You can do it with any kind of yarn, but acrylic might be more apt to unravel than animal fibers.
Greatā¦now all I have to do is practice and see what happensā¦If I follow what you posted at the begaining of this postā¦with adding extra stitches, do I add what you posted? if not, how do you know how many to add?
You can really add as many as you want. If youāre nervous about sewing and cutting, you can add more. If youāre doing a Norwegian steek, you donāt add any. I add for Norwegian steeks.:teehee:
I did 10 with very thin yarn. As long as you have room to run rows of stitches down, or crochet the steek if you choose to go that way, it really doesnāt matter. You do, however, knit them every round, so you donāt want to add too many.
I usually always do an 8 stitch steek. If itās a slippery yarn, like a wool/cotton blend, I crochet it. If itās a grabby all wool, I use an unreinforced steek. I heard that some knitters actually use 2 stitch steeks to cut down on time and waste.
Amazing! Boy are you brave. Keep the pictures coming. Your sweater is beautiful. Happy Knittingā¦
Linda
i really donāt know what to sayā¦
you are knitting-genious, ingridā¦thanks
But Iām too scared!!!
Ingrid and ContiKnitter,
I want to try a steek. Eek! :cheering: Itās a little scary but sounds like such a good thing to know. I have owned EZās [U]Knitting Without Tears[/U] for years, she talks a little about steeking in there, but it mostly sounded to me like she didnāt really [B]knit[/B] a steek, she just used about 3 stitches and machine sewed and cut to put in sleeves.
Ingrid your information right here about steeking is the best I have found so far, but I still have a couple of questions.
Do either of you have a blog or anything that goes into even more detail about this technique? Ingrid, you said one place that you pick up stitches along the first row of the regular knitting at the edge of the steek, for instance at the sleeve. You donāt do anything with the steek part after that? EZ didnāt really knit a steek, she just ācut a steekā, I guess youād call it. Then she said she whip stitched over the edges. I donāt really know what all this looks like at this point so Iām unclear here. There is nothing that can come undone after you pick up stitches and do sleeve or neck? Can you cut the steek off near the picked up stitches? :shock: Ingrid, you said you didnāt sew yours down? Does it really need to be 10 stitches wide or can they be more like EZs? :shock:
Ingrid, on the neck of your sweater all the āshapingā you did was to leave some stitches on a holder at the beginning of the where you wanted the neck? The rest of it just sort of happens magically. :?? In one of ArtLadyās posts she said she saw a lady on a cruise ship doing a vest that she was going to steek, and mentioned that she āshaped the neckā. Is there a way to shape a neck AND do a steek? Iām thinking of making cardigans, how does the neck shaping work on a cardigan that is steeked up the middle?
I better stop for now and see what your answers are up to now. Iām very grateful for the chance to ask questions of someone who has actually done these. Thank you both for your willingness to share and help people learn new things. 
MerigoldinWA
OK, letās see.
EZ may not have knit a steek. I donāt have the fearlessness of EZ, so I knit steeks. I am making a sweater now where Iāll have to sew and cut without a steek since I didnāt know where to start itāthe sleeves are knit separately and then you cut for them to fit. Iāll take pictures of that potential fiasco. :teehee:
I like having the security of the knitted steek since I donāt have a whole lot of confidence with the sewing machineāthe steek stitches give me a little leeway.
I donāt sew down my steek edges. They just kind of lay there with the machine stitching still in place. I donāt see how they could unravel after picking up the sleeves, and I have had no problem with them. Iāll take a picture and show you what it looks like. It might be neater to sew down the edges, but Iām not all that particular how my sweaters look on the inside. I donāt really like to sew for appearance, so I donāt.
The way you shape a neck with steek stitches in place is to put the center stitches on a holder, then cast on the steek stitches above it. The shaping is done on the outside edges of the steek. So when you decrease, you do it outside the steek and edge stitches. The steek stays the same size, but the stitches of the sweater on the outside of the steek go down in number.
Iām in the process of making a cardigan, and I have cut the steek up the front (I just have to finish the bottom of the sleevesāitās been waiting since last summer.) I just looked at it, and the neck shaping was done the same way. Keep the steek as is and decrease on the outside edges of it.
I hope that answers your questions so far, and I will get some pictures of the insides where the steek stitches are for the arms and neck.
I tried to get some pictures of the steek on the inside of the sweater as it lays and whatās left of the neck steek. Thereās another little tab on the other side.
