Knitting

Fixing a Ginormous Mistake

Did you ever make a sweater that you were absolutely in love with, both the yarn and the pattern and, when you were sewing it together, discovered a mistake so enormous that you could not ignore it?

I knit myself a really lovely cardigan in a beautiful yarn this last couple of weeks.  I joined the shoulders with a three needle bind off, knit the band around the front and neck and sewed in the sleeves.  I pinned the sides together for seaming and, much to my great distress and using every curse word that I know, I found that I had repeated the first lace pattern at the beginning (bottom) of the back piece twice and only once on the fronts.  I got ready to toss it into the garbage or at least a corner to gather dust but I just liked it too much to not try to repair it.

Mistake

I have removed the bottom of a sweater before and reknit it down to increase the length but only in stocking stitch and never with this pretty a yarn.  I gathered my courage and here’s what I did.  I left the sweater sewn as far as I had gone because who wants to undo hand sewn sweater seams.  That almost never works out for me.

Life-Lines

I used a contrast colour in a pale yellow so that I could still see it but not have any bright or dark fibres left when I removed it and, picking up one side of every stitch, threaded a life line through my knit stitches two rows above the last lace repeat that I wanted to keep.  I then place two life lines one row apart on the two rows below the first row of garter stitch that bordered the lace pattern.

Cut-Between-Life-Lines

Next, I took a very deep breath and cut between the life lines.  Yes, I cut the bottom of the back off.  Working on the bottom piece, I picked out all of the little bits from cutting and, carefully ripped back to a couple of rows above my life line.  I picked up the stitches with a circular needle, made sure that my count was correct and unknit back to the last knit row that ended the one lace repeat that I should have stopped at the first time around.  I used a contrast waste yarn and worked two rows in stocking stitch then cast off to hold all of the stitches securely.

Bottom-Piece-Unknit-to-right-size

Putting that piece aside, I then used my circular needle and picked up one side of the bottom loop of each stitch between the two life lines on the top piece of the back.  I used two life lines here as I wasn’t sure how the loops would hold when I picked up the bottom of each stitch.  I then ripped back to the needle, used waste yarn and worked the same two rows of stocking stitch and cast off.

Picked-Up-Above-Second-Life-Line

Now, to put the two pieces back together, I worked from the wrong side with a really long length of yarn (because I didn’t want to have to try to join in the middle) and grafted the loops from the bottom to the loops from the top piece.  I checked to make sure that all of the stitches were included and ripped out the waste yarn from both pieces.

Close-Up-Ready-to-Repair

Grafting-Started-From-Wrong-Side

Success!  My lovely sweater knit with the lovely yarn was now repaired and the fronts matched the back.

Front-and-Back-Pieces-Compared

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