While it drips and drizzles in the drabby day sky,
I am BRIGHTENED by my other little fixUp project.


the Shell that wanted to be a Cardi

After stitching and cutting open the front of the shell and finishing the neck edge with a mock turtleneck, I was ready to make a band for the zipper. (ZIPPER! Does any garment going through the works ESCAPE Zippering this season? Apparently NOT... teeheeheee!)

Using a size C crochet hook and some beautiful Electric Blue yarn



I picked up stitches to make the band.



Here's a close-up of the hook going into the front behind the stitching. Because this is such bulky yarn, I am only allowing 2 rows for the band facing. (The Band Facing is the part that will fold over and be on the wrong side of the garment after the band is knitted.) If it was a smaller gauge yarn, I would make the facing 3-4 stitches wide.



After all the stitches are picked up, I knit a few rows then bound off the band. Then I used regular sewing thread to tack the Band Facing down. Because this yarn is rather fuzzy, the fiber itself will *grab* its other fuzzy neighbor fibers and they'll *handshake* together forming a solid join...