WORKING REPORT – CRAZY COLORS PULLOVER
Another lost entry that didn’t transfer correctly from the old site. This one originally appeared on 21 June 2004.
WORKING REPORT – CRAZY COLORS PULLOVER
Well, my mindless knitting has suffered the intrusion of some thinking. Looking at my 9-inch deep yoke I’ve decided to pull it all out and start again:
(That’s my toe holding down the edge, clad in a Regia 6-Ply Crazy Color sock.) Why rip back? Two reasons. First, I don’t like the one-row color stripe widths that the larger circumference piece sports. While I realize that stripes won’t be as deep as the ones on my socks, I like the upper part of the yoke better, where the shorter rows and bounce reflections off the neck hole made the stripes wider. Second, I don’t like the way the mini-cable on the raglan “seam” is coming out. I had started this piece on one circ, then moved to two. For some reason, when I moved to two the width of the framing purl stitches decreased considerably. While this tighter look is better, it does leave the upper part looking sloppy by comparison. So having knit up around 2.25 skeins, it’s back to ripping for me.
I think I’ll begin again, also doing a raglan, but I won’t get caught up in the idea of matching stripes across the raglan seam (near impossible with this yarn unless you knit in the round). It will be boring as heck, and seamed to boot, but I think the stripes will work out better on shorter width pieces of knitting.
Sigh. At least house stuff is going well. Here’s another couple details – the window from the living room, looking out on the porch, and the fireplace from the wall facing it. The same window is also on the dining room wall.
I’m pretty sure that the inside fireboxes of both fireplaces have been rebuilt. To my untrained eye, the plain brickwork surrounds are a bit incongruous, especially with the red tile hearth, but they appear to be original. Also through the window you can see another of my nuisances. The pressboard hutch so generously left by the former owners. The house contains a few pieces of abandoned furniture for which I now have to arrange charitable donation. Grrr.
PLANNING FOR GOLD
Another AWOL post. I’ve got another week or so of these to post, so I’m going to have to finish catching up tomorrow. This one originally appeared on 20 June 2004.
I’m delighted to report that my time crawling through crawl spaces is about at an end. I’ve finished clearing out the old insulation, and can now turn my attention to ridding the house of picturesque but destructive ivy. (Stucco doesn’t like ivy.) Dust masks are still the order of the day, but working standing up and outdoors has a lot to recommend it. Also, the kids can help, at least for the parts of this task that do not require ladders.
I’m afraid I still haven’t had much time to knit. I’ve been busy measuring, then doing dimensioned layouts of the house in Visio. We’re using them to help plan where our stuff goes, and for the electrician, so he knows where to place services. Here’s the result for the two front rooms and three-season porch.
Going back from this point, beneath the dining room is the kitchen, beneath the living room is the den, followed by a back bedroom we will be using as an office. A long hallway with stairs up extends from the center opening.
Before you ask, there’s no particular price break on not running phone, cable and network to all rooms at the same time as we trench the plaster walls to upgrade the regular electrical wiring. Even though we have only one TV and are not planning on having more than one, we’ll have the flexibility to move it around should we so desire. Another consideration – should we have to sell, having the house fully wired is a value point. As far as the furniture, painting, and decorating go right now we’re concentrating on getting the major infrastructure things done. Cosmetics and aesthetics will have to wait their turn, and our jumbled mix of yard sale finds, first apartment stuff, and one or two decent pieces will have to do for the foreseeable future.
Actual Knitting
With all this crawling around and drafting, I’ve had very little time or energy for think-work or involved knitting. I’ve fallen back into the project I had set aside for vacation relaxation. I’m doing a quick raglan pullover in Regia 6-Ply (6-Fadig) Crazy Color for The Smallest One. Nothing fancy – just a top-down stockinette piece with a two-stitch cable detail on the raglan seams. I’m about six inches into the thing so far. I’d take a picture, but all you’d see is a jumble of red, blue, yellow and green stripes jammed onto a circular needle. My only regret is that if I’m using up this project to unwind after a day of house nonsense, I’ll have to find something else mindless to knit while I stare off at the sea.
