How do you cure a knitter with the hiccups? Sneak up behind them and yell "STEEKS"! Something about cutting up hours and hours of knitting with a pair of scissors strikes fear to the very heart of even the most hardcore knitter. Unless they have tried it, of course. This method of constructing Fair Isle garments has been practised in Scandinavia and Scotland for ages. If it didn't work amazingly well, it would have been scrapped.

The first natural question that one may ask is "Why on earth would you want to hack your knitting up?" The second question is "Are you out of your cotton pickin' mind???" The answer to the first question is: there are two major practical advantages. 1) Fair Isle knitting is so much easier if you are always looking at the right side. Knitting a tube and cutting the centre front for a jacket and the armholes and neckline allows you to have your knitting facing you from the cast on to the cast off. 2) There are no ends to sew in! That's right. NO ENDS TO SEW IN.You can plan to always change colours at the steek and then trim off the ends after you sew and cut your opening. The answer to the second question is, yes, but that is another story for another day.

Ok, so there are some very compelling reasons to make a fair isle design using steeks. How do we get rid of the lump in our throat when we think about cutting into hand knit fabric? There are some very simple solutions to make the job foolproof. First, take some scrap yarn and baste a line down either side of the centre of the steek. Baste directly into the centre of the stitch that is just on either side of the centre of the steek. Next, take some tissue paper and lay it over the feed dogs of your sewing machine. Put your knitting on the paper and zig zag over the basting. Remove the paper and get the scissors. If you are feeling sick to your stomach, give the scissors to someone else. Point out the place they are to cut and run and hide in the bathroom. You're almost done and out of the woods.

Now pick up the stitches required to make sleeves, neckband, button bands or what have you. You can bind the raw edges of the steek with grosgrain ribbon for the front openings or you can knit a little facing and lap it over to make a neat finish (best for edges that are curved like armholes and neckbands). Some people tack the seam allowances down with a tidy row of cross stitches. Now look at the result! You can also adapt the steek method to sew together a collection of tension swatches or UFO's (UnFinished Objects) into beautiful afghans or other creative projects. Snip, snip, snip!

Thanks to dccraftaholic128 for sharing this fine photo of cut steeks on flickr.com