Father's Day Tie!

My Dad is impossible to buy for.  He's they typical Dad that says "Oh, I don't need anything, I have everything that I want."  Sweet but so frustrating!  He also likes to dress pretty dapper with jumpers matching his socks.  Naturally then he has a jumper in every single colour possible and endless ties and cufflinks.  This is why my Dad is impossible to buy for.

But wait, hang on, a knitted tie...my Dad doesn't have a knitted tie!!  Hurrah!  Present problem solved!

I decided that I wanted a 100% silk yarn, ideally 4 ply, to make it from.  Unfortunately, internet searching and a visit to John Lewis revealed that 4 plys were all silk mixes.  The only 100% silk I found was Debbie Bliss Luxury Silk DK.  Yup, double knit.  This would have to do and I just used smaller needles to cast on with.  The recommended size was 4mm so I used 3.25mm so the stitches came up smaller.  There wasn't really a pattern either, 12 stitches wide in a seed/moss stitch.  A stockinette would have just curled up at the edges and not looked very nice.  Using the whole 50g skein, the tie measured up as 53" long.  I had wanted it to be 58" as most of his ties were this length :(

I decided to let my Dad be the judge of the length and thankfully he said it was fine!

So here's the tie that I made for my awesome Dad!

Frogging Advice

You may know that I currently working on a jumper...annoyingly the pattern was unclear for the front shoulders and I messed up a little and ended up a few rows short.  Having realised my error, I didn't have the heart to rip (or frog) my work as there were about 10 rows to undo and so I've left it as it is :(

A few days later I came across THE most helpful article ever!  How to undo multiple rows without laboriously doing it stitch by stitch, I wish I'd known about this article earlier!

Anyway, I'm sharing it with you all as it's pretty darned useful stuff...enjoy!

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter03/FEATwin03TT.html