FILET KNITTING
More reposts. Material originally appearing on 17 June 2004.
FILET KNITTING
More reports on the great filet experiment.
First, thank you to Gayle Roehm, Judy Gibson and BJ Knitslikecrazy. Gail and Judy sent me info on a method shown in a Burda Magazine. Burda’s instructions were for a set of curtains in a cyclamen pattern. They offered up the pattern graphed like any standard filet crochet or darned net design, and in prose gave directions on forming both filled and open squares. Gayle sent a photo of her project knit from those directions:
Burda’s method takes four rows to complete a tier from the graphed chart. On the first row, spaces are formed by a YO, K2tog unit. On the second row (the purl side) the K2tog is purled, YO is slipped, and another YO is made. On the third row (knit side again), both YOs are slipped and another is made then the purl is knit. On the fourth row each space starts with a P1, and then the three YOs are purled together. That makes a mesh with heavier verticals than horizontals, but the mesh is more or less square. Not as delicate as filet crochet (which in turn is not as delicate as the darned net or withdrawn thread family of embroidery techniques). Here is Gayle’s note – reprinted with her permission:
A couple of years, I too had a bee in my bonnet about knitting that
looks like filet crochet, and I tried three methods:a) Burda method. I actually knit the cyclamen panel — a partial scan is
attached. Comments follow.
b) Mary Thomas method.
c) Sandy Terp method.None were quite satisfactory, though all work but only sort-of. The
problem is that you don’t get the nice squares and open holes that you
get with 3 dc, 3 chain. The solids are okay, but the holes and bars are
distorted.The Burda method is stockinette-based. From the scan, you see right away
that (a) the holes are still round, and smaller than the closed squares;
and (b) the vertical “lines” are thicker than the horizontal “lines,”
making the squares even harder to see. I think each square of the chart
accounted for two rows.The Terp method, which is garter-based, was only a little better. The
holes were marginally squarer, but the vertical lines are still thicker
— perhaps inevitable because you have to do a k2tog or k3tog. And one
square was (as best I recall, but I’m probably wrong) three or four rows
— slow. If you don’t have Sandy Terp’s method at hand, I think she has
it on her website somewhere, or written up in a leaflet. <snip>
The Mary Thomas method was also unsatisfactory for reasons similar to
Terp — the details escape me.
BJ Knitslikecrazy sent in mention of a style of filet knitting in a needlework technique omnibus called Stitch Wise. The description she sent sounds a lot like the Thomas method – with 3 stitch by 4 row units, with two half-height open spaces stacked to balance the solid knitted squares.
Here’s my swatch. The bottom several rows of garter stitch and bars is the Thomas method. The top checkerboard is my method:
As you can see, the Thomas method first few rows is interesting, and can be done following a graphed chart, but it just doesn’t have the filet look.
The upper part is my stab at doing it differently. Some of the vertical bars in the lower part are sloppy because I was experimenting with several methods of making them. I’m not entirely pleased with the later methods, but progress is being made. In the Kim-method, two rows make one tier of the graph.
Solid squares are formed this way on the first pass (knit side):
K3, turn
P3, turn
K3
On the returning purl row, all of these stitches are purled.
Note that groups of solid blocks can be ganged together. If for example, if the chart shows three solid squares in a row, the knitter would do this: K9, turn; p9, turn; K9.
Spaces are formed this way on the knit side pass:
(YO)3x. Retain 3 loops on needle.
Slip one stitch as if to knit. Slip the next stitch as if to knit. Pass the first slipped stitch over the second and off the end of the needle (sort of a no-knit bind-off).
Slip one stitch as if to knit. Pass the previously slipped stitch over this one and off the end of the needle.
(Reinsert the left hand needle tip into the stitch at the end of the right hand needle. K1.)3x – This makes a 3-stitch vertical “chain”
On the returning purl row do this on each space:
P2tog, K1, P1
Problems with my method:
- I don’t like the way the bind offs in the open spaces pull away from the previous solid space.
