Pieces of Thelma

There's nothing that I like quite as much as a nice line of finishing work - a hem, a seam. . . . a picot is like a little reverie.

I got out Marnie's knitting machine (aka little Knitter) the other day and decided to go to town on Thelma. The knitting machine is not for every occasion, but it can be nice for a long stretch of stockinette when you just want to punch something out quickly. Using a machine deprives you of the feel of the yarn in your hands, and for me the speed is always bittersweet for this very reason. It concentrates the work into the planning and the finishing details.

The Whole Shebang.For Thelma, not too much planning was needed. I made two swatches, let them sit overnight, took my gauge and went. I made a few little tweaks on the way through the pattern, but my biggest change was in the finishing. Instead of the oval roll edge at the bottom of Thelma, I worked a picot edge in a lighter denim, which will hopefully mirror the lighter denim scraps I'll use for the ties. I haven't yet decided if I will add a pocket or jettison that detail completely. If I do, I may place it over the side seam rather than at the front. Just a little pocket - to fit a key or a few dollar bills. We'll see.

Finishing has been another issue altogether. The machine knitting for the body took only about one or two hours, but knitting the hems and sewing them down has taken over twice as long.
The reverse side for the curious.I'm on the last hem now. The wonderful thing is that it hasn't been hard to match my gauge to the machine. I keep expecting my knitting to look wonky next to Little Knitter's and it doesn't. The first time this happened I was pretty smug at my good fortune and hopeful that it had something to do with skill, but now I think that the real difference between hand-knitting and machine, other than the handful of manuevers that hand-knitting cannot quite achieve, is simply the careful finishing. If you take the time to learn it, it all looks seamless, so to speak.