St. Brigid Done! Sort of.

I finished the collar today. I did a grafted bind off with a 1x1 rib, which yields a very stretchy neck edge (good for pulling over the head), and looks clean. The normal bind off with a rib can look so sloppy and is not good when one wants some stretch. This one looks very much like a tubular cast on, and like a sweater edge found on store bought sweaters.

It's done by using two needles ( I used two circulars) and carefully slipping the knit stitches onto one needle and the purls on the other, alternating back and forth. When you're done, your needles will be side by side and if you look at the front and back, it will look like knit stitches are on both, which is essentially what you have when doing grafting normally. There should be an equal number of stitches on both sides. Then you just graft or kitchener stitch as normal, being careful not to do it too tightly.

I wish I had taken pictures of it while I was doing it, but anyway, here's a finished pic.


And here's the final sweater with crappy pictures.

Pattern: St. Brigid by Alice Starmore
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Flame (8 skeins)

I knit the pattern as written with only a couple of modifications: I shortened the length by omitting one chart repeat of the main cable section, and added the braided cuff (the sleeves would be way too short without it!), which I knit first and then picked up the sleeve stitches. Better planning would have had me do the same to add a braided edge on the bottom edge of the front and back. I had started to add the braid afterwards by knitting it on, but when adding a knitted-on-border, since the purl row is in between the knitted row where the sweater edge stitch is knit together with the border stitch, that adds extra rows, about twice as many as just knitting the border and sewing it on, and therefore causes the border to flare out. Not something I wanted with this sweater. I hope I eventually knit the border and sew it on, but I really want to move onto other projects for now.....