steeking for beginners :: the Ursula Cardigan

In the beginning of August I started knitting this cardigan. It's the Ursula Cardigan by Kate Davies, one of my favorite designers, and it's featured on her recent book Colours of Shetland. I've been knitting it almost non stop since then  (with a little break to work on some Christmas ornaments ...) and finally I was done with the main body and it was time to steek.

Now, I've never steeked before so this scared the hell out of me, and I wasn' exactly looking forward to it. I mean, who in their right senses would make holes into their knitting, especially something that took me almost 2 months to finish ? But it had to be done, so I gathered my courage and decided to go for it. I followed Kate's wonderful tutorial which really explains everything beautifully.
I decided to start with the collar, since it was the smallest steek and therefore less chances of getting it wrong. I first made my crochet  reinforcements using a sock yarn that was similar to the main color of my cardigan, as you can see here:

All the tutorials I read usually say that before your first cut you should have a glass of wine. I don't drink much wine so I decided to have this instead ...

And voilá ... it actually works !

Then I did the armholes and left the front opening till last

This is how the crochet reinforcements look after they're done

See how it's easy to see where to cut ?

After you cut your first steek, the rest don't seem so daunting...

And this is how it looks on the right side - quite neat looking

And even the reverse side doesn't look very bad.

So I did it, my first steeking project. And it was definitely worth it ! This cardigan is now blocking and I still need to sew the buttons, snaps and trims, but I should be able to post some photos this next weekend. And I very much think it's going to become a favorite :-)