Monday, February 16, 2009

Stocking vs. Seed

Why, you might ask yourself, should there be any sort of versus in that title? Can't different stitches just learn to get along?

Sadly no. We will not discuss the precise manner in which the battlefield that is my aunt's tam demonstrates the discord between these two, beyond noting that the Statue of Liberty would be well-suited by the result. I have hopes that careful negotiations, in the form of a pressing cloth and steaming iron, will lead to peace.

Stocking stitch takes yarn farther than other stitches. Even garter stitch snuggles up close to itself row after row, so that if you have two small sections of stocking stitch and a long section of some other stitch - cable, tumbling blocks, seed - it will pull up in the middle where the stocking stitch sections are not staking it down. It sounds pretty when you put it that way, doesn't it? Perhaps I will take my aunt's tam as a learning experience and apply it more productively at the bottom of a sleeve or a hem or some other place where scallops look nice. But first, I have to fire up the iron.

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