INTERESTING 18TH CENTURY CAP – ORNAMENTAL WRAPPING
A person posting on one of the historical knitting lists asked a question yesterday about this 18th century Spanish knitted cap. I’ve poked around the Victoria and Albert Museum’s on line photo collection, but I hadn’t taken the time to zoom in and look closely at this particular item.
At first glance the cap appears to be covered with knit-purl texture patterning, but if you zoom in (and especially if you have the ability to get an even closer look at the image) you’ll see that the texture isn’t formed by knits and purls. Instead, the design is made up of some sort of stranding that floats over a stockinette background. The question was about how this might have been done. Unfortunately, we can’t see the back of the work. So I got to thinking…
The most obvious way would be for someone to work up a plain stockinette cap, then hand-stitch the floats over counted stitches, to produce a diapered or pattern darned effect. This would certainly work, but lacks elegance. If I were making a hat like this, I’d much rather do the decoration at the same time as the base knitting, rather than going back later.
This leaves two methods – some sort of in-row wrapping, or slipping stitches with the yarn in front of the work.
Let’s look at slipping first. If you knit a row, then holding yarn in front, slip several stitches, and then resume knitting, you make a fabric that has a base row of normal height, then a distended area where stitches were slipped. If you continue to do this on subsequent rows without rows of intervening plain knit, you pull those stretched stitches up even further, creating a vertical column with a grossly distorted base structure. It doesn’t look like the knitter of this cap made the floats by slipping with yarn in front because if you zoom in and examine the long vertical bars of the ornamentation, a float seems to happens on every row, and there is no evidence of vertical distortion.
This leaves the wrap method. Wrapping stitches for ornamental effect isn’t widely practiced any more although it still survives almost as a curiosity in some cotton knitting. You can see an example of wrapped stitches in the cover pattern on the Lewis Knitting Counterpanes book published by Taunton Press. In this case the wrapping is pulled very tightly to magnify the gathered effect of the pattern. The wraps are peeking out beneath the bellies of the scallops:
I’ve also seen texture designs in European pattern collections that use wrapped stitches. There are a couple of the tight-wraps-as-gathers type at the end of Omas Strickgeheimnisse, a German-language knitting texture pattern dictionary. I thought there was at least one in the Bauerliches Stricken series (another 3-volume German stitch dictionary), but thumbing through, I can’t find it now. Some of the on-line Russian language stitch collections also show wrapped stitches I found these by searching for which may mean pattern or stitch in Russian. It also seems to transliterate to the letters “uzori or uzor” in Western alphabets, which are also good starting points for searches. (No I don’t speak or read Russian, I’ve stumbled across this bit of trivia while web-walking.) I don’t have time this morning to fish up the citations for these dimly remembered Russian texture patterns. I’ll have to leave that for tomorrow.
However, none of the contemporary sources for these wrapped stitches employ them in the way I envision that the Red Cap Knitter did.
I don’t think it would be difficult to do this, just a bit fiddly. I like fiddly. Remember that this is a thought experiment. I haven’t tried the method out yet. Perhaps over the weekend I’ll have time to do so. Here goes.
Let’s say you want to lay a ladder across four stitches. You knit the four as usual. Then you take your yarn and move it to the back of the work. You transfer four stitches from your right hand needle back to the left hand needle, then you move the yarn strand to the front of the work, laying it in the “ditch” between the first stitch to be wrapped and the ones that came before it. Then you slip those four stitches back to the right hand needle. You draw the yarn strand across the front of the work over the four, then return it to the back. You have now “lassoed” your four stitches. Give the thing a slight tug to maintain tension, and knit the next stitch as usual.
Now all you need is a suitable graph, and you’re set. (Credit: This particular graph has been researched by SCA pal Carol.)
PROGRESS REPORT – PRINT O’ THE WAVE SCARF
Back to the project in hand. I’m up to adding the edging to the Print o’ the Wave scarf, which in part sparked the past two days’ digression into general edge-affixing techniques.
I am sad to say I have errata for the pattern as available now. I wrote to the author over the weekend to report it. While the mistake is not something that will trip up people who are comfortable with lace construction, people doing this scarf as a first or second lace project will be a bit more frustrated.
