CHARTING 104 – THINGS THAT MAKE LIFE DIFFICULT
In a perfect world there would be an intuitive set of graphing symbols
that would be quick and easy to understand. They’d cover all possible
maneuvers in knitting, and would be useful in every circumstance. This
is however, a total pipe dream. Knitting is near infinite, and
knitters are fiendishly clever in the variant ways they have found to
produce their desired results. There are a number of knitting
techniques and stitches that pose special problems to charting:
Large numbers of stitches increased or decreased at the same time
When you see instructions like “make 5 in next stitch” you’ll need to invent
a symbol to handle it. I’ve seen German and Japanese charts that use a
variant on something like this:
Decreasing a large number into one stitch would generate need for something
similar, perhaps with the V upside down, and the number of stitches to
be eaten indicated between its open toes.
Also unless you’re dealing with an edging, it will probably be impossible to graph up a
pattern containing massive group increases or decreases without using the
no-stitch boxes we discussed yesterday. Still, these problems fall into
the “inconvenient but not insurmountable” camp.
Bobble and bell-shaped semi-detached units
Some bobble and bell units are produced by knitting back and forth over a
small number of stitches, to make a blister-like addition that’s
attached to the main work at top and bottom. Most chart authors treat
this type of unit as a separate sub-process. The main chart may have a
single box with a specified symbol in it, indicating where the unit is
to be placed. The unit itself will be described either in prose, or in
a “mini-chart” accompanying the main chart as a sidebar. Another
“inconvenient but not fatal” challenge.
Patterns containing stitches either slipped from or knit into the row below
These can pose real charting problems, especially in linen stitch family
textures where large numbers of stitches are worked “out of row.” I’ve
seen large V-shapes superimposed on the graph that are supposed to
represent these distended stitches, but they are visually difficult to
deal with. If there are lots of them, the clutter can be overwhelming,
and some linen stitch or slip-stitch based patterns may be impossible
to graph at all.
It is interesting to note that B. Walker used a special charting notation for her slip-stitch based mosaic colorwork. In that format each row of the chart represented two rows of knitting
instead of the more conventional one row worked = one row charted
ratio. She didn’t try to show stitch deformation by the use of a symbol
set, instead she stuck to two-color mosaic patterns that swapped colors
every two rows. The squares on her charts indicate whether one is to
form the next stitch by working with the current strand, or slipping
the color of the previous two-row set up onto the needle.
Threaded stitches or stitches with right-side floats, or decorative wraps spanning one or more stitches
There are some patterns that form colorwork or texture patterning by using
separate strands that are threaded back and forth through live stitches
during knitting. Other patterns use as decorative elements floats or
wraps of one or more stitches, deliberately formed on the right side of
the work. These are both very difficult to represent in charts. I’d
probably go with some sort of notation in the main chart that Effect #1
happens here, and accompany the chart with a separate detail write-up.
Novelty stitches
Some popular novelty stitches are near impossible to chart. Loop Stitch is a
good example. That’s the stitch used to make a surface completely
covered in shag-rug style loops. The manipulations required to make the
loops don’t lend themselves to graphing, and beyond noting which
stitches carry the loops in a piece that uses both adorned and
unadorned areas for contrast, indicating their presence is of little
value.
In spite of these exceptions, if a pattern contains just knits, purls, cables, simple increases and decreases – even twisted stitches – it can probably be graphed. The graph may be massive, but it can be done.
I’ve got only one nomination for a particularly vexing pattern to use in tomorrow’s object lesson. If you’re got one to suggest, please send me an eMail (replace the “AT” in the address with the standard @ sign).
CHARTING 103 – THE STITCH THAT ISN’T THERE
We’ve covered basic charting, and charting variable width edgings. Now
for panels and insertions. Those are patterns that can be used as
accents in the main body of your piece. Sometimes they show up as
single strip scarves, sometimes several repeats of the design are
combined across to make an all-over design (occasionally fitted
together with half-drop variations), sometimes a single panel is
repeated to make a long stripe in combo with a stockinette ground,
sometimes just one vertical repeat of the design is used as a spot
accent, sometimes panels of different patterns show up side by side.
