Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 16:04:56 -0500
From: jimbob@ITCHY.MI.NET
To: Multiple recipients of list <knit@geom.umn.edu>
Subject: Knit: How to execute the perfect graft

[...]

     Yesterday I finished the worked-sideways cable band for the waistband
of my new project, and of course I wanted to graft it together so it would
be a perfect seamless circle (I had, with foresight, worked the first two
rows in scrap yarn). I tried to follow the instructions in the Vogue
Knitting book, and what a bucket of piddle they turned out to be! Four
steps, they say. Four steps! Who could follow that, especially if they left
the stitches on the needles?

    Running on instinct, I yanked the stitches off the two needles and set
about grafting them as I thought they ought to be grafted, which is to say
using the same motions one would use to seam a shoulder together if both
edges were cast off. And of course it worked perfectly, and the waistband
is a thing of beauty, almost flawless. (Because grafting is necessarily a
half-stitch off, the cables don't line up absolutely perfectly and you can
see where the grafting must have taken place, if you look closely. Not one
person in a hundred would ever notice.)

     There is *one* step in grafting, and any book that tells you different
is lying to you and making your life difficult. I'm going to tell you how
it is properly done, which is to say how I did it yesterday; once you've
done it this way, it will always come automatically to you and you'll never
fear grafting again.

     To begin, cut off a length of yarn about four times the width of the
to-be-grafted seam and thread it into a yarn needle. Don't leave the yarn
attached to one of the rows of knitting; it's very hard to see what's going
on in the first few rows if you do that. Pull all your stitches off the
needles; they're not going anywhere, and if one of them dows pull free,
just hook it back into place with a crochet hook. Hold the two pieces of
knitting, rights sides up, with the live stitches facing one another.

     Now, to graft. Insert your threaded yarn needle _down_ into the first
stitch on the top piece of knitting and then back _up_ through the second
stitch. Now do the same thing with the bottom piece of knitting. Then back
up to the top, down into the second stitch and up through the third. Now go
to the bottom piece; down into the second stitch and up through the third.
Back to the top; down into the third stitch and up through the fourth.

     And that's *it*. Just keep making that same motion, down into a stitch
and up through its neighbour, over and over again, until you come to the
end. Do this loosely so you can see where you're going, and then when
you're done, start from the middle of the seam and use a crochet hook to
tighten each half-stitch all along the seam until the stitches are the same
tension as the knitting itself. Take in your ends and you've got a flawless
graft, guaranteed.

     I think it's high time I wrote a book....

Robert Matthews

jimbob@itchy.mi.net

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