Again sorry there are no pix of the mid-block Paisley Shawl. Last night was a blur of my own take-home assignments, kid homework, and general domesticity. I didn’t have time to pin the thing out.

I did however have time to take up the Rogue again. I’m several rows further along, but not enough to merit a new photo. But it’s been about a month since I showed it, so here’s the last picture:

It continues to be a satisfying piece on which to work. Aided by my bargain basement improvised magnet board, I was able to pick up exactly where I left off. Which is a good thing because one of the leading causes of projects languishing un-done around here is that I put them down to work on another more pressing need, and forget what I was doing when I have time to resume work on them again.

In a way, this blog has been very helpful, too. I never thought to keep a knitting journal – too much work and too much time that could be spend actually knitting. But I’ve found myself going back a couple of times to look at previously posted entries on String, in an effort to figure out where my logic went wrong, or to see details of a past effort.

On the new project – you guys are a pack of evil enablers. I received quite a few notes telling me to toss rationality and obligation to the winds, and knit whatever would be fun. I might do that, or I might advance the "two summer tops for me" line item up the must-do list.

I’m finding myself in need of some wardrobe augmentations for my new job. A couple of three-season tops would be A Good Thing right now. Plus, I just received the Sweater Wizard 3.0 upgrade. I think it needs to be stress-tested. I’m thinking 3/4 sleeve pullovers, with something interesting going on, but not too lacy to wear without a camisole; maybe some waist shaping or bust darts in there somewhere to make them less boxy. Just the sort of thing to wear with chinos or black slacks in the back room cubes of a relaxed dress, high-tech company, in the work pod underneath the air conditioning vents. (Aren’t all cubes underneath air conditioning vents?)? My Taco Coat – The Sweater That Thinks It’s an Afghan – is already there, helping to fight this year’s unseasonal Spring chill.

As for yarns, I’ve got a couple of lots sitting in stash waiting patiently for attention. Among them are some particularly vibrant deep burgundy worsted weight cotton, and some light violet hand-dyed beaded cotton – also a worsted, leaning towards Aran weight. I wish I had more sport-weight cottons as I find them more comfy for multi-season layering, but not enough to make me go out and buy some.

I continue to plug away at Rogue. I haven’t had much free time to knit lately, so I’m not zipping along as others might. The latest modification I’ve made has had to do with the smaller gauge of my chosen yarn, plus the texture pattern I’m using.

After getting to Direction #5 (split for back), it was obvious that I had more stitches than the pattern calls for. No surprise there. I cast on more than required (that gauge thing again). So I adjusted the number to be decreased. I’ve got more stitches than are called for even for the largest size, but my back armhole decreases are proportional to the original. I’m now in the work even for 38 or so rows. I’m upping that to 40 because it takes me to the beginning of my next repeat.

I can see that the step after this is going to be especially problematic. Rogue forms its shoulder decreases using short rows. A very clever technique. I’m not quite sure how or even if I will be able to integrate the short row shaping with my texture pattern. I may have to un-engineer that particular bit of cleverness, graphing out the shape of the decreases and moving them back to the ends of the rows. More on this after another two or so inches of work.

You are looking at the back of the piece, folded along the nifty side cables. You can see somewhat of the shaping made by the cables; the bound off underarm; the decreases that form the bottom of the armscye; and part of the work flat bit just before the shoulder shaping. Things look a bit curly because I’m a lousy photographer, and didn’t pin this piece out before attempting the shot.

Several people have written to ask me to go back to Webs with them. While it might be fun, I’m afraid I’m rather short of time, plus my yarn budget and available storage space are now stretched to the max. Please note I wasn’t theinstigator of this trip. I was pulled along not-so-reluctantly by the other members of an informal (and anonymous)Tuesday knitting group. They were kind enough to adopt me earlier this year, and I’ve had great fun watching their projects grow.

When it exists as a flap, to be made into a pocket later.

Here’s my admittedly limited progress. While there’s not a lot on the needles, what you see here is the third iteration of my larval front pocket(s). Why third?

Because as usual I outsmarted myself.

I was trying to play elegant with the texture pattern, working it in as unperturbed as possible, in spite of the march of the ever-narrowing pocket edge. I was also trying to watch a movie with subtitles. Not a good combo, as I ended up losing track of which decrease/increase pairs had been eliminated, and which still existed. Twice. So after ample ripping back, some extreme driveway shoveling, yet another snow day with kids at home, I present the pocket flaps:

I really like the twisted rib edge as opposed to the garter stitch edge on these.

The problem I had is a common one. Faced with a texture stitch repeat and edge decreases, how does one go about reconciling them? For patterns that depend on increases and decreases to form the texture, this can be especially painful. It’s less painful though if you take the time to look and examine the pattern.

Most (but not all) textures maintain stitch count row to row. For those that do, and build their structure with increases and decreases there are usually equal numbers of each in each row. Yes, a minority of patterns (especially older patterns) alternate rows where increases and decreases happen, but for the most part, easy to knit texture patterns conform to this rule. If yours does, subtracting along an edge for a sloped pocket or armhole isn’t too tricky.

First, identify the pairs of increases and decreases. They should be near each other, although there is no requirement that they are adjacent. My chosen texture pattern is a 20 stitch bounce repeat, mirrored around the center column (stitch 11, and the first/last stitch). Each side of the symmetrical piece incorporates two increase/decrease pairs.

It’s relatively easy (or so I say now) to pare this down by five-stitch units. As my edge decreases infringe into my pattern repeat space, I eliminate the increase/decrease pair in the affected five-stitch unit, replacing any pattern shaping in it with plain old stockinette. I do need to keep track of where my repeats begin and end, then count back from the last full repeat to determine what needs to be happening on any partial slices between that full repeat and my rapidly encroaching pocket edge.

This sounds much harder than it actually is. Let’s say I was working in Little Dragon Skin and my garment pattern called for me to eliminate the stitches shown in yellow:

Instead of working the texture design’s increases and decreases as usual, I’d substitute plain old knits for the ones shown in blue. I’d eliminate the base pair on Row 2 because I know I’ll be trimming above it, and the directional distortion in starts will soon be lost. Then I’d kill the ssk decreases on rows #4, 6, 8, and 10 because I was also eliminating the make ones that offset the loss of those stitches.

There are other ways to do this. I tried to get cute, and leave the decreases in on the theory that I could move the stitches eliminated by the slope of the pocket edge over to those points by working them as normal but without their companion increases. What slipped me up is that the rate of decrease does not remain the same over the entire pocket edge. It speeds up a bit part way through, making a graceful curve. Computing in that curve, my texture pattern, drinking a glass of wine, and reading subtitles all at the same time didn’t mesh, and resulted in my re-workings and the object lesson here.

I repeat what I can see is becoming my knitting mantra:

"If you go about making life difficult for yourself, things ain’t gonna be easy."