- I don’t like the relative thickness of the horizontals and verticals. My verticals are thinner than ones made by decreases, but they’re still thicker than I’d like.
- I don’t like way there’s a little vertical slit left when a solid square follows a space.
But I’m getting there… Constructive criticism and idle thoughts graciously accepted!
BINGO BUNGALOW, FILET KNITTING
Hmmm. As I was writing today’s entry, I wanted to refer back to a post I remembered writing back in June of 2004. Apparently not all of the posts for that month imported correctly when we transferred our archives over. So the posts you’ll see today are hand-carried ports of the AWOL material. Apologies for the deja vu. True new content tomorrow. I promise.
Material originally appearing on June 15, 2004.
BINGO BUNGALOW, FILET KNITTING
Excuse this shortened entry. I’m deeply enmeshed in home rehab, and haven’t had much time to do anything else. Yesterday I measured the entire house so I can draft up a set of dimensioned drawings. That will help us figure out where to put things. While I was doing that I attempted to take some snaps of the house’s more nifty features. I’m a lousy photographer, so I’ve only got a couple.
First the house is a stucco bungalow, built in 1912. That style is pretty unusual for this part of Massachusetts. The majority of older homes in this town are Victorians of various configurations, Dutch colonials built in the 1920s, and saltbox Capes built in the 1930s. In between and in pockets are some older houses dating back to the 1700s and early 1800s, and some post WWII neighborhoods of ranches and raised ranches. The place is fairly big – not as huge as a rambling Victorian, but pretty big compared to the tiny 6-room ranch we’re leaving.
The house has had only two prior owners – the family that built it, and the family we bought it from. It’s been largely left alone, with very little tinkering over the years. That means that we’ve gotten some features you rarely find. Like original lighting fixtures in three rooms (this is the biggest one in the living room):
Another amazing bit of preservation is the downstairs bath. Except for the butterfly handles on the sink and an innocuous replacement toilet, it’s untouched, with all tile, fixtures, and stained glass window original and intact (the little sitz tub is especially nifty, it’s an exact match of its big brother on the other side of the room):
And here’s the smaller of the two fireplaces. This one is in the den:
As you can see, all of the woodwork on the first floor of the house has never been overpainted. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the entire house is still using the original electrical wiring – the old bare wire on insulator stuff put in when the house was first built. That means there is one plug per room; nothing grounded anywhere in the place; and anemic service. Over the next month we are having a contractor completely rewire the house. I’ll be putting in sweat equity, too – mostly ripping out improperly installed fiberglass insulation that’s making the roof rot, and encouraging the growth of a truly spectacular mildew farm in the attic. Meaning the insulation is doing the encouraging. I’ll be doing the exterminating.
FILET KNITTING
I did have time to start playing with this last night. The Thomas method is daunting to look at in description, but once you start messing with it it’s pretty straightforward. Solid blocks are composed three knit stitches. Open blocks are done similar to a one-row buttonhole, starting with a double yarn over. Then two stitches are bound off by passing existing loops over and off the end of the needle. The last stitch remaining is then knit to finish out the block of three. Alternate rows are knitted back, with the second YOs purled to make a garter stitch base.
But here’s the kicker. To make the solid areas appear square, each block on the chart corresponds to FOUR rows of knitting. That’s two right side rows and two wrong side rows. This means that there’s an extra horizontal bar (aka bride) in the center of each block compared to filet crochet or darned net That makes the open areas far less open, and rather compromises the look – especially for very complex charts. Clearly, more work on this will need to be done as I don’t think this particular technique, even were I to work with tatting cotton on 000s, would look good for my chart.
I’m not giving up though. Tonight’s round of experimentation will include adding height to the solid blocks by Yoda-knitting them back and forth. Working each block as a tiny 3-stitch short-row should square off the units. More news tomorrow…
PS: If you see spurious question marks in these entries, please ignore them. It’s not that I’m more puzzled than normal. For some reason, as of this morning every double space in every has morphed into a question mark. I’ll investigate.
