crochet steek

i've been working on a seamless raglan--the body knitted bottom up, the sleeves top down. after completing the yoke with neck shaping from page 74 of Knitting Without Tears (efficient, easy to execute, but not quite as clean in appearance as other neck-shaping techniques), i unraveled the sleeve provisional cast-on and began knitting downwards. at this point, i felt like i was knitting blind. the neck opening was too small to try on, so no way to check whether the sleeves were long enough, wide enough, shapely enough, etc.


the small neck opening wasn't a problem because the plan was always to cardiganize with a steek (hence the guide thread through the center front stitches). this was in exchange for the comfort of knitting seamlessly and mindlessly around on the body. in order to check sleeve progress, it was time to steek. this would be a first (cutting up my own knitting, on purpose, while expecting it to stay in one piece. sounds nutty when spelled out like that.)... i reread what i had on crochet steeks, picked out some leftover and very feltable peruvian wool in fingering weight, and started crocheting:



nothing left but to cut:


it's easy to find the ladder meant for cutting on a crochet steek, which means confidence that one is cutting the correct piece of yarn:



there were nerve-wracking and discomfiting bits of unraveling/loosening yarn at the bind-off edge (see dangerous strand indicated by red arrow), so i threaded the end of the crochet yarn through a needle and whipped a few stitches around that edge. other than that, things seem to be holding well. in fact, it's a very neat edge that naturally curls under. i kinda want to steek some more.