Can anyone advise please? "Pick up and Knit"

[RedRosie]

I am a bit of a beginner-knitter. As some of you lovely ladies know, I've been knitting a baby cardigan for what seems like years for a friend. There is a picture of it half-done on my profile ...

Anyway, I've done the basic cardigan now. It needs sewing up obviously ... But before that I have to "pick up and knit" the neck and button bands, and knit a rib border.

I am really struggling, even though my book has clear instructions. I can get the first loop on the needle, but then get completely confused about what I'm doing, where the new yarn is and how I create/get stitches onto the needle ...

Is there a clear explanation of this for total idiots anywhere? I am getting cross with myself!

Any advice appreciated. I should just stick with squares for the blankets ... I can do those (after a fashion!)

you are just really looping the yarn through the edge to give you stitches to knit.

I hold the knitted bit in my left hand, poke the needle through from the front, yarn over the needle and then bring the needle back to the front and keep the yarn on....just like when you are knitting

make sure to do the pick ups evenly and fairly close to the edge so you do not get a big ridgey seam at the back.

Blimey Catsmamma! I think that's it!

My instructions use a crochet hook to pick up, but I got into such a mess juggling the hook and the needle and the wool, that I kept losing the yarn.

I just got lots on the needle by pushing through directly from the front and doing a "stitch".

Thank you. Brilliant!

Have picked up 'n knitted.

In retrospect, I probably didn't pick up enough stitches on the neck ... But the baby will look cool in a slightly standy-uppy collar ... If I ever get it done before she goes to school.

On to the button bands and the first ever buttonholes in my knitting career.

Thanks again Catsmamma.

The basic aim is to pick up and knit 3 out of every 4 stitches on straight edges, and every stitch on slopes or curves like the neck. But as you have seen, doing it a little differently results in a cool design feature that you can pretend from now on was entirely intentional :)

This has some useful information, esp about where is best to pick up stitches for button bands (which is further in than you might think) - but I'm sure what you've done is fine. I've found that knitting in the border bands can make a huge difference to the 'finished' look of a project, not to mention make you feel like you are finally reaching the end!

I have to steel myself to pick up and knit and sew up - so my congratulations for tackling this!

A useful tip is to use pins to divide up the edge so you can pick up evenly.

For example if the pattern says to pick up 16 stitches along an edge then fold the edge in half and mark the halfway point with a pin. Then fold again and mark the quarter point with a pin. This means that (in this example) between the bottom edge and the first pin you will pick up 4 stitches, between the first and second pin you will pick up another 4 stitches and so on until you have picked up the full 16 stitches. This keeps the stitches even and helps with buttonholes looking even.

I use safety pins to mark the points so they don't slip out.

Thanks all! I got rather involved in BBC4's "The Bridge" last night (such quality if you've missed it) and put my knitting aside, but will start the button bands and my squares for the blankets this evening.

Thanks for the tips and links. Really helpful.

The sewing up will be another problem - my sewing is terrible and I don't want lumpy seams poking my colleague's baby.

On the other hand, who would have thought RedRosie would ever knit anything? RedRosie certainly didn't!

RedRosie, I've been trying to watch The Bridge and knit at the same time. Quite a challenge (although I lived in Sweden so some of the dialogue vaguely makes sense to me, it's actually worse cos half the cast are speaking Danish as far as I can tell, and half in Swedish. To each other! Stop that).

I have to say one of the absolute best courses I've ever been on was the full day finishing techniques one I did a few weeks ago at my local yarn shop. It was run by a Rowan consultant / goddess and was utterly brilliant. It can't make finishing actually fun of course, but it makes it a lot less daunting.

A couple of other hints, make sure that the work is facing you when you pick up the stitches as you create a small ridge. Next it is much easier to pick up the stitches on a crochet hook and slip them off the end onto your knitting needle.

Finally don't forget to block your work so that it sits properly before you start to sew up and then use a mattress stitch to sew up your seams, if you put that into Youtube you will get some really great tutorials.

I hate sewing up, so I have been fiddling around with patterns for baby cardigans to knit them in one piece, knitting the fronts and back in one piece up to the armholes, knitting the sleeves in the round on dpns, then put them all on a super long circular needle and decrease two stitches where each raglan seam would be on every other row.

It only works with a raglan design and it looks really neat with no seams.

Nanny - I'm so new to knitting I didn't even realise that raglan shaping was meant to be a seam . I also do most of my stuff seamless, so have just finished my second of these. It's knit from the top down in one piece, so the raglan seams are actually double increases done in a fancy way to make a nice design. Where I've struggled with the top down method is that it means you have to pick up stitches underneath the arm hole to make the sleeve, which is harder to do neatly, although I've cracked it now.

It does still need a button band, though, so still needs stitches picking up all around the sides and neck. But I agree, sewing up should be avoided if it can be, although mattress stitch is such an amazing one I'm almost tempted to do something unnecessarily in two pieces just to seam them :)

The Bridge has been breath-taking in pace and scope. Such quality. Beautifully made and intelligent. There is so much dross about that I've almost given up TV (although I have a sneaking shameful love for Lewis).

Thanks again all. You are so nice to beginners!

Woollybackswife - thank you for such a simple, yet brilliant tip re the pins! I'm another who hates picking up stitches but am tempted to try a border on my next project now!