In Chart B – the graph for the edging, the next to last stitch box on rows 9, 11, 13, and 15 should be a K2tog, not a plain knit.
A good way to “proof” graphed lace patterns is described in the Lewis Knitting Lace Book published by Taunton. It’s in several others, too but I think Lewis outlined it the most clearly. To paraphrase, special techniques and weird row-perturbers aside,, for most simple lace to remain at a constant width, with left and right edges parallel, the number of stitches increased must equal the number of stitches decreased. For lace to grow wider, there must be more increases than decreases. Conversely, for lace to narrow, there must be more decreases than increases.
On the edging in question, we know that rows 9, 11, 13, and 15 are the ones on which the pattern narrows, forming the “downhill” side of each repeat’s gentle pyramid point. But if you count up the increases and decreases on (for example) row 9, you end up with four stitches added (all YO increases), and four stitches decremented (two k2tog, and one k3tog double decrease); yet the pattern shows a net one-stitch loss on each odd numbered row. Since the visual lines established in the design are very strong, there’s only one logical place where that extra stitch can be lost – the next to last position on the row.
I have to admit that I was a bit tired when I first played with the edging pattern and kept messing up. But I muddled through, and then compared this variant of the Ocean edging to those in my other reference books (most notably the most excellent Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller). Those patterns do put an additional decrease in the penultimate position on each “downhill” row, so my guess has precedent.
I also have to moan about another minor lace tragedy, visible in the photo below:
All that muddling about at the beginning, starting the trim and ripping it back resulted in a dropped stitch over near the beginning of the edging (I’m working along the top edge of the stole first). Aaargh! I don’t want to rip back, so I’ll have to repair it tonight.
MORE ON ATTACHING AN EDGING – DRAWN LOOP METHOD
Yesterday I described two of the more usual methods for attaching edgings to project bodies – plain old mattress stitch seaming, and knitting onto a live stitch or finished edge. Today I continue with a third method. I’m not quite sure what it’s called, so I’ll call it the drawn loop method for now.
I learned this while doing the Forest Path Shawl (Interweave Knits, Summer 2003). If you plan on finding a copy of IK and working the Path, be aware that it appears to be sold out from the back issue collection on the IK website, and that there’s a correction posted in the magazine’s errata pages.
Drawn loop is intended for working a knitted trim onto a finished edge, and seems to be the least bulky of the three methods when used for that purpose. Like plain knitting on, the attachment is worked row by row as the knitting proceeds. Many patterns that use plain knitting on include directions to pick up an endless number of stitches prior to working the attached edging so that the trim is applied to live stitches rather than the original finished edge. The drawn loop method avoids that annoying exercise in endless counting although it does work best when done on a slip-stitch selvage. Unlike knitting on, there’s no column of double stitch thickness decreases formed where the edging meets the main body. As such, it’s particularly airy. It is however a bit fiddly to do, and works more easily with a smooth finish yarn than with a hairy mohairy type lace yarn.
To use drawn loop, you cast on much as for knitting on. If you use half-hitch, knitting on or a cable cast on to add your edging’s worth of stitches, you do so to your right hand needle, but instead of making a slip-knot for the first, you establish that first stitch by picking up a stitch in the edge-most loop of your main body, then work back a wrong side row to return the yarn strand to the rightmost side of your edging (and point of attachment). If you had the foresight to have incorporated a slip stitch edge in your main piece this will be easy. Otherwise you’ll have to eyeball where to pick up. Difficult (which is why many patterns want you to pick up stitches along finished sides) but with practice this is do-able.
If you use a provisional cast-on like a crocheted chain, you’ll put those new stitches onto the left hand needle, then work a wrong side row using your good yarn to return the rightmost side of the edging (and point of attachment).
Once you’re back at that rightmost edge, you use your needle tip to draw another stitch up through the next selvage loop of the main body. Here’s where it gets tricky. Enlarge that “stitch” until it’s a loop of about 18 inches or so diameter (how big to make it will become clear after you’ve done a couple of iterations). That loop will have two “ends” – one firmly attached to the knitting, the other sliding free trailing back to your yarn ball. Grab the fixed end and give it a gentle tug to make sure there’s no extra slack, then using the loop, work across the right side row of your edging. Flip the work over as usual, and work the wrong side row back, again using the giant loop. When you get back to the point of attachment, give another slight tug to the strand coming from the yarn ball to pull out any excess left over from your giant loop. Then repeat the process, drawing up another giant “stitch” in the next selvage loop and using it to knit a pair of edging rows. All of this sliding of the yarn back and forth as the large loops are made is the reason why this method works better with smooth rather than hairy finish yarns.