What makes them different from edging patterns is that they can be
embedded in the center of a piece, and that piece can be knit in the
round.
These insertion style patterns can have either stable or variable stitch
counts from row to row. One with a stable count (either no
increases/decreases or an equal number of increases to decreases on
every row where they occur) are graphed more or less the same way as
the pattern in Charting 101. The ones with changing stitch counts do
pose special problems.
Let’s consider this simple variable count
insertion. It’s my own write up of a simple embossed leaf inside a
framing K2, P2 rib:
Cast on 9
Row 1 (wrong side): P2, K5, P2
Row 2: K2, P2, (K,P,K in one stitch), P1, K2
Row 3: P2, K2, P3, K2, P2
Row 4: K2, P2, (K1, YO)2x, K1, P2, K2
Row 5: P2, K2, P5, K2, P2
Row 6: K2, P2, K2, YO, K1, YO, K2, P2, K2
Row 7: P2, K2, P7, K2, P2
Row 8: K2, P2, K3, YO, K1, YO, K3, P2, K2
Row 9: P2, K2, P9, K2, P2
Row 10: K2, P2, SSK, K5, K2tog, P2, K2
Row 11: P2, K2, P7, K2, P2
Row 12: K2, P2, SSK, K3, K2tog, P2, K2
Row 13: P2, K2, P5, K2, P2
Row 14: K2, P2, SSK, K1, K2tog, P2, K2
Row 15: P2, K2, P3, K2, P2
Row 16: K2, P2, K3tog, P2, K2
As you can see, the thing starts out being nine stitches across, but grows on row 9 to 17 stitches across.
How to chart? The symbol set is pretty straightforward. Each
individual row poses no problems. For example, here’s row 8:
If we normed one edge like we did with the edging patterns, we’d end up with this:
While all the info is there and this chart could be worked from, it’s
deceptive in that it looks like an edging. Plus one of charting’s prime
directives – representing knitting in a format that’s visually akin to
the finished product – has been fouled.
So. Let’s look closer at this pattern, looking for obvious points of internal symmetry or
reference. We quickly see that the thing IS symmetrical. There’s a
center stitch in every row. Let’s stack our rows on the center stitch:
That’s closer. You can begin to see the leaf shape in the center,
but the wiggly edges are still a bit confusing. Here’s another
cut at the same basic concept. This time however, I’ve lined up
not only the center stitch, but also the knit ribs that frame it:
Those gray areas? They don’t exist. Flat out aren’t
there. They’re the equivalent of the stage attendants dressed in
all black who move props around in full view of the audience during a
drama or puppet performance. You’re not supposed to see them, even
though they’re in plain sight.
The grayed out areas are spacing mechanisms introduced for the sake of
visual clarity in the rest of the pattern. They have no
correlation to stitches in the actual knitted piece. Working from
this chart, I’d skip right over the gray background. My first row would
be P2, K5, P2, just as in the written directions. Now different
authors represent non-charted “no stitch” or null spaces
differently. I chose to use a general background shading, with no
boxes marking individual stitches. Other people don’t bother
removing the box notation from the no-stitch spaces. On their
charts the no-stitch boxes can be a bit harder to interpret.
How to know when to use mystery no-stitch boxes? Although it’s a
matter of personal preference, sometimes they’re absolutely necessary
because there just isn’t room to graph out your piece unless they’re in
the mix. I could graph out my embossed leaf without the
no-stitch areas, but if this leaf was part of a larger graph covering a
wider area, the distortion introduced by the width of the longest row
might ripple out and perturb the representation of design elements to
either side. In that case, using the no-stitch boxes would keep
my two edges parallel and let the leaf panel sit more comfortably in
the total project chart. That in turn would help the
knitter keep his or her place on the wider graph.
Tomorrow I’ll look at patterns that are extremely hard (if not
impossible) to chart out. The final piece in this series I’ll
build one chart for a lacy or complex cabled design that has presented
a special challenge. Nominations for the final object lesson will
be accepted. Please contact me off-list before Thursday night if you know of a prose texture pattern you’d like to suggest for group edification.