WORKING REPORT – SPRING LIGHTNING LACY SCARF
Hmmm. As I was writing today’s entry, I wanted to refer back to a post I remembered writing back in June of 2004. Apparently not all of the posts for that month imported correctly when we transferred our archives over. So the posts you’ll see today are hand-carried ports of the AWOL material. Apologies for the deja vu. True new content tomorrow. I promise.
Material originally appearing on June 14, 2004. For the record, the pattern for the Spring Lightning Lacy scarf is now in the main wiseNeedle pattern collection.
WORKING REPORT – SPRING LIGHTNING LACY SCARF
My lacy scarf is done!
As planned, the ribbed center section pulls in a little bit, making the two diamond panel ends flare out. Stretched and blocked, across the widest point of the edgings it measures 14 inches at the end and 12 inches at the center. It’s about 80 inches long. That’s big for a scarf and narrow for a stole, but I like the size. I really enjoyed this project. It was just the right combo of super-easy and super-exacting. The Greenwood Hill Farm 2-ply laceweight yarn was wonderful. I Can t say enough about it. It’s the softest, most buttery Merino I’ve ever worked with. It’s hand-spun look is unique. You can see the slightly whiter areas in the photo – those are spots where one of the plies of the two-ply yarn gets a bit fluffy. There’s a lot of variation skien to skein in the amount of the fluffy bits, so if you order it or buy it at a sheep and wool show, you may want to try to pick skeins that are similar (or not, as your taste and project needs dictate).
I’m not sure whether I’ll keep this scarf or give it as a gift. On one hand I really like it. On the other hand, while it would be an interesting contrast with my guy-style brown leather aviator jacket, I know several people who might appreciate it as much as I do. Plus I’m not tired of my Kombu Scarf yet. Good thing I have the summer to think about it before scarf season resumes.
FILET KNITTING
Here’s an obscure style. Mary Thomas in her Knitting Pattern Book mentions Filet Lace Knitting. It’s a style of knitting more or less equivalent to filet crochet, which is itself an adaptation of earlier lacis and other filled net or withdrawn thread style darned embroidery. In this set of styles, the needleworker follows a graphed pattern, working solid or “empty” squares. The pattern is built line by line by these blocks of squares. This butterfly insertion is a good example of filet crochet:
(Pix from http://www.knitting-crochet.com – attributed there to Star Needlework Journal, 1917)
On page 263 of her book, Thomas describes a way to do something like this using knitting. Solid blocks are formed by units of three stitches x four rows. Spaces look to be formed by a combo of yarn overs and bind-offs. I haven’t quite figured them out yet, but Thomas gives several illustrations and a couple of easy practice pieces.
I’m asking if anyone has ever actually tried this because I have never seen any lacy knitting that was done this way – not as a piece of actual knitting, nor in a photo either on the web or in any other book. I have never seen a lace pattern for a project done in this style either. So I’m asking. Have you done this? Do you know of any pix or other sources for the style?
The reason why I’m asking? I’m in the middle of one of those panting-and-eyes-wide moments of gotta-do-it-but-how? inspiration. Yesterday we closed on the new house. I am now the proud owner of a massive Arts and Crafts style front door, with a glass window that’s 30 inches wide by 18 inches tall. There’s mounting hardware there for a lace curtain panel, currently holding a dingy scrap of Woolworth’s best. The door cries out for a better curtain.
But not just any lace panel will do. I’ve **got** to make one, and not only do I want to make one, I want to make one from THIS panel from my book of embroidery patterns:
The ultimate source is a book published in Nuremberg Germany around 1597 by one of the more prolific and well-known makers of embroidery pattern books. Not only did Johan Siebmacher put out several (this pattern was in his Schon Neues Modelbuch vol allerly listigen Modeln naczunehen Zugurcken un Zusticke”), his books traveled all over Europe so they’re very well represented in museum collections. Many plates from them were copied and re-issued during the counted pattern “Renaissance” of the mid 1800s. This particular panel has cropped up several times over the years – often simplified or truncated. The most recent adaptation from it of which I know is a pattern for an cross stitched kitchen tablecloth and curtains set in an Anna magazine from the mid 1960s.