Thanks Ingrid. :cheering: I think I get the first part now. I can knit a steek or not. And I can sew the edges down or not. Probably EZs way of making the non-steek, steek has more need of being sewn down than yours does. 
The way you shape a neck with steek stitches in place is to put the center stitches on a holder, then cast on the steek stitches above it. The shaping is done on the outside edges of the steek. So when you decrease, you do it outside the steek and edge stitches. The steek stays the same size, but the stitches of the sweater on the outside of the steek go down in number.
The part quoted still isnāt clear to me yet. :?? You donāt decrease any in the steek itself, just keep it going, say in 10 stitches. Got that.
So when you decrease, you do it outside the steek and edge stitches.
On this part, I get outside the steek, but not 100% on the āoutside the edge stitchesā. Do you mean that before and after the steek stitches you leave one stitch (or more, how many?)on each side, just in from the steek, to be an edge stitch and decrease inside that? If so what happens to the edge stitch? Is that where you pick up the neck stitches? Iām trying to picture how decreasing at those points works. :??:?? Usually Iām out on the edges and I lose stitches on each side, kind of like taking little bites off the neck edge. :biting: When I try to picture that in a tube of circular knitting I get a bit flummoxed.
You do, say K2tog on one side and SSK on the other and the edge stitches, no little bites really appear but it is shaping the neck anyway? Is that it? You canāt end up with little spaces like I picture along the necks of a regular cardigan. There are no spaces, right?
Sometimes on necks they have you bind off 2 or three at the beginning of several rows. Do you just avoid that sort of shaping and depend on K2tog, SSK type shapings instead? Or is is possible to do the bind offs somehow? Seems like that would lead to holes and wouldnāt work. :shrug:
I appreciated the pictures of the inside of your sweaters. 
Thanks for showing them, they are helpful.
Do you do the same size of a steek for the sleeves as you do for the opening in the front for a cardigan? Thank you, thank you. Merigold
When you do a knitted steek, you keep a stitch at each edge in the background color of the pattern, and alternate colors between. So if you have Red and Blue in, with Blue being the background color, your knitted steek would look like this:
BRBRBRBRBRB
BBRBRBRBRBB
BRBRBRBRBRB
BBRBRBRBRBB
The background color may change, and the contrasting colors certainly change. You use whatever the background color is for that particular row and alternate it with the cc color of that row.
The edge stitch is used to pick up the sleeve, or the neck edge.
For the neck decreases, youād do the k2tog or ssk right before or after the B edge stitch. Iāve never seen a bind off on a steek edge. Even if you see a blip where you do the decreases on the side of the edge stitch, itās the edge where you pick up stitches for the collar, so they really donāt show any more than in a regular sweater.
Some patterns have you work the neck back and forth so you can do bind off and make the neck wider. In fact, the sweater Iām working on now has you stop working in the round at the neck but work back and forth from the front edge neck to the back neck edge on each sideāright front to right back; left front to left back. I didnāt appreciate doing stranded on the back though.:ick:
The cardigan I steeked had 8 or 10 steek stitches across the front, I donāt really remember. Now I have to pick up a billion stitches up the front, around the neck and down the other side. Someday when Iām tied down, I guess.:teehee:
Thanks so much Ingrid. I think I get it now. :figureditout:
I understand what you mean by not wanting to work back and forth up past where the neck begins. That is why I want to try the steek idea. I knew I could work in the round to the armholes and then divide and do the fronts and back separately but in a Fair Isle that would be a bummer. I donāt like having to do the Fair Isle with the purl side staring at me. :ick: I was also thinking that my FI could look different where I did it in the round and where I did it back and forth. That would not be a happy situation. Can you get yours to look just the same either way you work it?
I really appreciate your help. Maybe these added posts will help some other poor soul too. We appreciate you. Now all I need to do is try to do it and see if I find more questions along the way. Thanks again. 
Iāve never noticed this thread before and I admit only read first and last pages. It IS amazing to see knitting cut however, I still donāt understand what a steek is as such. Is it a piece of knitting you add in for the purpose of cutting? Part of the reason I may not understand is that Iāve never made a jumper beforeā¦butā¦okā¦I actually donāt understand the point of it to be frank. Is it when youāve changed your mind about a pattern and wish to change the neck shaping?