Again, like any attachment method that involves butting two pieces of perpendicular knitting, some adjustment of the ratio between rows worked to selvage stitches may be necessary. If the newly done edging is beginning to get too ruffly and fluttery, you may need to rip back a row or two and skip a selvage stitch. If the edging is drawing up and the body is beginning to gather, you may need to work an additional pair of edging rows without attachment.
Like I said, it’s fiddly but effective, creating the lightest possible line of attachment between an edging and a live-stitch-lacking main piece, and avoiding pain-in-the-neck sessions picking up a zillion stitches around a piece’s perimeter. I used drawn loop to good advantage on my Spring Lighting Lacy Scarf pattern, and plan on using it again on future designs.
KNITTING AN EDGING ONTO LIVE STITCHES
Now. Back to the present.
Sallyknitter sends an eMail asking how one goes about attaching an edging to a row of live stitches. I’ll try my best to answer.
First, there are several ways of doing it. The simplest but most fussy is to knit the edging entirely separate, as a long strip – then sew it on using mattress stitch. Effective, but boring. Plus even using mattress stitch you can end up with a relatively bulky seam on the reverse compared to the rest of a gossamer-fine lace piece. I used this method on the two counterpane patterns in the wiseNeedle pattern collection, and on the tragic pink blanket now awaiting repair.
Having had my fill of producing an endless roll of edging, then an eternity sewing it on neatly, I now prefer knit-on edgings. They have the advantage of keeping one’s stitches securely on the needles until they are both edged and bound off in the same pass. Knitting them on is relatively easy. Let’s use an edging pattern I’ve described here before:
To work this onto the edge of a row of live stitches, I wouldn’t even need to break my yarn off after completing the last round of my main piece. Using a half hitch I’d cast 8 stitches onto my right-hand needle, adjacent to the last stitch worked in the main body. If I started with half hitch, I’d purl 8 back, working row 12 of the pattern, with the exception that the blue box would be a plain purl instead of the “artifact” stitch left over after binding off 6. If I were to use a provisional cast-on employing waste yarn, I’d cast on 8 onto a DPN or the left-hand needle, then work across starting with row #1, but working the first stitch as a plain knit.
I’d then work the rows of my chart as directed. You’ll note that on the final stitch of the even numbered (wrong side) rows, I purl the last edging stitch along with a live stitch from the existing edge. In the case of this particular pattern, given the row and stitch gauge difference, I found I had to “eat” additional live stitches as I attached, in order to prevent ruffling (which on some pieces can be a design feature rather than a bug). So on rows 6 and 12, I purl one stitch from my charted edging along with two live stitches from the piece’s body.
Now. What do you do if there aren’t live stitches? You pick them up. To knit the edging above onto a FINISHED edge, instead of purling the last even row stitch together with one stitch from the live body, I’d finish the even rows by picking a stitch up along the body of my finished piece. My odd numbered rows would then begin with a K2tog, knitting that new stitch together with the first stitch of my edging pattern.
Using these method, any edging from dead simple I-cord to elaborate lace can be attached to a live stitch edge or a finished piece. You can even use an edging to both finish and seam together TWO edges. I did that on these pillows.
I recently learned another slightly more involved method of knitting an edging onto a finished piece. It’s the one I use in the Spring Lightning lacy scarf (pattern elsewhere on wiseNeedle). More on that tomorrow.
INVESTIGATIONS – FILET KNITTING AND CROCHET
Done with the reposts! I hope. Here’s something from String, first appearing on 27 June 2004.
INVESTIGATIONS – FILET KNITTING AND CROCHET
More investigations on filet knitting and filet crochet have convinced me that while filet knitting will be worth doing, provided I use very fine threads and 4/0 (1.25mm) needles or smaller, it’s not going to work out for my dragon panel.