CHARTING 102 – VARIABLE STITCH COUNTS
I’m delighted that people found yesterday’s post useful. The most asked
question though was TexAnne’s original one – what does one do when
stitch counts change from row to row?
The guiding principle here is clarity of illustration. You want your chart
to reflect as closely as possible the visual appearance of the finished
knitting. That might mean that you handle the problem differently
depending on the general situation. An edging for example might be
graphed up differently than a panel insertion.
Let’s start with the basics – some different types of increases and decreases. They are
after all the Evil Agents that perturb stitch count across rows.
Increases come in two flavors – visible and invisible. A visible increase is
something like a yarn over. It’s an increase that leaves an intentional
eyelet hole in the piece. Invisible increases come in all sorts of
flavors – some more invisible than others. Often an invisible increase
is called a make one. Some people favor raised bar style increases,
others do the knit into a stitch of the row below, and others go for
the less invisible knit/purl into the same stitch (or k1 front, k1 back
into the same stitch). Which method of invisible increase is used is up
to the knitter, although the designer may suggest one that works
particularly well for the project in hand. In general though, the two
types of increase have different notations in charting. I favor a boxed
circle for a visible increase and a boxed M for an invisible increase.
I even go so far as to slap a bar across the M if I want to
specifically call for an invisible increase that forms a purl stitch.
Here are the symbols I use for some of the more common increases and
decreases:
Apologies for the size of the illustrations today. I’m having an argument
with the picture upload facility, and this is the best resolution that
I can get working this morning. Although my symbols were inspired
by B. Walker’s and L. Stanfeld’s two, apparently I stuck to industry
standard practice, doing whatever the heck I felt like doing and coming
up with my own set.
Now. How do you use these?
Let’s start with a simple edging. Edgings generally have one straight edge
where they attach to the thing being trimmed, and one that’s dagged,
pointed, crenelated, scalloped, picoted or otherwise fancified in some
way. The fancy bits (I’ll call them all points for simplicity of
reference), are formed by increases and decreases. In some the
decreases come as partially bound off rows. Here’s a good example. This
one is the edging I used on my Kombu scarf:
Cast on 4
Row 1, 3, 5 (wrong side) Knit
Row 2: K1, YO, K1, YO, K2
Row 4: K2, YO, K2tog, YO, K2
Row 6: K3, YO, K2tog, YO, K2
Row 7: Bind off 4, K3 (4 stitches remain)
Repeat rows 2-7
First off – assume that all edgings knit side to side are knit in the flat.
The ‘wrong side’ notation confirms this. Row 7 starts with binding off
and is a wrong side row. That means that if you hold the piece with the
RIGHT side facing you, the straight edge will be on your right, and the
ziggy-zaggy one will be on your left. Row 1 is not repeated, and
appears to be just a foundation row. Armed with this orientation info,
we begin charting rows 1 and 2.
Row one is a wrong-side row, so even though the directions say “knit” the
stitches are plotted as purls (that chart = right side view
thing). On row two we’ve got two yarn overs. They increase
the total stitch count by two. We know that this is an
edging. We know that the jagged edge will be on the left when
viewed from the right side. Therefore I have chosen to make the
stitches line up along the right hand edge. Here’s a proofing
trick. There are no decreases in this row, therefore number of
stitches in this row EXCLUSIVE of the yarn overs should be equal to the
number of stitches in the row below. 4=4, we’re o.k. Let’s
continue:
Row 4 contains two yarn overs, but the total stitch count is
increased by only one block. That’s because it also contains a
K2tog (stitch count +2yos -1k2tog = stitch count +1, not +2.) Row
5 is just another all knit row. Proofing stitch counts vis
a vis the previous row can be done by counting the number of plain
knits, plus two for every K2tog or SSK decrease. In this case
we’ve got 6=6. It works.
Row 6 and 7 get interesting. There is no uniformly acknowledged
(or obvious) symbol for binding off, therefore charts that contain
bound off stitches often use a text notation to indicate what’s going
on. Also remember if you bind off stitches you end up with one
remaining loop on the needle:
Again Row 6 increases total stitch count by only one (two steps
forward, one step back covers the YOs and the decrease). Row 7
includes the instruction to bind off four stitches, BUT there’s a
visual discrepancy between the chart and the written directions.