Sorryā¦:shrug:
Okā¦it paid to read page two as I found this from Ingrid:
āA steek is an extra set of stitches that you include in your pattern so you can continue working in the round all the way up your sweater. This way you donāt have to divide into front and back for sleeves or work the two sides of a neck separately.ā
I understand the definition now at leastā¦ 
Iāve been reading this forum and I really really want to do some Fair Isle sweaters, but thereās one part Iām just simply not understanding: how does it not unravel? Like, if you pick up the stitches and knit your sleeves, how are you sure that where you picked them up from isnāt going to unravel? I just am having a hard time understanding, even with the pictures.
Also, whatās this about a crocheted steek? That seems doable, especially since my sewing machine cannot be trusted. :doh:
ETA: The see eunny knit blog has an excellent tutorial on crocheted steeks here But that blog says that crocheted and hand-sewn steeks still rely mostly on the yarn to hold itself together - how? It seems like the crochet would keep it from unraveling?? Okay, so obviously unraveling is my biggest fearā¦ 
So if you wanted to do steeked armholes, how would you add the steek? Do you do increases where you want it to start, or does the pattern include it? How do you know how many rows to do the steek stitches?
The yarn used in traditional FI sweaters is regular old wool, so the ends will try to stick together even without sewing or crocheting them. At least thatās what they say, and what they did back in the day, and probably now come to think of it.
Even if you use a different yarn, the sewing or crocheting does keep it together. Really. None of my steeked sweaters have come close to unravelling, even when made with superwash wool.
I think the act of picking up and knitting the sleeves keeps it from coming undone, too, since the edge stitches are knit .
All I can say is, itās worked for hundreds of years.:shrug:
If you are doing a pattern that includes the steek, it will tell you when to do it. Itās basically when you get the body to the length you want it from the underarm, you bind off a few stitches at the underarm, and on the next round you cast on your steek stitches and knit until the armhole is the length you want.
Well, I started. :cheering: Before I started the little sweater I want to do, I did a gauge in the round on dpns. But after making a inch and a half of my sweater I see it is smaller than I need it to be so Iām going to start over on bigger needles. This gives me a chance to ask a couple of questions I have already come to.
The Fair Isle (or whatever Iām doing) is only two colors and they change back and forth a lot. There are about even numbers of each over all. On some rows one predominates (it is an 11 stitch repeat). Many times one color shows up 5 times and the other 6. On those rounds I was considering the one with 6 as the ābackgroundā color for the purpose you outlined above about the edge stitch of the steek. Since the color use is so nearly the same all the time, do I really need to worry about which is the background color? Would it be better (or worse) to just make the first and last stitch match the first color used in the round? I notice on one row that there are 7 or 8 of one color so that seems like a definite background color. Am I right that on a row like that I would use the color used 7 or 8 times as the background color for the edge stitch of the steek?
Also I made the steek 10 stitches because you had mentioned that number and this is a sport weight yarn and I need enough steek to work with. Iām wondering why you use an even number instead of an odd number? Do you cut down [U]between [/U] two rows of stitches then in the center of the steek? Why wouldnāt it be better to have an uneven number so you could cut right on a row? Is there some advantage to having an even number?
Well, I wanted to get this question on here so it might give you an opportunity to respond before I get to where I need it again. I have a trip I need to make, so I need to go. A trip to the frog pond. 
Wonāt be the first time. :lol:
Thanks Ingrid.
Merigold
I think the even number of steek stitches is so that you can seam down the outside of two columns and then cut between them.
XXXX/XX/XXXX
The edge stitch isnāt all that critical. If you have a single background color and lots of other colors, itās obvious. If you have changing background colors, it becomes obvious, too. Otherwise it wonāt make all the much difference in the end. If you wanted, you could just pick a color to be the edge and have it the same all the way, or pick a dominant one. Itās really up to you.
I want to make the Blue Skies cardigan from IK sometime soon. Itās a cardigan, so the steek will be the entire length of the piece (there might also be steeks for the sleeves, right?). Here are my two questions regarding the center steek:
-
Does one have to widen the steek to accomodate shaping, or does the shaping all show up, presto-chango once itās cut (like the collar on your sweater, Ingrid, which is beautiful, btw)?
-
The sts from the steek are picked up and a shawl collar is knit from them, so Iām not worried about unraveling (phew!). How does one hide the steek and make it look pretty? This steek wonāt be as hidden as the inside of sleeves.
Thanks! This is a wonderful tutorial. Thanks for your answers and patience. I think Iām going to like steeking, once I muster the courage to do it for the first time!