Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop

Courtesy of a submission from Erin, the Girl Who Knits, we are able to kick off our crafts & hobbies category with the forty-second page of “Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop” (by—you can probably guess, Elizabeth Zimmerman) which reads (emphasis added):

PHONEY SEAMS

For those who complained that circular sweaters "had no seams" and therefore "didn't hang right", we invented the Phoney Seam, which we've now decided is an indispensible adjunct to a well-made sweater:

FIND the "center-stitch" of the 8% of stitches at the underarms, and drop it clear down to the border or the ribbing of the sweater.

NOW, with a crochet hook, hook it up again, but with a different relationship of stitches to rounds—two stitches for every three rounds.

PUT the crochet hook in the first stitch at the bottom of the runner you've made, and hook the next two threads through it.

THEN hook one thread. Then two, then one, then two, and so on.

THERE will be 2/3 as many "rounds" for this stitch as for the rest of the fabric which will hump it up slightly to form an ineradicable and good-looking pressed-in seam. This gentle technique will, I think, also eliminate the trauma about dropped stitches forever.

More information about “Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Powell's Books