I haven’t a clue as to how I’d go about making my George and Dragon panel, but I’ve got the will, the how-to book, the cotton yarn (Crystal Palace Baby Georgia), and the blissful confidence born of total ignorance.
WORKING REPORT – SUMMER LIGHTNING LACY SCARF
Hmmm. As I was writing today’s entry, I wanted to refer back to a post I remembered writing back in June of 2004. Apparently not all of the posts for that month imported correctly when we transferred our archives over. So the posts you’ll see today are hand-carried ports of the AWOL material. Apologies for the deja vu. True new content tomorrow. I promise.
Material originally appearing on June 13, 2004. For the record, the pattern for the Spring Lightning Lacy scarf is now in the main wiseNeedle pattern collection.
WORKING REPORT – SUMMER LIGHTNING LACY SCARF
I’d hoped to be able to report this a done item, complete with in-block pictures, but life continues to intrude. Closing for our move is on Monday, and hectic does not begin to describe the household right now. At least we don’t move for another month. I’d have gone nuts if packing was loaded on top of everything else.
I can report a good deal of progress on the scarf, even if it isn’t done. Exactly as described, I ripped back to before the final panel, added around six inches of length, then reknit that part. I’ve added all but the last six inches of the edging, going completely around the new end.
One person has asked if I’m doing anything special where ends of the edging meet. I started the edging in the center along one side on the theory that the scarf’s center was most likely to be worn behind the neck. I’m hoping to make everything work out so that I end my edging knitting on the last row of the pattern. That way I’ll graft the live stitches of the last row to the half-hitch cast on I used when I began. That should make an almost-invisible seam. To make sure I end up at that spot I’ll have to plan ahead. My edging pattern is 8 rows long. Since I’m attaching at the rate of one attachment point per two rows (at the beginning of each right-side row), and since the scarf body was done with a slip stitched selvage edge things should be easy to calculate. That works out to one attachment point per slipped selvage chain.
Starting around now with six inches to go, the next time I am about to begin at Row #1, I’ll count the remaining selvage chains to see if the total count is divisible by four. If so, I’ll just work along merrily until the last row is complete. If not, I’ll figure out how to fudge by either adding an extra attachment point or two, spaced out over the six inches, or by skipping an attachment point at the very end. I’d prefer to fudge by adding rather than skipping attachment points because a little tiny bit of extra flutter is less noticeable in a fluttery scarf than would be a little bit of puckering.
Another question I’ve gotten is how I went about edging the corners. At first I’d planned on mitering the corners, but that fell through. Instead I just eyeballed it, working three points worth of rows (that’s 24 rows or 12 attachment points) in each corner. I spread those pick-ups out just a little, starting them one stitch away from the corner, on the corner stitch itself, and continuing onto the stitch following the corner, but the bulk were lumped up as best I could in the corner stitch itself. Here’s the scarf end so you can see:
RED DOILY SHOW AND TELL
Taadaaah!
Here they are. Big doily first:
The blocking was a bit overaggressive on one side – you can see the distortion around the 3:15 position. Still, I’m quite pleased, and I can redo the block to an exact circle the next time it’s washed. Here’s the thing installed in its new home:
Aside: The vase is by potter Joseph McCaffery at Narrow Land Pottery in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. There are several more of his pieces in the hutch behind the table.
Now the smaller doily. Remember, it’s about half the diameter of the one above:
Important lesson learned. Don’t count your doily measurements until after everything has been well-blocked. It turns out that my smaller one is just right for its intended use:
While this means that I didn’t need to go on and make a second larger cloth to satisfy my original fear-of-wine-drips doily emergency, I’m happy I did. Now I have something spectacular to put underneath my favorite vase on the dining room table.
Roundup of patterns and specs – The smaller doily was knit from FANDUGEN, a pattern appearing on Nurhanne’s Yarn Over site. The larger one was done from a pattern in Patterns for the Art of Lace Knitting: The Complete Works of Rachel Schnelling, compiled by Gloria Penning. I modified the smaller doily by adjusting the placement of the arrowhead shapes around the perimeter so that they lined up better with the points and valleys of the previous motifs. I messed with the larger one by introducing the dark knit-on edging (the original used a crochet loop finish similar to that on the smaller doily).
