BSJ was a real surprise!

For those of you who notice such things in the sidebar, my progress bar for BSJ went from 85% complete to 5%! I was at 95% when I decided to frog. *sigh* I knew there were issues while I was knitting but kept going - it's such a quick knit and I was very keen to see how it folds to make a jacket. Well, now I know and those holes from my increases were so darn obvious! *sigh again*

So, it was out with Vogue Knitting and Katharina Buss' Big Book of Knitting and yes, I was doing my increases correctly. I was using the M1 method of inserting my needle under the yarn between the two stitches from front to back and knitting through the back of the loop. Still I had several good sized holes - anyone would think I had used yarnovers! So I checked out my alternatives. I wanted something reasonably 'invisible' - the increases are part of the design but shouldn't be overly noticeable.

So I tried this method - M1 [version 2] from Vogue Knitting: insert needle under the yarn between the two stitches from back to front and knit through the front of the loop. This is much trickier than the other version, it's easy to pick up the next stitch when trying to knit through the front of the loop - no wonder this is not the method we teach for M1 ! It does indeed twist the loop but I can still see the little holes made by this method.

Because I'm knitting this for charity it's in acrylic so it won't block out. The problem is possibly 5ply yarn on 3.5mm needles coupled with my tension - the gauge is too loose! But it makes a lovely soft garment! The increases so far are in the sleeves to give fullness; I haven't yet begun the increases to shape the garment - I think I might use knit into front and back of stitch for those increases - sure that's not invisible but it doesn't leave holes either! Will keep you posted!!