Not weave weave, but weave in ends.
I didn’t realize that alot of people don’t know how to do this so the ends stay secure and the weaving is flat. Thus, it doesn’t show when you are looking at the knit.

1.Identify where you need to weave and tighten the ends - look at the front to be sure it’s not too tight.

2. Cross them, this holds them together and stops you from having a gap there.

3. Weave in a diagonal fashion

4. Weave back diagonally

5. Do the same with the other side, but in the opposite direction - makes it flatter and helps hold the criss crossing you did a bit tighter - you don’t want it to slip and become a hole.

6. My join and weave is within that circle. And I assure that in real life it’s as flat as it seems.

On wool I use the spit splice. This technique here is something I usually only do for weaving in stripes, ends, and on materials that can’t be spit spliced (cotton).

Scary right. I hope some of you didn’t fall or anything when reading that. What the heck would possess me to say something so outlandish? No more coffee? Obviously I’ve hit a new level of insanity. I feel like I have.

For the past 6 months or so I’ve been battling with chest pains. In January they got so bad that I went to the doctor. I was hooked up to all the machines. I could have sworn I was going to die by chest implosion. She said I was fine and sent me home with some blood work to do. A week later, there was no doubt in my mind that my chest was indeed going to implode so I went back to visit my doctor.

This time she told me she thought I had heartburn. Heartburn? Seriously? Doctor you have to be shitting me? There is no way heartburn is going to cause such an explosion in my chest. I got the look from her that let me know I was being a ridiculous baby and that obviously I had no clue what heartburn was. Indeed I’ve had lots of heartburn in my time. Never had it tried to implode me. I was informed it could be a hiatal hernia, heartburn, GERD, Acid reflux, etc etc. Any one of those, or some combination. Here take these pills and stop being a baby.

Normally I hate to take pills without knowing what is wrong but at that point I really just wanted the pain to go away. It was getting hard to function. So I’ve been taking the pills as faithfully as my scattered little brain will allow. I just picked up one of those pill organizers so maybe I’ll be able to remember if I took my meds or not.

The coffee banishment…
Last week, I forgot to take a pill. I didn’t realize I forgot to take a pill until the next day when I had my morning cup of coffee. I drank half the cup and all of a sudden my chest started to implode again. Coffee bad. Right then and there, I realized I needed to say good bye to the coffee. I almost threw the cup across the room. I remembered that I like the mug so I simply poured out the coffee, cleaned the mug and made myself a pot of tea.

 **edit** it’s not the caffeine that gets me, it’s the acid in the coffee.  Plain and simple, there is too much acid in regular or decaf coffee.  It’s like drinking a cup of vinegar, which is another story for another day.  Decaf is just an insult. It’s not as good as regular and it still makes me hurt.  Sadly, coffee is out as a daily good morning.

I told that long story to give you a tutorial.
Yes, I know a bunch of you skipped the boring story to get to the pictures.

Now that I’m drinking tea I needed a cozy to help keep the pot warm. I needed the cozy now. I’m far to impatient to just knit one. Not when a pile of winter hats is staring at me from the corner. I’m using this opportunity to give a hat a summer life and I’ll get to make myselfa new hat next year. All pictures can be enlarged with a click.

Teapot and hat to be transformed (Fake isle hat)

I stretched the hat over the teapot. My very scientific way of seeing how it will fit.

While the hat is still on the pot, I start to pick up stitches and crochet a single chain around where I want the cut to be for the handle. Basically this is just doing a crochet steek technique. Make sure if you are using a fair isle item that you ar grabbing the carried yarn in with your steek so you don’t end up losing stitches when you cut. You can also sew and then crochet your edge if you are being really careful.

Then I cut!
I fit the hat onto the teapot again and do the crochet and cut steps for the spout.

It sort of fits. The bottom is too long and I want it to be felted anyway. Into the washer it goes.

All done!
The longest part of this was the washing machine filling with hot water. It was excruciating. I’m that impatient. Now I have a prettly little teapot cozy. The poor thing has a little Grizzly Adams thing going on and will need a bit of a haircut at some point. For now it’s just happy to be sitting on my little teapot.

I’ve heard lots of people shy away from adding zippers to their knits. Those that have done it, know it’s like steeking (but without the need for a stiff drink). Once you’ve tackled it once, you can do it again and again.

So you have your sweater knit and you have your zipper. You’ve got most of the work done. Make sure your sweater is blocked well. You don’t want to be dealing with curling edges. Unless a curly edge is what you want. In the case of a desired curly edge, I recomend tacking down the edge with a few stitches to keep it in the right place along the whole front. You can’t really just forget about it because sometimes the curled edge will be more or less than in other places. You want a good even straight front edge to put in the zipper.

I start by safety pinning the 2 halves together.

This is the quick way. If the sweater had stripes that needed to be aligned I would tack the front together with a series of stitches, using yarn instead of safety pinning. Tacking should be done with contrasting colors to the sweater so it’s easy to remove later. It is more foolproof than the safety pinning and preferable if you’ve not done this before or you have a sweater that has a pattern that needs to line up. Don’t make wide sweeping stitches, just stitch the edge along the whole front opening.

You only need to grab the first stitch or 2 all the way along the opening.

Next you will pin in the zipper. I pin on both sides of the sweater up and down the length of the zipper. Then I remove the safety pins because I like to sew the sweater when it’s opened. If you did the Tacking stitches instead of safety pins, and you want to sew with the Tacking in place (which can be a good idea with stripes/patterns), you can do that too. Just try not to sew over the Tacking yarn or you’ll be doing a lot more work in the end when you try to remove it.

When I open up the zipper, I add more pins to be assured that it’s in there good. I don’t want the zipper slipping on me when I’m sewing. Sweaters also have a tendency to stretch under that heavy foot and a zipper doesn’t, so pinning tons helps assure that it’s not going to do that. Even if you’re hand stitching, a few extra pins can save you a bit of trouble in the end.

I baste the zipper in before I sew the final stitches. Basting helps to hold it all in place better than pins and I usually have to redo at least one side when I baste, basting stitches are much easier to remove than the final titght stitches I will use when I sew the zipper in place. If you left in your tacking yarn to keep your sweater closed, you want to be sure NOT to sew those stitches in. After you’ve basted the zipper you want to make sure to remove that tacking yarn that held the sweater shut.

If your basting comes out good, remove the pins and you can do the final sewing of the zipper. Once you’ve done the final sewing trim all ends of threads and take a look at it. Does your original basting of the zipper to the cardi show, does it look awful? Sometimes the stitches and good thread matching the colors will mean that the basting doesn’t show. You can leave it in, what are a few extra stitches going to hurt right? If it looks awful or you used a really wide stitch to baste the zipper, you need to remove that as part of your finishing.

My model here is a lot smaller than I am so unfortunately the sweater looks a little sloppy on her but very fitted on me.
Happy little Zipper Cardi
STATS:
Yarn: Spunky Eclectic Big Ball Chunky in Walkabout colorway - 2 Skeins!
Pattern: Boogie - Free with a purchase of this yarn at SPA this weekend.
Needles: US9
Size: 40 inch chest with a 22 inch zipper - the back measures at 24 inches
Special Features: Raglan shaping. Short row neck. Waist shaping.
I could make this sweater again and again. It took me 2 weeks to make it. Not bad for a good sized sweater.

I’m sure there are several tutorials like this out on the web. Do a search if this one doesn’t feel right to you. As in knitting the pieces itself, there are many ways to tackle a zipper. Don’t ignore the zipper just because the tutotial doesn’t make sense, you can do it, you just need to find the right path for you