I worked both from a cone of a unnamed faux-silk lace-weight rayon flake weaving yarn, bought for a song from the back room of Webs. I also made my Alcazar from the same cone, and still have a ton more left over. For the record – yes, the dark burgundy rayon behaved exactly as one would expect when wet: it shed lots of dye. Since I don’t plan on washing this with my regular load, I don’t find this to be a problem, but if you are contemplating making a lace blouse from this stuff, you may want to factor ease of care into your equation. I used the same needles for both – size 3.0mm, a Euro size that some US makers label 2, some label 2.5, and others don’t make at all.
WAVE SCARF – DEPARTING REALITY ON TRACK 7
My red doilies are still damp, so there’s no unpinning them for show and tell today, but I’m still working on the Wave Scarf, so I’ll report on that instead. I have taken yet another significant departure from reality as described by the original pattern.
First, I decided to dispense with knitting from the center out to make the two ends identical when worn. I didn’t like the visible seam-like line down the center of the back. So I just knit the piece end to end. Then I decided I wanted to make the thing longer, so I did. Which means that the carefully worked out in-pattern directions for picking up around the edge and working the small eyelet divider rows are all not going to work. I looked at the numbers of the original and working out the pattern row multiple vs. the available stitches for attachment. And then I winged it.
I ended up with more than 17 repeats of the 12 row cycle. I had about 20. Picking up stitches around the outside, I needed more than the original, so I ended up with 80 stitches per short end, plus 420 stitches per side (7×60), plus 8 more (2 for each corner). Then I worked one row of plain knit all the way around to confirm my stitch count (adding a YO on either side of each pair of corner stitches).
Now I’m doing something that’s a cognate for the eyelet row. Since my total is divisible by 4, I’m working (K2, k1, YO) units all the way around – ignoring those corner stitches for now. I’ll do another row of plain knit next, then look into whether or not I need to play with the row ratio for one of the several versions of the Print of the Wave family companion borders I have in the house (the variant supplied with the pattern, plus two in Heirloom Knitting, plus at least one other in yet another lace book on my shelf.)
How did I get all those stitches onto something manageable? I’m using the two-circ method. One circ holds one end and one side, the other holds the remaining stitches. I may not enjoy using that method for socks (for me DPNs are faster) but for flogging a zillion stitches into submission, it can’t be beat.
Do I recommend just winging it in lace knitting? Probably not if your constitution can’t take the searing realization that you’ve done something stupid and have to rip back miles of work. Since I don’t bother with lifelines, that ripping can be harrowing. Why do I do it? I can’t say. Maybe I just like living on the edge in this one tiny facet of my life. If you’ve been reading along for a while you have seen that whenever I am given two paths knitting-wise, I’ll always chose the more risky or more arduous option. Getting there may be half the fun, but I want to chug up craggy mountains and press on through jungle perils on the way.
BACK TO KNITTING – DOILY FINISHING
Putting the curtain project on the back burner to stew a while, I turned back to knitting this weekend past. First, having time, and Older Daughter around to do photography that requires extra hands, I was able to do the final graft/join on the larger red doily, uniting the final row of my edging with the cast-on edge.
Here you see the problem. The last row of the edging is still on the needle
I wanted to make as invisible a seam as possible. I used standard grafting to unite the live stitches on the needle with the half-hitch formed cast on row. Had I been paying attention to detail a bit better, I would have used some sort of provisional cast-on instead of half-hitch. So it goes. Here you see a sequence of three shots showing picking up live stitches, then taking a stitch through a cast-on row stitch, and so on:
And the final product,with the graft indicated by the arrows.
I admit that with a bit more patience and time, I could have done it a bit better, but this was good enough.