The chart says BO4, K3. The chart shows four stitches.
That’s because one of those is the loop that remains after you’ve bound
off the four stitches at the beginning of Row 7. You have that
loop on the needle, then you knit the remaining three stitches, for a
total of four stitches on the needle. I’ve also shaded out Row
#1. Just like the edge stitches in yesterday’s illustration, this
indicates that Row 1 is not part of the regular repeat. It’s a
foundation row worked at the start of the edging strip, and not
repeated thereafter.
As you can see, simple edgings are relatively easy bits of lace to
graph. Stitch counts do vary from row to row, but because they
have a stable edge, those extra stitches have someplace to go,
visually. Having built this foundation of basic concepts,
tomorrow we’ll do a panel pattern that doesn’t have the luxury of
a free edge, and introduce The Stitch That Isn’t There bugbear.
CHARTING 101
TexAnne eMailed a question that sends me off on a tangent. She’d like
to know more about how to take a set of prose directions from a source
like one of Barbara Walker’s stitch treasuries and turn them into a
chart. In specific, she’d like to know about how to handle things
like double yarn overs, and stitch counts that vary from row to
row. These are excellent questions. Since not everyone can
leap right in at the graphing lace level, I’ll start with simple
charting and work up to the harder bits later in the week.
To
start, transforming prose to charted directions is easier than some
people think. Tools include some sort of mechanism on which to do the
chart. I ping-pong back and forth between good old pencil and paper,
and Microsoft Visio. Visio is an expensive Windows drafting/drawing
program that I have on hand, mostly because I use it when I work as a
consultant. There are other solutions out there, ranging from forcing
spreadsheets to handle the function, to dedicated knitting programs.
But don’t despair if you have access to no computerized tool for
charting. Plain old 1/4 inch quadrille paper (the Junior High
School geometry teacher’s friend), a friendly pencil and forgiving
eraser work just fine. Principles of conversion remain the same
regardless of tool used.
Let’s start out with some basics.
Charts are read from the bottom up. In most cases (but by no means
always) there is a one to one correspondence between a stitch in the
work and a box on the graph.
Charts represent the work as seen
from the public or right side. As such, if you’re working flat, you
need to remember that the same symbol that represented a knit stitch on
your right side row will represent a purl stitch on your wrong side
row. (If you’re unsure of this basic binary truth, go grab something
with both knits and purls on the same row, like a swatch in ribbing,
and use a pin to poke through a single stitch, then identify it on both
sides of the work).
Two more basic truths of charts:
- Almost every author or chart source has a unique symbol set. Some are similar, but none are absolutely identical.
- Not everything can be completely charted
Oh, chart purists will argue about #2, but there ARE some patterns that just don’t lend themselves well to charted expression.
Let’s
start with an easy one. Here’s a recipe for a simple basket rib done in
all knits and purls. Stitch counts remain constant from row to
row. The source is Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, Scribners, 1968;? page 17 (see footnote below).
Multiple of 4 stitches + 1
Row 1: (right side) K1 , *p1, k1; rep from *
Row 2: K2, *p1, k3; rep from *, end p1, k2.
Row 3: P2, *k1, p3; rep from *, end k1, p2
Row 4: P1, *k1, p1: rep from *
Row 5: K1, *p3, k1; rep from *
Row 6: P1, *k3, p1; rep from *
Now
to chart this out, we examine the instructions. It’s pretty clear that
there will be an edge stitch. The “Multiple of 4 stitches + 1” says so.
So let’s start with Row 1. The stitches will read exactly as written,
in the direction of the work. That means that the first stitch will be
at the right hand edge of our chart. Since the directions call for a
multiple of 4, +1, let’s start off with an auspicious 13 stitches –
that’s three repeats. plus that one spare:
All
well and good. In my twisted logic, a blank square is a knit, a square
with a dash in it is a purl. Not everyone uses this notation. Some
people use a square with a vertical line in it to represent a knit, and
a horizontal to show a purl. Some people use a dot to indicate a purl.
There’s never been any international standardization of knit symbols,
so use what’s comfortable to you.
