MARG'S KNITTING PLACE

Project #5 - Used Fair Isle and Intarsia Carriage

Today I decided to work on a simple little pullover and test out some ideas I have had swimming around in my brain.  I'm working on my LK 150 using #3 yarn on a project MT of 4.

First
I do not like the starting edge of relatched rib, it seems too "puffy" to me.  I tried working in a 2 x 1 rib today with various changes in tension.  I started with an e-wrap cast on, doing the next four rows in ascending tensions.  I started with 2 dot, next row was 3, next 3 dot and finally 4 for the rest of the ribbing.  When I relatched, I picked up the two lower bars, turned them to create a e-wrap stitch then relatched the rest in the normal fashion. 

  Public Side - Regular Cast On - Puffy Edge

Second 

I played around with my Intarsia carriage to get the tensions on it and my fair isle carriage the same.  I was working with T4 on my fair isle carriage and had to jump up to T4 dot on the intarsia carriage to get the same tension throughout.

The back - I did with the fair isle carriage - no problem there. 

The front - I used the fair isle carriage to the opening at the front neck.  I put the front neck stitches on a circular needle.  I switched to my Intarsia carriage starting a new yarn supply for the left side of the bed.  I laid the yarn over the needles in both sections individually and knit across - whenever I had to decrease I did it on both sides of the neck so basically you are doing a mirror image.  Worked great - I will do that again for sure!

Third
The sleeves - I was still messing around with the ribbing so I did two ribbing sections and put them on my garter bar.  Reading ahead in the pattern I realized I could probably stay with the intarsia carriage and knit both sleeves at the same time. 

I hung the two sleeve ribbing sections far enough apart to accommodate the increases on the arm section of the sleeve and off I went laying the yarn across the needles on each section separately and knitting across. 

Again when it came to the decreasing sections, whatever I did on one sleeve, I did on the other - so the sleeves are absolutely identical.  Again this worked great and I definitely do this again.

I am really impressed with the ease of using the two carriages to make this little sweater once the tension was the same on both.  As far as the ribbing situation, I think I'll go back to doing my ribbing last instead first as the finished edge is somewhat more attractive.  Also I have always used an e-wrap cast on for rib ~ may try a crochet cast on and see how that works.

Off to Project 6!