Of course now that I’ve finished off the piece, I had no excuse not to block it (and its smaller sister). The op-art effect made by the sheet is not my deliberate attempt to befuddle your sight. I found these rally check sheets years ago, and find the regular grid to be very helpful in keeping things straight.
Less eye-popping pix will be forthcoming once both are dry.
WAVE SCARF, CONTEMPLATING CURTAINS
Yes, I’m still knitting. I’m in the “I’ve memorized the pattern repeat and up to churning out yardage” part of the project. The center area of my scarf/stole is approximately 3 feet long. Another two feet and I’ll be ready for the edging:
On the other needlework project contemplations, I wrote to ACP Textiles (the linen source I cited in my first post on the curtain project), asking them about thread counts of their products. They were gracious enough to reply immediately. Here’s the data in case you’re looking at their products, too:
- Flax Canvas 28 x 24 – 52″ wide
- Craftsman Linen 20 x 18 – 55″ wide
- Osnaberg 40 x 45 – 58″ wide
- Irish linen 40 x 32 – 55″ wide
- Belgian linen 34 x 38 – 54″ wide
- Raw linen 34 x 38 -54″ wide
That’s one set of vital data points necessary for further contemplation of this project. The remaining two are what stitching design to choose, and how and to what size specifications will the curtains be made
Stitching pattern
I am contemplating using one of three historical patterns from The New Carolingian Modelbook – all done in monochrome: If you have a copy, here are the citations.
Plate 33:1 – an extremely long block unit repeat, which I would embroider in voided style (working the background, not the foreground) in either cross stitch or long-armed cross stitch. This one is of a complicated interlace sporting grape leaves, and columbine flowers.The strip is 53 units wide, and the entire pattern repeats in about 308 units, center to center. The first publication I found of this was in a modelbook printed in Lyons dated 1533, although it was reprinted at least once by a different publisher in Venice in 1546.
Plate 63:1 – one of the more open straight stitch unit motifs, not suited for knitting or cross stitch but perfect for double running stitch (aka Spanish stitch, Holbein stitch) work. This one is an interlace with pomegranate and acanthus motifs. It’s also 53 units wide, but the repeat is complete in 146 units. This one was graphed from a photo of a boy’s shirt, circa 1540.
Plate 69:1 – another straight stitch motif. This one is of grapes and grape leaves, 65 units wide, with a repeat complete in 127 units. If you happen to have a copy of Drysdale’s Art of Blackwork Embroidery, the original 16/th/17th century Spanish artifact this was graphed from is also shown there on page 33.
Window size and curtain construction
My window is pretty big, original to the house. And it’s one of two. Here it is, adorned with the tired dime-store lace curtains and tobacco-stained roller shade left by my predecessor
I have not sewn curtains before, but it should be pretty logical. Especially for something this plain. I’ve you’ve done this and have warnings or spot flaws in my thought processes, please chime in.
I want flat panels with little or no extra width compared to the window. I want to sew little brass rings on the top that will be threaded onto a narrow brass rod, so I don’t have to allow for a header. I am also going to line the curtains to improve drape, give a bit more privacy, make the back neater, and increase their thermal retention (such as it will be). My window is 44 inches across, from one edge of the sill to the other. My window is 71 inches from top of the casement to the surface of the sill, and 74 inches from top of the casement to the bottom of the casement. It looks like any of the fabrics listed above would be wide enough to provide the two panels I need for the window side by side.
Since I would be hanging the things from a rod attached to the casement, about .75 of an inch below the top, and the rings are likely to be about an inch in diameter, I’d subtract about 2 inches from the 71 for total finished length. That gives me two mirror image panels about 23 inches wide x 69 inches long. I have enough width in my fabric for seam allowances. My guess is that for stability and drape, I’d want a hem of about 2 inches at the top, and about 4 inches at the bottom. That means that for each window I’ll need to buy about 2.25 yards of linen, plus an equivalent amount of lining fabric.
Now which fabric would be suitable for which of my motifs, and how would I go about placing them on the curtains, and how would I treat the right-angled corner when using designs that don’t provide that detail? Obviously more public contemplation of this project will appear here.
String-Or-Nothing 