picot hem goodness: a tutorial

A how to in many many pictures. One thing I realized though, was that, you know, I’m a left handed knitter. This may or may not mean that the picture tutorial will be too hard to follow. I don’t know, so I’m gonna just put up the pictures as they are, and then we will figure out what I need to do from here. I was going to just go ahead and flip them around, but that proved too confusing for me.

I hope this does help, though…. It’s low pressure but looks fab. WE LOVE THAT.

Find your needles, however many you use or what kind you use for a pair of socks. Got that? Now you find some waste yarn, preferably in a solid color, just because it’s harder to do it if it’s variegated. I know this from experience…. Put a single slipknot onto a needle.

Got that?

Now cast on as many stitches as you need with the backwards loop method. Yes, just a simple backwards loop. It really doesn’t matter how many, as long as it’s an even number. Need an odd? Add one more, you really do need an even number. For reference, my usual sock count is 60. Yours will be whatever you need yours to be. Makes sense?

Divide them onto needles or not, it doesn’t matter really. Don’t worry about your tension, don’t worry about excess yarn. It’s waste yarn, right?

When you’re all done backwards looping except for the last one, cut waste yarn, and make a slipknot for the last one. There! You are all cast on. DO NOT JOIN.

Now start knitting, with the yarn you’re using for the sock. Don’t worry about tension, don’t worry about the looseness. It’ll all tighten up later, pinky swear. Don’t do a fancy join when you’re finally all done knitting all the waste stitches, just set them up so you’re sure they’re not twisted, and then knit as usual. Really. Don’t do anything special. It’ll be loose, that’s normal. REALLY.

Knit nine more rows. You want ten rows total, NOT COUNTING THE WASTE YARN ROW and counting the row that’s on the needles. Do one row of YO K2tog. This is the turning row. Do me a favor and count each needle as you go to make sure your count is right. Not that I ever have been guilty of screwing up that poor row repeatedly. Now do ten more rows, NOT COUNTING THE TURNING ROW but including the row on the needles.

I don’t worry about doing the inside portion on smaller needles, or doing a different row count or blah blah blah blah. Too much hassle. This is low stress, right? It looks good, right? Moving along.

This is what you should have at this point. Not too shabby.

Now the fun part begins.

This is how I do it, because I find it a lot easier and neater this way, and still is low stress.

Take a deep breath, and find five more needles. Smaller ones, if possible. Just makes it easier. They don’t have to be the same size or color. You’re just going to pick up the stitches off the waste yarn.

This is why I like the backwards loop – one stitch is held by two loops of the backwards loop, and no, it doesn’t “unzip”, but it is safer this way because you can’t have loose stitches without meaning to. Which is good. Now get the loop that’s attached to the very last slipknot… Now see, I’m left handed, so I started with the loop on the right side of the gap. You’re right handed, probably, so you probably would start with the loop on the left side? Same principle though. You may find that the tail is through one loop, just pull it out until it is loose and is a perfect stitch. Don’t worry if it gets muffed. LOW STRESS. We will fix that later.

Just keep picking up each stitch and pull out the waste yarn with a smooth fwoop fwoop of a knitting needle as you go.

You’ll find that if you keep the stitch count the same on your picked up needle as you do on the knitted-on needle, they’ll match up fine. The “gap” in the waste yarn lines up with the needle placements, which is neat! It’s almost as if I planned that.

Just keep picking up the stitches and keep going and going and you’ll find that miraculously the stitch count is the same as the stitch count on your knitted-on needles. How about that? If they aren’t, and are one stitch short, just use the tail to pull through another stitch. One stitch too many? We’ll fudge.

Now fold the wrong sides together and kind of origami the whole thing into a tube, trying to keep like needles together.

Now this next part is maybe the trickiest of the whole thing, or maybe the most tedious. The directional information of the loops I give are accurate for left handed knitting. Please, someone let me know what the loops should look like for right handed knitting so I can toss it in for everyone else. I’m clueless!

Right about this point is when a Matisse or perhaps a catchen of a more local flavor will become interested in the hemming process.

What we are doing here is putting the loops on both needles together onto one needle. You don’t HAVE to do this, but it makes for a much neater result IMO, and this way you know everything is oriented properly and the joining row is easier.

The row AWAY from me I insert the needle like this:

And the row CLOSE to me I do it like this:

This is how you orient the stitches so that they do not become twisted when you join. Left handedly and backwards, anyway.

And this is how I join… Just a lovely row of K2tog all the way around the round. One plain row even. And you’re all done! Hemmed!

And now I’m so busted on the fact that I actually knit socks inside out and left handed.

The Matisse is tired now.