Okay, I’ve searched the posts and haven’t found what I need.
The pattern reads:
[FONT="]Shoulders: Cast off 30 (32-33- 38-43) sts beg next 2 rows. Leave rem 35 (35-37-39-39) sts on a st holder. [B][COLOR=DarkGreen]Done that[/COLOR][/B][/FONT]
[FONT="]Cont even until work measures same length as Back to shoulder ending with a purl row. Cast off. With RS of work facing slip next 19 sts from spare needle onto a st holder. Join yarn to rem sts and work as given for left side reversing shaping. [B][COLOR=DarkGreen]Done this as well[/COLOR][/B][/FONT]
[FONT="]Neckband: Sew right shoulder seam. With RS of work facing and smaller needles, [/FONT][B][FONT="]pick up and knit 18 (19-20-22-24) sts down left front neck edge.[/FONT][/B][FONT="] K19 from front st holder. [/FONT][B][FONT="]Pick up and knit 18 (19-20- 22-24) sts up right front neck edge[/FONT][/B][FONT="]. K35 (35-37-39-39) from back st holder, dec 1 st at center. 89 (91-95-101-105) sts.
Work 1½ ins [4 cm] of (K1. P1) ribbing as given for Back. Cast off loosely. Sew left shoulder and neckband seam. [/FONT]
I understand how to pick up stitches, but how do I “pick up and knit” particularly DOWN the left front edge. I currently have no needles, no yarn (other than on the stitch holders).
Do I pick up the stitches from the bottom up, then knit down? then pick up the stitches from the holder and knit, etc???
Attached is a diagram of the work and where I am at.
I use the continental method and am right handed.
If you know how to pick up stitches, that is what you are going to do here. Pick up and knit means the same thing as pick up really. :?? Oops, unless you are thinking of something a little different.
Here is what you do. Hold your sweater so that the right side is facing you and you are ready to work starting at the place where the shoulder is not sewn together, heading down the front neck edge. Just hold your empty right hand needle in your hand (BTW I also am right handed and knit Continental), hold the yarn that is not attached to anything in your left hand like you would if you were going to knit, leaving a bit of a tail going off to the right. Insert the needle into the first place from which you want to draw up a stitch (that will be close to the shoulder opening), yarn around your needle just as you would to knit and pull up a loop onto the needle in your right hand. Now you have picked up and knit one stitch of the number you are supposed to pick up along the left front neck edge (as the sweater will be worn). Keep picking up the number of stitches you need for your size along that sloped edge down to where you have the front stitches on a holder. Space them as evenly as you can.
When you get to the holder put those 19 stitches on a needle so that the working end will be on the right side and knit them onto the needle with the picked up stitches. Now pick up stitches the same way along the other neck slope, up to the shoulder. Then put the other stitches onto a needle and knit them onto the needle (dec 1 in the middle) with the others. Now knit back and forth over these stitches for 1 1/2 inches in 1X1 ribbing.
If I was doing this neck I would opt to sew the second shoulder seam as well and then use a small circular, or two longer circulars, or double pointed needles and pick up the stitches as given but do it in the round with no pesky seam to have to sew up when done. But if you don’t have the means to do that, or prefer you can do it as given.
I’ve always been tickled by the term “pick up and knit”…
…what ELSE could I possibly do? Pick up and dance? :teehee:
When I pick up stitches around a neckline, or a buttonband for that matter, I use a crochet hook to pull the yarn (from the skein) through the spot on the neckline. I load about 10 st on the crochet hook, then ‘feed them off’ the end of the c hook onto the knitting needle. I feed them onto the knitting needle ‘knitwise’. I have to turn them around as I go so they’re not twisted.
I find it easier to ‘pick up’ the stitches with a crochet hook.
It’s a leftover term from when knitters used to pick up all the sts from the edge with the left needle and then knit them with the working yarn. We now combine it into one step, picking up and knitting with the yarn at the same time.
How about Pick-up and haul it away? That’s what a pick-up [truck] is for!
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ArtLady, you could also just “wrap as if to knit” around the crochet hook then they wouldn’t be twisted (crochet wraps in the opposite direction from knitting so is more like combined knitting). I was knitting for a year before I made that side by side comparison to see why my crochet chain (Tunisian simple stitch) cast on method was twisting my stitches. :oops:
([SIZE=“1”]My silly though on this is that western knitting is the “twisted sister” to crochet… or perhaps :roll: to some.[/SIZE]) [/color]
What was confusing is that the term applied to the ROW not each stitch. I picked up along the neckline where I had no stitches, KNITTED off the stitch holder, then picked up the other side of the neck and finally KNITTED off the back yarn holder. so it was pick up X 24 KNIT Pick up 24 KNIT…
:clink: then it was Miller Time!
Yep, many patterns will have you ‘pick up and knit’ the sts on holders as well as new sts around the neck. Maybe it’s lazy writing, or space saving, some pattern will say to pickup and knit sts from the right neck, knit across the held sts from the back and pick up and knit from the left neck.
or perhaps :roll: to some.[/SIZE]) [/color]