If you follow the charts that I’ve put up here and on wiseNeedle,
you’ll notice that I like to keep tabs of how many stitches are across
my row by using a red rule every five stitches. When I chart out a big
pattern, I set up a large red grid first and then populate it, but here
I’ll add in the red lines and row numbers as I need them. Again, this
is a matter of personal preference. Set your rules 4, 5, or 10 stitches
apart, or don’t use any at all. It’s up to you.
Now to add Row
#2. The original prose instructions were written for someone knitting
in the flat. In general unless you have absolute evidence to the
contrary from any accompanying text, assume that prose instructions are
written in the flat. This means that WHEN SEEN FROM THE FRONT OF THE
WORK, the second row will commence at the left hand edge of the graph.
A clue on this pattern is the notation “(Right side)”. In a piece knit
in the round EVERY row is a right side row, so this piece must have a
wrong side row – hence it is knit in the flat. Yes I know this is
confusing, because you always work in the same direction, but remember
that if you were knitting in the flat, you’d have flipped the work over
to go back.
Aha!
A second complication! The prose instructions start off with K2, p1,
but the chart shows p2, k1! Don’t panic. Remember, we’re on the second
row – a wrong side (aka purl side or inside) row. The “2” is at the
left edge to remind us of that fact. Those first two wrong-side knit
stitches WHEN SEEN FROM THE FRONT are purls. That’s the way they are
graphed. If your head is starting to hurt, just contemplate that while
this is a mind-stretching exercise, mental gymnastics like this have
been shown to delay brain aging.
Adding Row #3 makes which stitches compose the 4-stitch repeat more clear:
In
adding Row #4, I’ve moved to a more conventional method of shading.
Most charts that show edge stitches do so by shading them. Here it’s
clear that there are three repeats, plus one column of edge stitches
(to be fair, I could designate either the first or last column as my
edge, as in this simple pattern with a one-stitch edge, it doesn’t
matter which column serves that purpose.)
In
prose it’s not immediately evident where the actual repeat falls, and
what parts of the directions cover the non-repeating edge stitches.
This is one reason why I prefer working from charts.
Since we’ve
covered the basics, I’ll quickly add the last two rows. Graphed out,
not only do we see where the repeats are, we also see that a
basketweave pattern is formed by a half-drop. Rows 1-3 and 4-6 contain
the same basic unit, but in rows 4-6 it’s advanced by two stitches. I’ve
marked the same basic unit in yellow on rows 1-3, and in orange on rows
4-6.
The
simple nature of this repeat and the symmetry that builds it into a
basket weave pattern are difficult to discern by just reading the prose
instructions, but in a chart, the logic stands out.
Now,
knitters working both in the round and in the flat can use this same
chart. People knitting in the flat would cast on a multiple of 4
stitches plus 1. Then they would start at the bottom right corner and
work across Row 1, then they’d flip the work over and start the next
row at the “2” – taking care to do the mental flip; and so on. People
knitting in the round would cast on an even multiple of 4 stitches, and
starting AFTER the blue edge stitch, would work across Row 1 as many
times as needed – skipping the blue stitches, eventually returning to
the point where their round commences. They’d then start to work Row 2,
again working from the chart’s right hand edge and skipping the blue
edge stitch whenever it was encountered.
So you see –
translating a pattern into a chart isn’t that tough. This particular
texture is an easy one. It’s all knits and purls, with no increases or
decreases. There are no variant stitch counts. Every row has the same
number of stitches. There are no slipped or dropped stitches, no wraps
or other bits of oddness.
In Charting 102, we’ll look at the
mystery that is The Stitch That Isn’t There. I’ll go over patterns with
increases and decreases, and what happens when the stitch count
changes. TexAnne, I hope this helps.
* My quotation of B. Walker’s directions, verbatim. Normally I
don’t do this. If I use a pattern that’s in a stitch treasury, I
try to alter it a bit. I start at a different place in the
repeat, center the repeat differently, chart it where it was in prose
before, or rechart it starting at a different point. I do this
because while no one person owns copyright on a knitting texture
pattern, they do own copyright on the way they have expressed that
pattern. This is analogous to recipes. No one owns the
concept of “apple pie,” but thousands of authors each own their
individual description of what goes into one, and how to make
it.
