As you probably remember, we have been working up the Servin’ Up Stripes Table Runner pattern as a Loom Along for October at our Yahoo Chat Clique and at our Ravelry LAL Group. It’s been a little quiet, but some of us have been making some excellent progress on it and the variations of the different yarns being used are terrific to see in this project! 🙂
We did have an excellent question arise that needed to be addressed. When using the increasing method described in the pattern specifically used for double knitting and making a triangle shape, there ended up being little loops on the side of the points where the newly cast on stitches were employed. This doesn’t really show up if you’re using a thick enough yarn to fill out that extra looseness in the e-wrapped add-ons, but they do definitely show up with thinner type yarns.
I dug out my loom and yarn and refreshed myself on that cast on method. I worked, tried, frogged, winged, frogged, then frogged some more, lol, in the search to control those loops. Finally, I had some luck! 🙂
If you follow the instructions just as written, but instead of wrapping those added increase pegs on each end as normal, you create them by using the half hitch technique, you will almost completely eliminate those extra loops! YAY!
What is the half hitch? If you have the new book, it is described in the Knitty Gritty section. It’s also shown on the DVD some of the book backers received (more info about that DVD coming soon!). In essence, you will wrap exactly the same way, but will twist the working yarn in your fingers THE OPPOSITE WAY as an e-wrap, so that your WY will cross UNDERNEATH your wrap when placed on the peg. This helps lock that wrap in place and it won’t elongate after knitting off, which is what tends to happen with the e-wrap method.
Here’s a little tutorial video for you to see what I’m talking about for yourself…
Working with the Half Hitch:
Does this make sense? Give it a try and see what you come up with! 🙂 You can also find the updated version of Servin’ Up Stripes Table Runner pattern on the Freebies Page here.
Bethany~
Gettin' It Pegged...Loom Knitter's Clique 
Thanks so much for the video – I couldn’t understand what you meant in the description but of course it makes perfect sense when you SEE it. THANK YOU!!! I have had to put the runner aside for now, while I work on things for our Craft Sale. And I had to order more wool! I initially planned on using a single strand, but it was just too thin and when I double it up I don’t have enough.
Thanks for all you do,
Cheers, Karen
How can we modify this to make a men’s necktie? I’m a newbie otherwise I could figure it out myself…….I think. Thank you.
I believe you could fairly easily use this very same concept to make a necktie, just by decreasing the number of pegs used. 🙂 I think it would also be nice to use a smaller gauge loom with thinner yarns…a great example would be a sock loom by Authentic Knitting Board, or by using the Martha Stewart Loom kit’s smaller peg configuration with either sport or sock weight yarns. I’d love to see what you come up with! What a terrific idea for Father’s Day! 🙂