I’m having gauge problems working my design into the desired dimensions, even if I eke out the too-narrow dragon motif band with additional borders top and bottom. For the record, my design is something like 43 units tall by 135 units wide. I’ve got a space to fill that’s 19 inches tall by 30 inches wide (although I can go over a bit on this). That means for the width, I’ve got to hit something like 4.5 rows per inch. Now in filet crochet, looking at a series of filet patterns with gauges found at the Stargazer site, I’m seeing gauges the smallest gauge I see (size 30 crochet cotton) is something like 10 rows = 2.3 inches. That’s about 5 rows = 1.15 inches. My 135 rows at this smallest gauge would be something like 31 inches wide. By contrast, the smallest I’ve been able to do so far in knitting is 3 squares = 1 inch (that’s about 14 or so knitting stitches per inch). At 3 squares per inch, my 135 units turns out to be 45 inches wide. I suppose I could hunt down longer size 5/0 or 6/0 needles (or make them) and finer threads, but I’m not inclined to do that right now. Interim verdict: Filet knitting is certainly worth further experimentation, but it’s not suitable for this project.
I think I’ll have to fall back on filet crochet to do my door curtain. I think I’ll take it and my Crazy Raglan with me as my official vacation projects.
Crochet Dragon Panel Pre-Project Calculations
Using these theoretical base calculation points for two thread sizes, I posit these rough dimensions and yarn consumption factors:
- Base for Size 20 cotton – 10 squares x 10 rows = 2.2″ x 2.4″; a piece that’s 100×50 squares or 21.3 inches x 12 inches will take 519 yards, using old US size 9 steel crochet hook.
- Base for Size 30 cotton – 10 squares x 10 rows = 2.1″ x 2.3″; a piece that’s 100×50 squares or 20.4 inches x 11.5 inches will take 485 yards using old US size 11 steel crochet hook.
Doing the math for Size 20 cotton (and working across the height instead of across the width to preserve sanity), that means my piece of 43 x 138 squares would be 9.16 inches x 33.12. Since my piece is 5934 squares total (138*43), and the original was 5000 squares, mine is roughly 19% bigger. I’ll round up to 20%, and I come up with a new yardage consumption estimate of 519 *1.2 or roughly 623 yards. I’ll add 10% to that for a fudge factor and round up – 686 yards. Repeating the operation for Size 30 cotton, I get an estimated finished dimension of 8.8 inches x 31.74 inches, and an estimated yarn consumption forecast of 641 yards. Remember that these yardage estimates are for the base dragon strip alone. I need to make it taller because the window space I need to cover is taller. With height estimates of 9.16 and 8.8 inches respectively I’ll need to either find or design complementing border strips that roughly double the project’s height. That means I need to double my yardage estimates – 1372 yards or 1282 yards for size 20 and 30 cotton, respectively. These estimates are VERY rough at best, but with luck should be good enough to get me started.
Now on to crochet hook sizes. The circa 1919 instructions on which I’ve based these calculations specify size 9 and 11 steel crochet hooks for sizes 20 and 30 cotton. According to various authorities (very few of whom agree), an 11 can be as large as 1.1mm, and as small as .75mm; a 9 can be as large as 1.4mm or as small as 1.25mm. My modern Susan Bates set goes from 0 to 10 (2.55 to 1.15mm). I’ll have to play and see what I can achieve using those sizes.
I haven’t decided which size thread or hook to use yet. Much will depend on what I can find locally, and on what size hook I can dig up without staging a raid on the storage cubby where all my tools and goodies are stashed.
So apologies. This knitting blog is going to take a side trip into crochet. But since I’ll be doing it during a forced blogging hiatus, I’ll only bore you with a couple large gobs of progress rather than by reporting in inch by inch.
WORKING REPORT – CRAZY RAGLAN
This post originally appeared on 26 June 2004.
WORKING REPORT – CRAZY RAGLAN
You know what I like about knitting? Among others, two things in particular:
- 99.9% of all mistakes can be dealt with without losing anything except time
- You never stop learning
Knitting is a very forgiving pursuit. Woodworkers can’t un-cut a mis-measured plank. Cooks can’t get the extra egg back into the shell. Sewers and tailors can’t return their fabric to the bolt once it’s been snipped. But knitters can grab and end, yank and reduce the most recalcitrant problem back to its larval state, ready to be knitted again. That suits me, as many of my projects proceed one step forward, two steps back.