In this case however, quoting Walker verbatim falls within the bounds
of fair use. I’ve given the citation, crediting the original
author. The quotation is there because the premise of this piece
is how to take a standard set of well-known prose instructions and turn
it into a chart.
SOCK YARN RUN DOWN
Some random questions popped into my inbox this week. I try to answer:
You said you
knit a lot of socks, and the colorful bits on the booties are
leftovers. Leftovers from what? What are your favorite sock
yarns?
I like the Euro-style classic finish hard twist wool/nylon blend sock
yarns best (I don’t care for either wearing or knitting cotton
socks). My short list includes Socka/Fortissima, Regia, Meilenweit, and the like. I’m slightly less fond of Reynold’s
sock yarns, finding them a bit coarser than I like. I knit with
Opal once, the yarn’s texture was nice and the colors were interesting,
but not so much that I’d pay a premium to find more. I’ve
also tried Kroy 4 ply (aka Kroy Sock), Special Blauband, and Brown Sheep Wildfoote.
I’m not as fond of those. Brown Sheep is too thin, splitty and
flabby. Special Blauband is also thin compared to my usual (their
Blauband Ringel
yarns though are more comparable to the Socka type). Kroy is a
bit less densely spun than the Euro yarns, but it’s economical and is
stocked in solid colors. Once it was difficult to find multicolor
sock yarn, now it’s tough to find solids. I use solids for
contrast, so I was very happy to find Kroy.
I’ve also tried some of the higher priced yarns, like Koigu and Lorna’s Laces.
In truth, though the Koigu colors were fantastic, I was less pleased
with its performance in a sock than most. I found it too thick to
make socks I can wear in most of my shoes, plus even under careful
hand-wash, I found it fuzzed and lost that surface sheen that makes the
colors pop. The socks are wearing well, but they’ve lost that
special something that the yarn had in the skein. I’d use Koigu
again in a heartbeat – but not for socks. The Lorna’s Laces yarn
was a bit loftier than my usual hard twist stuff, but worked up
nicely. It’s wearing quite well.
I’ve also tried a salad of other sock yarns – Alpine, Marathon, Happy Strumpf, Trekking
– whatever wandered into my local yarn store that looked
interesting. While all made suitable socks, none stood out as
things I’d want to seek out for repeat use. Alpine was a Euro
style yarn – good texture, boring colors; the others were heavier than
I prefer.
I haven’t tried the less expensive sock yarns from KnitPicks or Elann. I tend not to buy yarn via the Web if I can get the equivalent locally, and I live in a very sock yarn rich region. (Actually touching yarn before I buy it is a requirement.)
The links above just go to one representative of larger, similarly
named sock lines. If you need more info on sock yarns, try
wiseNeedle. Go to the search page and
look up a sock yarn by name, or select "sock" from the drop down list
of yarn types. About 135 are currently listed – 85% with at least
one review. You can also find a chart showing some repeat lengths of common sock yarn self stripers here.
Still working on the scarf?
I like it better when you write about little stuff. The big projects are boring. What little stuff are you planning?
Unfortunately, I don’t plan my knitting to fuel this blog. I knit
wherever I want to wander, and the blog gets pulled along behind.
That being said, I have to finish this latest crop of booties plus the
Harvey Kombu, then rescue Elder Daughter’s Rogue before returning to my
large blanket. Plus the holidays are coming. I’ve promised
a ton of socks, plus there are some other special gifts that I really
should make. You’ll see quite a few quickies over the coming two
months, I guarantee.
Late breaking addition:? Ooooh. Mittens!? Haven’t done full patterend mittens yet. Thank you , Wendy!
CROWN OR PETAL EDGING
There must be something in the water (please excuse me for not drinking).
I find myself knitting booties for a flood of the newly
expecting. So many in fact that over the past two weeks, for the
sake of fun I’ve taken to playing with ankle part after the eyelet
holes for the drawstring style bow.
