Shearer Step Nine - Grafting Shoulder Seams

Again, Lorraine's sage advice from the comments rang in my ears as I sat to graft the shoulders. I couldn't expect absolute perfection  - at best things would be off a step for each stitch. Also, I knew with my less than perfected grafting skills I'd be doing well to achieve even that! So I just tried to get the thing to give the impression of continuity across the shoulder join.

I set up on a table with great light and grafted only a few stitches at a time. then I'd walk away, come back and look with freshly critical eyes and several times, ripped out and started again.

I'd worked one cable element (the one pictured at the bottom in the shot below) to a point where they were just about to cross as they met so I crossed the stitches (on the panel on the right) without actually having knit them that way. It gives the impression the cable spans the seam, hopefully distracting the eye from seeing where the pattern isn't as well aligned where the next element meets.

In fact, to make sure that one cable element was exactly right... (again, I'm talking about the bottom one in the shot below)

I started the graft at that point, several stitches in from the edge then went back to graft the skipped stitches afterwards. this let me hide the one stitch that was off alignment out of sight in what will be the eventual shoulder seam with the sleeves.

I'm very happy with how the shoulder seam relates to the collar and thrilled with the collar itself.

Details on all that tomorrow! Thanks for dropping by!