Not socks! Cowichan Sweater Repair

An adventure ... but not in argyle sock knitting:

I recently took a break from my argyle adventures to fix a beautiful, vintage, well-loved Cowichan sweater for a friend. The sweater was purchased in the 1980s. Vintage Cowichan sweater repair was an interesting process and I am quite proud of the results. I thought it might be useful to document the steps, just in case this comes up for someone else.

If you don't know much about Cowichan style knitting, it has a very interesting history that dates back to the late 1800s. Wikipedia has a very good description of Cowichan Knitting History. It is definitely worth reading. Interestingly, there are some Cowichan knitting displays at the Vancouver International airport which showcase the art.

Back to my project ... the parts that needed fixing were the edges of sleeves and the edge around the body. The ribbed edges had become quite frayed over time. I decided to try and replace the rows after the last white stripe around the cuff and bottom edge.

Second Challenge - Gauge

My next challenge was to determine how many strands to combine of the lighter weight yarn and what size needles to use to get the correct gauge.

It was easy to see how many stitches were in the ribbed rows of the sleeve edges. The rib pattern repeats "knit 2 + purl 1". I could see 7 of these ribs, so therefore 21 stitches per row.

Then I experimented with some samples. I doubled, tripled and quadrupled the strands of yarn trying needle sizes ranging from 5.5 mm up 7 mm.  It sounds like a lot of combinations but I only had to try about five samples before I zoned in on the winning match.

The magic combo was tripled strands with 6 mm needles.

Third Challenge - Now what?

Yarn and needles and gauge sorted out ... how would I attach a new cuff?

After searching on Google, it seemed like grafting a newly knit cuff to the existing sleeve would be a good method. I have grafted many sock toes but always just a few stitches in stocking stitch. A ribbed pattern is a little bit more complicated.

There were a few failed attempts. I was following a YouTube instructional video, but the stitches were not lining up. I took a closer look and realized that the sleeves were knitted top-down. That is, the stitches looked like upside-down "V"s instead of right-side-up "V"s, as normal.

This actually made the task easier. I picked up the stitches along the last white row with double pointed needles and knit the seven required rows and cast off.

I did all of this with the original frayed edge in place. I was very nervous about cutting and removing these rows until I knew I had it right. Once the old part was cut out it looked like part of the original sweater.

Fourth Challenge - Body Edge

The edge around the body was knit from the bottom-up. The strategy that I had avoided for the sleeves/cuffs had returned.

I used an 6 mm wide, 80 cm long circular needle to knit a new bottom edge for the sweater. I had determined that the edge had 87 stitches. 29 ribs X "knit 2 + purl 1" = 87 stitches

Then I went back to the grafting video. This is not mine, but I found it very useful. I find her visual aid with the paper and the contrasting color yarn quite helpful.

I started grafting my newly knit edge on to the last row of white on the sweater. After a dozen or so stitches I was quite happy to see the ribs lining up. Yeah!

After grafting the last stitch, I nervously cut away the old frayed edge.