Fairy Longlegs underway!

I've decided to try and make a pair of Fairy Longlegs and show the process here in my blog. To start, I hand dyed some aran color Patons Classic Merino with Wilton's royal blue cake dye. The yarn really took on a beautiful color. Very intense and deep.

I cast on my knitting machine and began circular knitting. After a no of rows, I begin short rowing - or adding extra rows to one side of the garment to increase to length on that side or provide fullness. It's kind of tricky on a machine. I take a lot of notes and write everything down immediately in case I have to stop midway. It's very important when machine knitting to check after each row for errors as they can be difficult to fix later on. I usually have to fix a dropped stitch etc 1/2 a dozen times or so - depending on the yarn.
See in pic how one side is "longer" that the other - that's your cloth diaper booty room! The white yarn is waste yarn that will be removed later on as the stitches are pickec up and knit.



When the main knitting is finished, the knitting is removed from the machine, then immediately rehung to knit the crotch gusset. I knit that, remove it from the machine and graft it to the other side - see photo. You can see that the body of the pants is starting to take shape.



Then, I've found that the best way for me to continue is to pick up the stitches and knit a few rows by hand to get the legs going.
When picking up stitches along the gusset, I add a couple of twisted bar increases at the join - many thanks to Pamela - designer of the famous "wonder pants" at www.woolywonder.com for helping me work that out!
I bind off loosely and will hang the knitting back on the machine to knit the legs.



I'lll try to get a picture of some knitting on the machine for those of you that have never seen a knitting machine. Still, it's hard to visualize without seeing one in action.
Maybe I will try to post a video one day.

My mother is doing quite well. She is in a rehab hospital and they are making her work! She hopes to stay at least a week and get really stable on her feet before she goes home.