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June 1, 2005
Ayuda a la Gringa!*
Friends, I need your help. As I try to dig out from my avalanche of baby knitting in a timely manner, I've hit a brick wall snag. My normal response to such an obstacle is to just power through it, trying and retrying a variety of techniques. But all of these small-gauge baby knits have left my hands and arms aching and tender, and I'm hoping that your collective experience will save them the strain of doing and undoing a teeny-tiny little seam.
This has been a very fast knit -- I bought the yarn on Friday night1, and all of the pieces were knit by Monday evening. I finished the seaming last night, and went on to work the moss stitch button bands. I knit both of them as indicated in the pattern (starting with five live stitches left on a holder at the bottom of the front panels for this purpose). The final instruction for the button band section of the pattern was: "Slip stitch bands into place."
I misread this, and took it to mean that I should baste them into place temporarily while I went on to pick up stitches and knit the collar. Needless to say, when I finished the collar and went back to the pattern to see how to permanently attach the button bands there was nothing there!
No biggie, I figured. I'll just do a little research on how to slip stitch and attach them now that I know better. I turned to Google, and found that a slip stitch seam is a crocheted seam favored by none other than Bonne Marie. (See this Lion Brand page for details and instructions.)
Not having an appropriately small crochet hook, I tried to fake it with other seaming techniques, and they all looked like crap -- each one made the seam bulky and uneven or caused the button band to curl under. I'll admit it, I'm a bit incredulous that a crocheted seam could come out neat and flat, but the seam in the pattern picture (left) is pretty much perfect so maybe I'm wrong. If so, what size crochet hook should I use (button band was knit on 2s, the body on 3s)? Anybody got any experience using a slip stitch tecnique on a small-gauge knit?
¿Alguien?2
* "Help the Gringa!"
1 Thanks again, Johanna!
2 "Anyone?"
Posted by shannon at June 1, 2005 12:03 PM