STEEKING
The house is sparkly clean and the laundry is hanging on the line and I'm settling down to knit all day in the warm desert sunshine. I'm past the dreaded boring part on the Sirdal cardigan and I'm already starting to think of doing the steeks on this sweater. I've tried several different methods. The first method I tried was from an online pictorial that basically said to take the yarn you knit with and sew several backstitch lines up and down each side of the steek. This was not good and I could see the little ends working their way loose as I was doing it. The second method I tried was a crocheted steek and I had the same results as the first method. Once Jeanette kindly offered her services as seamstress and machine stitched them. I don't have a sewing machine so the method I've finally arrived at is to use quilting thread and do several cross stitches on each steek side, making sure to catch every yarn with the thread. This does take some time but it is foolproof so far.
I've always wanted to try two unusual steek methods. One is called the wound steek method in Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting - basically you wind the yarns several times around the needle when you get to the desired steek opening then start knitting again. On the next round, drop the wrapped yarn off the needle before winding on a new set of yarn loops. You're making a yarn ladder and when you get to the top you cut in the center of these ladder yarns and darn them all in on the wrong side. I may try this method on the Sirdal for the neck steek. The pattern doesn't have a neck steek but it is a nice way to save time. Most Dale patterns have you working back and forth up at the neckline.
I've heard of a simpler yet more controversial version of this type of steek. You'll need a larger number of steek stitches - at least 4
and probably more. At the top of the knitting, simply drop/unravel the steek stitches to the desired opening, cut the ladder stitches in
the center and then proceed to KNOT every two yarns together. So you'd have a lot of knots along each steek edge but in a Dale sweater where there is always a knitted facing on every steek edge, I'm not sure how noticeable that would be.
Here is my first steeked sweater - it is #79013 in Dale of Norway's book #79 (long out of print) in Heilo yarn. As I was cutting the steeks on the front I actually cut through and made a hole in the back of the sweater! After spending 15 minutes swearing like a sailor, I ended up unraveling the sweater a bit more in the back then using the Kitchener stitch and knitting on double pointed needles to repair it. It isn't noticeable at all any more thankfully.