Steeking: So Far So Good

That last sweater went so well that I'm even more excited about my next Lesson in Knitting Sweaters, "The Steeked Sweater."

Creativity is my delight in knitting. I'd rather make something and really, really mess it up than to plug along following a pattern, miss some little "and at the SAME TIME" do " THIS VITAL BIT" ... really, really messing up the designer's lovely pattern.

Just me, but I'm OK with the fact that I don't follow directions all that well. : )

So here' the idea with this sweater: I am making a standard, Knit by the Numbers sweater in this fabulous deep coral Shetland wool:
I'll knit the tube with 10 extra stitches right up the front, sew those down (possibly a few times - OCD can't be wrong, eh?) Then I will take a chug of stiff drink (highly recommended in all of the tutorials) and - EEK! - cut that piece of work from stem to stern.

So far, it's not all that exciting and/ or pretty:
And for those of you who think I might be utterly mad - or at least criminally careless, making plans to cut this simple and defenseless piece of wool, let this allay your fears...

I worked up a small swatch of 40 stitches in the round (about 1/2 of what EZ would have done - and she would have ended up with a swatch hat to boot.) I plugged in the sewing machine , used that green thread you see to sew a few crooked lines of very small stitches down the midline of this thing, then ZIP cut it right in half. See - I'm not working entirely without a net!



This worked fine and I just this minute tried picking up stitches from behind the Green Line of Safety and look how well it worked! (The line of stitches still on the needle up there ... that would be the edge of my cardigan button band if this were a real thing instead of a mangled piece of hurried experiment.

Therefore, based on this small experiment of less than 1000 stitches, I continue working on that rather dull tube you see above.

Remarkable, isn' it? You'll laugh with me if it stinks in the end, won't you?