Yes, that's right, misplaced steeks, in colorwork knitting (Fair Isle or Norwegian) can be fixed! When my husband came home, he calmly looked my steeking disaster and said "Wait, this can be fixed" and proceeded to describe a perfect fix. It's the same solution that colorwork genius, Janine, gave me in the comments and I'm happy to report it's working.
I'm going to outline it here, in case anyone else makes the same silly/ridiculous/heart-rending mistake that I did:
My mistake was that I had placed the steek (red line) 6 stitches to the left of where it should be (black line), on both sides. The black dots are the three flower motifs at the side of the sweaters. This meant that each side (front and back) had the right amount of stitches total but the center motif (and neck opening) was off center by 12 stitches.
The solution: center the steek by widening it. It helped me to imagine the line I should have cut on (black line) and put that in the center of my actual steek. So, if I was to the left by 6 stitches, I needed to cut another steek 6 stitches to the right of the correct steek line.
So the sleeve will go in the right place, centering the neck. However, the shape of the sweater is now changed. Traditional Norwegian sweaters are drop shoulder designs: the sleeves come out at right angles from the strait tube of the body:
From Knitty.comI was able to ease my sleeve into the armhole without altering it all, but if you need to, it wouldn't be too hard to rip back the last inch of your sleeve and add some increases.
Let me know if you have any questions about this fix, or if it isn't clear let me know!
1 comment:
Oh, thank goodness there is a solution!
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