Kris Jenner Sweater

I said some time ago I was going to put a reversible Kris Jenner image onto a sweater, and I finally got around to doing that in December. Sort of. I used a different image, and a different method of knitting, but it’s still mama Kris.

The finished Kris Jenner sweater!

Of course, when we’re talking of clothing, there are issues to consider besides, “Can I make this image look good,” such as, “Will this fabric be as stiff as cardboard,” etc.. I didn’t really like the feel of that particular yarn/knitting combo for a sweater, it was kinda stiffer than I would personally want to wear. This lead me to try … I want to say eight different combinations of yarns and knitting methods before I settled on one that had enough drape. Of course it wasn’t one of the easier methods with the second yarn feeder, no, of course not. I preferred the swatches done in slip jacquard.

“No biggie,” I thought, “it’s only two colours, I’ll just use my colour changer.” This lead to me fighting with my machine for something like a week. A week! I broke needles. I bent needles. I broke a part of my carriage. I wrecked my needle retaining spring. (All fixed, thank goodness.) I dropped countless pieces of knitting off the machine. I could NOT get my colour changer to work! I finally realized I was threading the carriage incorrectly, and that helped somewhat, but it still had a tendency to grab both colours, or drop one and then drop the whole thing off the beds. Except with one particular yarn – Woolike, again. I tell you that machine just loves that yarn.

So I had to make two of these KJ sweaters, and I started the first one with the jacquard claw. I was afraid of ruining it. I did the whole front panel with the jacquard claw, and it didn’t actually take that long, since I was only doing the raglan shaping and planning cut and sew for the neckline. But I couldn’t bear the thought of doing a second one that way, so I was determined to get the colour changer going. In the end it worked fine, I just had to keep a close eye on it to make sure it was properly unthreading each time, and a couple of times caught it just before disaster struck.

The rest of the sweaters was done in full needle rib, and that actually went super quickly. I was running out of time to do full fashioned shaping, so for all pieces but one back panel I just knit big rectangles, and did cut and sew. I was left with a LOT of scraps and fluff, but I managed to get both sweaters done in a fraction of the time. The inside seams, done with my overlocker, are not as pretty as they could be, but hey, they’re done and they won’t fall apart, so I’m happy.

The necklines, on the other hand, are GORGEOUS! I finally tried Jonathan’s cut and sew encased neckline (it’s on YouTube) and they are so beautiful.

Check out that beautiful encased cut and sew neckline. You can’t see a hint of the overlocking that hides underneath.

As well, I learned a new technique for going from ribbing (2×2 industrial in this case) to FNR, which is, when you’re done your ribbing, pull out your needles for FNR, do two circular rows at a tighter tension (as when you start ribbing, after the zig zag row), then change to your FNR stitch size, knit one row, and then in my case, rack to the right so everything is lined up properly and carry on. (I had it racked to the left for the 2×2.) This means you don’t have to hang up a bunch of heels of stitches to avoid getting holes in your knitting where you change from ribbing to FNR.

No hanging heels of stitches, and no holes. What is this sorcery?!

So, it wasn’t the sweater I had intended to make originally, but they came out great in the end. The recipient loved them, and I’m never making two sweaters in 7 days again, if I can help it.