A Knitting Mystery
An interesting package arrived today from my Aunt Cathy. It contains two unfinished projects begun by my grandma before she stopped knitting. The first is this cream sweater:
And the second is this afghan in browns and teal:
Ideally, I’d like to figure out how to finish both of these projects. But first I have to figure out the answers to some questions. This is where you come in.
The Sweater
Let’s start with the sweater. There’s a front, a back, and two sleeves. The sleeves are joined — more or less — to the fronts and back, but the seams are partially unraveled, and there may be a hole along one seam. (I have to investigate that further when I take the pieces apart.) There are live stitches along the front neckline, the back neckline, and both sleeves, some of them on holders and some not. The front left side of the neckline is clearly higher than the front right, which concerns me.
Along with the sweater came this pile of cream-colored yarn.
The yarns clearly do not match. When my grandma moved into a nursing home, my aunt received all of her stash yarn and patterns, as well as these unfinished projects. I am assuming that the pile of cream yarn was all with the sweater in one place, rather than picked by Aunt Cathy from among the stash. This would mean that my grandma intended to use some or all of the cream yarn to complete the sweater. Given that the creams in the sweater itself do not all match (which I tried and failed to capture on camera), I can only assume that the sweater is knit with different dyelots of the same yarn or, more likely, with several completely different cream yarns. Was this some sort of stashbuster? Grandma did make numerous fisherman-knit sweaters and could well have ended up with enough cream wool oddballs to decide to make a sweater with the leftovers.
There is no pattern accompanying the sweater, either because Grandma was making it up or because the pattern got separated at some point.
What I need to figure out is how to complete the sweater. I am fairly sure I can match the cable pattern and identify and match the lace pattern if need be. I’m also pretty confident I can lightly overdye the sweater to make up for the differences in the colors of the cream yarn. What I’m most confused by at the moment is why the front left side of the neckline would be so much lower than the front right side. How would that even have happened? Do you suppose that stitches were put on hold in the center front and then the two sides were knit separately, and one side was unraveled for some reason? That’s the only explanation I can come up with.
How to proceed? I suspect what I will do is unseam the raglan seams, wash and block all the pieces, and take a good look at them all before formulating a plan to finish the front. I would be grateful for any suggestions y’all have.
The Afghan
The afghan comes with no yarn. It seems to be nearly complete. I have never seen anything like it and am not sure it was knit. It may be elaborately knotted. It looks so regular that I almost wonder if it was machine-made, except that it is so clearly unfinished.
These bobby pins would suggest that the afghan was still in progress when it was set aside.
I’m much more out of my league with the afghan than with the sweater. Can anyone tell me how it was even constructed? Ideas?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
That afghan’s not knitted; it looks to me like a crochet technique called “broomstick lace” with elaborations. I haven’t any idea how to actually work it, but I’ll bet you could find a tutorial somewhere.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Er, sorry, *hairpin* lace, not broomstick. I have no idea what came over me.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
That’s such a beautiful sweater! I think I agree with you about the discrepancy in the height of the two edges of the front. It looks like one side just came off a holder and unraveled…
The blanket is so very interesting! I really like the ways the braided strips look with the middle lace-like strips but I too have no clue how it was constructed. Do share if you ever find out!
March 6th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I agree with Carrie - it looks like hairpin lace to me, too.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
The blanket is definitely hairpin lace which is made from crocheting up between two spindles. If I hadn’t seen the loosened seams on the sweater I’d have thought she finished the one side and hadn’t gotten to the other, but it looks like what’s unravelled is just what was done after separating for the neckline. A little patience in following the completed side should let you recreate what’s gone.
But what a treasure to have something that will have both your generations work going into it. Truly heirloom pieces!!!
March 8th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Hi,
The lace panel looks like the gull pattern from Elizabeth Zimmermans Baby Sweater in the Knitters Almanac. It is a very easy 7 stitch repeat.
The blanket is hairpin lace. Pretty too. It would be worth finishing!
Jo Anna
March 8th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Two interesting projects to figure out! And I agree with Msbehave that these will be inter-generational treasures.
The blanket is very definitely hairpin lace, which I think goes by other names too. I knew how to do this in my youth, but have forgotten. It involved a giant “hair-pin” — a big u-shaped metal wire. You wrapped yarn around it and with each wrap, crocheted the loops together in the middle (between the legs of the pin). Somehow (another part I can’t remember) you fasten the loops of each new row together with previous rows. There must be on-line tutorials for this. If I did it as a kid, you can figure it out and finish the afghan. Ask your aunt to look through her remaining stash for the hairpin thingie. Likely it’s still there and she didn’t know what it was for. Oh, and you just use a crochet hook for the middle crocheting.
Looking forward to seeing how you finish these!
March 8th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
That sweater is lovely, it will be so great to finish it and have something that your grandmother started and you finished, what a beautiful tie between generations. I have a similar sweater that is about half complete, but I’m not quite ready to tackle it yet. Maybe next year!
The neckline looks to me like the center stitches may have been bound off or put on a holder and then the sides of the neckline worked separately with different balls of yarn, as you mentioned. I knit a sweater like this last fall. But I’m not sure why one side would have been unraveled, unless she discovered a mistake?
Good luck!!
March 10th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
I think it’s cool that the hair pin lace afghan was secured with hairpins!!
I hope you’ll be able to figure out the cabled sweater, it looks really pretty!
March 11th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
On the afghan the bobby pins are holding the final ends of the woven hairpin loops so they will not come loose. There are several ways to secure these ends. One way is to use single crochet stitches and chain stitches and as you come to the places where the bobby pins are you make a single crochet into all the loops together as one, then make some chain stitches, and sc into the next place where the bobby pin is and so on. If you only want to work along the ends of the afghan, then start with a sc in one corner and work across the end as stated and end with a sc in the next corner, and fasten off. (Then add fringe if wanted, or another row or rows of whatever kind of stitches you want to use.)
Or you can begin in one corner with a single crochet, then *make enough love knots (also called Salomon’s Knots) to reach the place where the bobby pin is, and single crochet into all the loops as one, and repeat from *
across the end of the afghan. Then repeat this along the opposite end, or you can continue on around the entire afghan making love knots and single crochets along the sides, spaced evenly and the same number of love knots between where you make the single crochets, then continue across the other end, and along the other side. (Put a single crochet, one love knot, and a single crochet in each corner of the afghan.)
Hope this helps.
Ann
April 24th, 2007 at 4:37 am
I have an afghan like this that my aunt made for me in the 70s. I do not have a pattern for it, but probably if you look for hairpin lace afghan patterns, either online, or search Ebay for vintage patterns, you will find it. Mine has looped fringe around the four sides to finish it.
September 18th, 2007 at 5:21 am
Looking at the closeup of the afghan it is done in basic hairpin lace and the strips are joined with a cable join using three loops at a time. If you visit the stitch diva website, it has a tutorial section that will show you how to make hairpin lace, join the strips and also how to finish off the edge with no further yarn required. Hope this helps. Nice afghan by the way, it’s given me a few ideas.