The dreaded purl curl, fixed :-D

As you may have guessed from my header, my grey wrap, after much blocking and steaming, still had the dreaded purl curl at the hem. Then Holly suggested making an hem to stabilize it. Thanks again Holly, you are pure genius.



I picked up the stitches from the inside edge of the hem and knit them with a very fine glittery mohair. Three rows later on huge needles, the fine yarn produced a net like lacy bit, about an inch deep, at the hem. I cast it off using the stitched castoff incorporating a row of the grey stitches from the inside of garment that had the curl issue.




The end result was a flirty, very slight, red edge along the bottom that only shows with movement.




The best part of this neat 'Holly's Hem Trick' is that there is no curl left at all, it hangs nicely.

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Many thanks Holly, you rock.

Snug n warm a cowl that doubles as a snood

This is a cowl/snood that I just finished blocking. It was done with some lovely Wenseydale yarn that I acquired access to up at the Rhinebeck Sheep n Wool Fiber Fest. The sheep that produce this particular yarn are raised in West Virginia, they have the most amazing long staples. I just love working with their wool and, due to those lovely long staples, it is very strong.


I used a smart sewn cast off that came out very nice n stretchy as promised. It was the first time I tried this castoff and you can see in this pict, it stretches nicely. This is a link to the cast off instructions that I used;
http://www.woolywonder.com/classpages/sewncastoff/sewncastoff.htm
It's an easy one, just do not tug too hard on your sewing yarn or you will loose the stretch. You need to leave enough of a loop on the edge of the casted off piece that, the yarn you pull through with the sewing needle, is left looking like a, "purl stitch bump."

This piece was done with a 100% Wenseydale wool three ply yarn, it yielded about 4 stitches per inch in stockinette.

With long tail method; casting on 72 stitches, work in the round k2, p2 ribbing for 1 1/2 inches.

Then work 1 1/2 inches of stockinette stitch.

Do a basket weave with k2 p2 creating 1 inch for each of 3 woven basket straps (that's two switches going from purl to kint n from knit to purl in a row).

Work 1 1/2 inches of seed stitch then finish with 1 1/2 inches of the same k2 p2 ribbing.

Cast off with the sewn cast off shown in the link above.