I’m a slash-and-burn knitter (swidden knitter). By that I mean that I try to expand my mental knitting territory on almost every project. I’m always hungering for new challenges, new techniques, or trying to figure out easier/less error-prone ways of doing things. So far I haven’t run out of challenges, as even the simplest thing can end up being a roadblock. I’ve got knitting pals that always say nice things about the projects I finish, but probably don’t realize that like an untrained rat in a maze, I spent considerable time scurrying up and back dead ends. But learning flows from making mistakes, having the patience to figure out what went wrong in the first place, and the fortitude to correct them.
I have a hard time understanding all the people who post that they tried something and gave up, some even tossing the project out in disgust. True, I’ll lager the most egregious away for a while or even rip back particularly spectacular failures and re-use the yarn for something else, but I can’t imagine getting so disgusted that I would throw away the whole mess.
Case in point – my sorry excuse for what was supposed to be a mindless busy-work project, filling in extra post-exhaustion hours and (perhaps) lasting long enough to take me through a blissfully non-thinking week of vacation. I could make all sorts of excuses for what’s happened so far, but why bother. Here are the facts:
- I mis-measured my gauge – not once, but twice
- I mis-measured my kid’s circumference, and settled on making the wrong size
- I entered the above bogus data into Sweater Wizard, then mis-read the resulting print-out, and cast on too few stitches.
- I didn’t bother to confirm measurements until I was at least 7 inches into the thing. Twice.
The result? Another opportunity to reclaim and re-use yarn. I should be on target now. I’ve confirmed my gauge, recalculated The Smallest One’s size, and re-drafted the pattern (thank goodness for Sweater Wizard). Given that I was going to have to rip back anyway, I took the opportunity to do what I mentioned yesterday – using two balls of yarn to knit the front and back, doing it with an intarsia-style join at the center front. This makes the stripes even wider, as the span of stitches traveled by each strand is even smaller than before. I’m getting nice, wide sock-type stripes now, with a “seam” up the center front (apologies for the lousy pix, my camera is out of batteries so I had to improvise with another):
At the very least, this continues yesterday’s visual lesson on using variegated yarns. The narrower the span of stitches covered, the wider the stripes will end up being. How to know if your yarn will stripe or make that stippled effect? Look at the length of each color section. The longer it is, the more likely it will be to stripe. How to estimate on the fly? In general, a row consumes roughly 3 to 4 times its length in yarn. That’s a very rough estimate. If the color sections are at least three times the width of your piece to be knit you’ll end up with a one-row stripe. That stripe might not begin at the commencement of each row, and may end up being a wider puddled “bounce-back” section on a side, but it will take at least that much length of any one color to have any hope of visual striping.
More length? Easy. Wider stripes, and the possibility of knitting up larger garments that sport them. (Custom dyers take note – LONG repeats made by looping up double length skeins before applying color may be cumbersome to produce, but I bet they’d sell quite well compared to skeins with shorter color runs.)
Less length? A mottled, speckled or streaked appearance, with the predominant color overwhelming the others when seen from far away. Some yarns with shorter color runs can be a challenge to use. I’m not particularly fond of yarns with color sections that are an inch wide or less. In a fingering weight yarn that’s a run of about four to six stitches (depending on needle size). In a worsted, about two stitches. In a bulky/superbulky – that’s only one stitch (or fewer!).
One of the things that drove me to play with entrelac for the Tee I’m also working on right now was the short length of the color runs. Colors lasted for about three to five inches before changing. I didn’t like the blotchy, streaky effect that gave. Working in entrelac though on tiny 5-stitch squares allows the colors to bounce back and forth forming mini-stripes on each block. It’s tedious, but gives a more painterly effect.
I think if I ever wrote a book on knitting the name might be The Lazy Knitter: How to Avoid Mistakes In The First Place. Either that or Chest of Knitting HorrorsTM: How To Get Out and Stay Out. So it’s back to the fertile field of making mistakes, both for my own edification and to provide vicarious amusement for those who read this blog.
WORKING REPORT- CRAZY RAGLAN
Another post from the missing month. This originally appeared on 25 June 2004
Back to knitting.
