Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Mermaid progress and cast-on tip

Here's what my Mermaid looks like now:


Seeing as I'm just past the armhole, I have a tip for casting on those stitches...

The pattern suggests you use a double strand on your thumb and a single strand on your index finger for a long-tail cast-on. I found a technique I liked a lot. I wound off a long piece of color C from the outside of the ball. I doubled it and tied a slip knot at the fold. I inserted this slip-knot between the last two stitches on my right needle. Then I used both tails from the slip knot on my thumb and the working yarn from the right needle on my index finger and cast on my stitches, remembering that my slip-knot was the first one. At the end, your working yarn is exactly where you want it to be to knit the RS row.

Update: I also collected all of my notes and tips for this project together on my Project Notes page for it. Includes description (and sample image) of the spreadsheet, discussion of my i-cord experiments, and the new tip above so far.

2 comments:

Maus said...

your Mermaid looks wonderful! Great work on your tips page, thanks so much for sharing all your experiences!

Docbeccy said...

Man, I wish I would have seen your post when I was trying to figure out what they meant by that double thumb thing. I did a regular cast on and of course it is not very sturdy so I think I'll crochet a row of single crochet over it to make it a little more firm.

I'm right at the half way point - need to take a picture. I LOVE this pattern and can't wait to wear it.
Ann