This bootie is a combo of Dale Baby Ull and tiny leftovers from three
candy color different self-striping sock yarns. Like I wrote
before, just a yard is enough to do a stripe, so I save every scrap.
You could argue that my petaled bootie isn’t entirely successful, that
the top round of contrasting welting should be deeper, and that I
should have worked a round in white before launching into the crown-like
points at the top. But hey – these booties are the knitting
equivalent of potato chips – quick snacks tossed off in between more
substantial meals. However they are excellent for playing with
some basic concepts before risking those ideas on a larger piece.
In this case, I looked at the thing (shown above before the bow tie is
inserted), and thought that I’d like a pointy finish. I didn’t
want it elaborate or deep, and was too lazy to haul myself over to my
bookshelf and dig through my collection of stitch pattern books.
It being a no-brain night, I decided to improvise on the fly and do a
no-brain edging knit onto the live stitches of my bootie ankle to
eliminate seaming (a pain on something so small.)
These booties finish out with 40 stitches – 10 on each of four
needles. 40 is a good number, it’s an even multiple of 4 or 5, so
an edging worked on 40 live stitches can have a 4 or 5 stitch
repeat. For no reason whatsoever, I picked 5.
I cast two stitches onto a DPN, and knit one, then did a yarn over and
worked the second together with the first stitch of my bootie ankle
using a SSK. On the second bootie-out and all subsequent
bootie-out rows, I flipped the thing over and knit back to the outer
edge. On the next and edge-in subsequent rows, I knit until just
before the last stitch, finishing out the row with a YO, SSK
incorporating one stitch from the bootie ankle. After I’d "eaten"
up four stitches of the bootie ankle and was ready for the fifth edge
in row, I bound off until I had one stitch on the right hand needle and
one stitch on the left. This last stitch I worked together with
the fifth bootie ankle stitch. Voila!? A very simple 10-row
petal edging custom-matched to the stitch count of the piece being
trimmed. I did seven more points (eight in all – two per bootie
ankle needle) and grafted the last two stitches to the cast on
row. Bootie done, and neither seaming nor casting off was
required.
Neither knitting an edging onto live stitches nor creating a very
simple edging in this manner are new ideas, but both evoke a bit of
"How did you do that" when seen outside of lace knitting circles.
I would improve this a bit were I to do it again. Instead of each
point "eating" five ankle stitches and taking 10 rows to complete, I’d
cheat a bit. I’d do an 8-row repeat, working my bind off on the
fourth edge in row instead of the fifth, BUT instead of working a SSK
with one edging stitch and one bootie stitch to conclude the bind-off
row, I’d work a SSSK, fusing together one edging stitch and TWO bootie
ankle stitches. In effect, I’d be working an 8-row repeat
attached to five ankle stitches. This will draw in just a bit and
counter the tendency for the edging to stretch the live stitches, and
be wider than the tube of the item it completes. Most lace
projects that? are ended off with an edging knit perpendicular to
the body and don’t exploit this natural tendency to ruffle do vary the
stitch attachment count in a ratio closer to 3:2 than 1:1.
So, the next time you do a top-down hat, a tubular iPod case, or even a
toe-up sock, think of finishing it off with a bunch of slightly silly,
fluttery petals instead of the standard bind-off row. Or if you
feel really ambitious – thumb through the lace edging section of your
stitch dictionary, pick one with an appropriate row count and try it
out out to put a crowning touch on your piece.
STILL WASTING TIME
I’m still sweeping out mental cobwebs, occupying my fingers with
interim quickie projects. Saturday’s was another pair of booties, in
the bootie pattern I’ve blogged about before:
This
pair is in lime green Dale Baby Ull, and the leftover of some tweed
sock yarn long since separated from its label of origin. It just takes
a couple of yards to do one of the purl welts. I’ve worked them in
contrast (as shown here), even working each welt in a different color
yarn. Sometimes I do the ties in the same color as the contrast,
sometimes not. It all depends on how much I’ve got. This is why I never
throw away sock yarn leftovers. The smallest bit is enough to accent a
pair of these booties.