Having successfully restarted my younger daughter’s raglan in Regia 6-ply Crazy Color, I can now report a modicum of progress:
It’s interesting to compare this pattern of striping with the one I was getting back when I was working in the round:
Same yarn, different width. If I had the strength I might even begin again, using the same strategy I employed for my Typeset Tee. That would make even wider stripes, but I’m too lazy to begin this no-think fill-in project for a third time.
The Play’s the Thing
How did I manage to knit off six inches each of the back and front in one night? I was at an audition.
I’ve mentioned before that The Resident Male was in a production of King Lear back in March (he played Kent). He has just tried out for a small role in a staging of Macbeth. But I didn’t go with him. My older daughter is caught up by the whole thing. At 13, she went to try out for one of the boy’s roles – Fleance (2 lines) or even MacDuff’s son (about a dozen lines) . She dutifully prepared her audition piece – Quince’s prologue to the miniplay in Midsummer Night’s Dream in Act 5, and read for the part. I told her that she’d be the youngest person there by a dozen years or more, but she was undaunted. She even made her way through the infamous tongue twister
Whereat with blade,
with bloody, blameful blade,
he bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.
Something I can’t see myself managing. I was tickled that she did so well. I have no idea if she got the part. Callbacks are on July 1st, but whether or not she’ll be cast she did us all proud.
The Latest Buzz
House nonsense goes apace. Yesterday’s big setback was the discovery of a huge colony of bees nesting in the floor below the sleeping porch. They get in through an old drainage pipe that sticks out through the stucco. The electricians working on wiring that part of the house were less than delighted to find the things. I was even less amused.
Under Massachusetts law the only available option besides letting them bee is to hire a licensed beekeeper to relocate the colony (not that I’d want to poison the little buggers). The hive must be removed after the bees are moved, as its contents would decay over time and cause even more problems. We’re trying to get a fix on how long the bees have been there. The longer they’ve been hoarding honey, the larger the removal cost, extent of the demolition required to get at the hive, and subsequent repair costs will be.
The only consolation is that the beekeepers will test the honey for edibility. If it’s uncontaminated (highly likely), we get to keep it. If there’s any quantity, I intend to have mead brewed from it so we may at the least, drink to both our and the bees’ new homes. Needless to say, things like this are not covered by insurance.
DREAM ON
This post originally appeared on 24 June 2004
DREAM ON
Just paging through the morning’s news, and I stumbled upon this report from a knitting-themed sailing cruise. It sounds like tons of fun. I could spend a week alternately knitting and re-reading O’Brien’s Aubrey and Maturin series…
But then reality sets in.
Maybe someday when the kids are older, schedules less hectic, and disposable income more capacious. Still, it’s fun to dream, isn’t it?
NEW CAROLINGIAN MODELBOOK
Another entry from long ago. The link provided is no longer good, but the advice still holds. Copies do surface every now and again on eBay and on AbeBooks. Nothing has changed about my royalty situation or the low esteem in which I hold the owners of the publishing firm and their total lack of responsibility. This first appeared on 24 June 2004.
Some people have asked me where to buy my book of charted embroidery patterns. I have to say that there aren’t many places that sell it. It’s a long, sad story involving publishers who were sloppy and unprofessional at best, and downright unscrupulous at worst. Copies do surface every now and again. I wish I could say that I was selling them, or that I had a prayer of getting royalties from those transactions, but I don’t.
However a friend just notified me that some copies have surfaced on eBay. The seller isn’t the original publisher, they appear to be an independent bookseller. I also apologize that the books appear to be going for well over the original cover price. I have absolutely no affiliation with this seller, nor will I benefit from these sales. But if you’re desperate for a copy, it’s the only source I know.
PROJECT – STRAKER GANSEY IN SHRINKING COTTON
More from the missing month of June. This originally appeared on 23 June 2004.
