in the picture, it was done from the right side! I have never done that cast off before, so I didn't realize how it was going to look on the other side until I turned it right side out! Grrr. I am tempted to just block it the way it is, and say the whole sweater is now reversible!

[texmati]

Smart idea going over the top of the stitches! I'll have to remember that sometime! You can always redo the BO if you want... but you could leave it as well. Sometimes thats just the great part of handknits, the teeny inconsistancies.

[Girlymomwithsons]

I tried the sweater on my friends baby today, and the bind off looks pretty good "inside out" when it is on a baby. I will block it out and be happy with it the way it is.