PROJECT – STRAKER GANSEY IN SHRINKING COTTON
The summer has finally arrived and it’s cotton knitting season, so I thought I’d show off my project from early last winter (I’m seasonally dyslexic). I’ve always had a yen to knit up Penny Straker’s Inverness Gansey, but had never found the right wool to use:
In a fit of serendipity, I ran across one of the naturally dyed, guaranteed to shrink cotton yarns at a recent clearance sale at my local yarn store: Marks & Kattens Indigo Jeansgarn. Although the yarn was cotton and not wool, the two meshed in my mind. So I went about messing with the pattern, taking into consideration:
- It wasn’t intended for cotton
- It wasn’t intended for a shrink-to-fit cotton
- The sizing is for men
- My gauge both before and after shrinkage wasn’t a match to the pattern
But challenge is the frosting on my cake, and I loved the thought of the indigo yarn slowly fading along the crisp cable and King Charles Brocade pattern edges like jeans seams do. I plunged ahead, knitting up the required swatch.
The length of my test swatch shrank about 5% the first wash, but continued to shrink in each of two successive washes/volcano drys. Total shrinkage after three washes was on the order of 8-9%, so I figured that the 10% shrinkage listed on the label was close enough. Width shrinkage was on the order of 1-2%. Minimal.
I’m a little handicapped in writing this up because my copy of Inverness is tucked away in the storage cubby along with all of my yarn and pattern stash. I recall the pattern was written for worsted weight, with a recommended gauge (in stockinette) of 5 stitches per inch. My yarn was listed as a DK, but it was a rather robust DK, closer to worsted than to sport weight. Also, because I planned for shrinkage, I figured that knitting it a bit loosely wouldn’t matter. My gauge swatch results bore this out.
So I went ahead. I recall that there was quite a bit of ease in the largest size (a men’s 42). I did add a little over an inch of width to the body. That wasn’t hard because the sleeves are dropped sleeves and aren’t set in. I made the seed stitch panels on the side under the arm each 3 stitches wider. No fuss.
Now, the sweater was long to begin with, but I’m tall. I decided I wanted to keep it long, so I added 10% to the length measurements. That means that I knit around 30 inches of body. I also added to the sleeves (more on this below). Having done my adjustments, I cast on and knit away merrily.
This was one of the most enjoyable, fun sweater patterns I’ve done in quite a while. The texture patterns, while visually complex were quick and easy to memorize. The yarn was a dream. Yes, as a naturally dyed guaranteed-to-fade indigo, the dye crocks and comes off on one’s hands, needles, stitch markers, but cleanup was quick. I avoided sitting on the chair with the light upholstery and washed my hands after each session. And yes, it’s a cotton and relatively un-stretchy, and working cables in it is more of a pain than working cables in a nice, elastic wool – but the thing really flew. Here’s the result:
I especially liked the small details that don’t show up in the photo. The ribbing bears a nifty little cable. There’s a row of eyelet welting above it, and just below the seed stitch mock saddle shoulders, and at the top of the sleeves. The sleeves are joined to the body by working a row of picked-up stitches along the shoulder line, then doing three needle bind-off to join those stitches to the live sleeve top stitches. All in all, tons of fun.
Apologies for the color in this detail shot. It’s tough to take a snap of something that’s dark blue without using studio type floodlights, even with a flash. The actual color is closer to the full view, above.
After my knitting was finished I washed my giant sweater as I had my swatch: hot water, cold rinse, followed by volcano heat in the dryer in the company of my navy blue sheets (so I wouldn’t have to worry about the sweater’s blue migrating to other things). Three trips through and I had achieved around the same percentage shrinkage as my test swatch.
I adore my finished sweater. It’s soft and supple, and the comfortable kind of baggy that only the most beloved an worn-out sweatshirts ever achieve. I can wear it indoors without something underneath in spring and summer, and layered over another shirt in the winter. (Were it wool, it would be too warm for all but winter wear indoors.) Even though it’s cotton and weighty compared to wool, the thing isn’t heavy and saggy. The color is fading as I anticipated. The exposed edges of the twist stitch cables and purls in the brocade are becoming lighter than the surrounding background. I’m looking forward to seeing this effect intensify over time. Plus I love being able to fling the thing into the washer and dryer instead of pampering it like I do most of my other sweaters.
I do have one miscalculation to report. Remember I said I added 10% to the sleeve length? That wasn’t a good idea. I had forgotten that I was starting with a man’s pattern. My sleeves are too long, even after shrinking. Eventually I’ll find the strength to pick out the seam, ravel back the excess and re-knit the cuffs. Someday…
String-Or-Nothing 