I’m still repacking my stash after our
near escape from a basement flood. In doing so I’m running across all
sorts of goodies I had forgotten about. In the same box as my
Kureopatora leftovers, I found about seven or eight balls of Harvey. Lang Harvey
was a wool blend salad with a boucl? finish – 40% wool, 32% acrylic,
15% polyamide nylon, 10% alpaca, and 3% viscose. I’m pretty sure I
scavenged it from a bargain bin at a (long gone) yarn shop I used to
frequent in College Park, Maryland. And I’m also pretty sure that I
bought it circa 1990 or so. Possibly earlier, so the chance of anyone finding more outside their own stash is slim to none. The original intent was
to make a vest, but although I liked the yarn I didn’t like the way it
worked with my chosen pattern, so I stashed it.
What’s boucl?
you ask? It’s a style of yarn that has fallen out of favor. You don’t
see that many of them around any more, the textured yarn niche having
been consumed entirely by the fluttery fur monster.
Boucl?s have an
airy hand. If you think of classic finish multi-strand yarns
(like Cascade 220) as dense cream cheese, boucl?s would be the whipped
variety. Unlike chenille where the fluffiness is made by little
strands that are bound by some kind of "keeper thread," boucl?s have no
fuzz to come unbound. The yarn’s structure is of one or more
two-ply strands. One ply is relatively taught, usually a very
fine nylon thread. The other ply is looser spun, almost slubby,
and is under far less tension. The looser strand is sort of
gathered and lumped around the nylon base thread, resulting in
something that has more loft and that has higher yardage per unit
weight.
Here’s Harvey:
Harvey has two two-ply strands. You can see how nubbly and slubby
it looks. While it reminds me in color and visual appearance of
the iron-upholstered sofa in my grandmother’s apartment (the one that
would sand your thighs off if you sat on it while wearing a skirt in
the summer), it is in fact an exceptionally luxurious feeling, soft and easy to wear yarn.
Some boucl?s are even more fluffy or bumpy than this. Some
have a loopy construction (I’m not sure at what exact point something
stops being a boucl? and becomes – for example – a mohair loop, but I’m
sure one of the spinning folk who read here will enlighten
us.)?? My Harvey is marked at worsted gauge (20 st x 34 rows
= 4 inches or 10cm) . It’s about 126 meters or about 138
yards. A classic worsted like Cascade 220 is about 110 yards for
50 grams. Even taking the fiber salad composition of Harvey into
consideration, 28 yards in 50 grams is a major difference in
yardage.
Now. How does Harvey knit up??
The first time I tried it out I was disappointed, but I had picked a
pattern for which it wasn’t suited at all. I tried it out using a
knit/purl texture pattern that was totally eaten by the yarn’s
texture and dark color. While it isn’t optimal for showing detail
on something like my Kombu, I thought it might be fun to try out in
that pattern:
Again, the ribbed detail is partially obscured, although it shows up
better in person than it does in a photo. But the softness and
drape can’t be topped. I’ll be finishing out my Harvey Kombu and
stowing it for the upcoming gift season. I’ll probably have
enough to do a matching hat, too.
Oh, and for an exceptional Kombu that really shows off the pattern’s
texture better than my own attempts at both knitting and photography
(and not to mention her superior execution of the idea) check out Kerstin’s Strickforum. Beautiful!
KUREOPATORA’S SNAKE PATTERN
UPDATE: THE KUREOPATORA SCARF PATTERN IS NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EASY TO DOWNLOAD AND PRINT PDF FILE AT THE KNITTING PATTERNS BUTTON LINK ABOVE.
I’ve finished my Snake Scarf. It’s about 58″ long, which works. I’ve used all but about four yards of my fancy yarn. The jury is still out on the edging thing. Perhaps something very narrow in black just to give it a contained, outlined look. Perhaps not. Lots depends on whether I have time to hit my LYS, as there’s nothing suitable in stash. Or I may just leave it as it is.
I played a long time with the final section, trying out several ways to do it that preserve the look of the ribbed sections that went before, because the usual way of ending off an Entrelac section lost the directionality of the ribbing. My corners don’t exactly match, but that’s because the entire piece has a definite beginning and end. If you were to work this idea like a seaman’s scarf, with a center third of plain ribbing, and both ends worked out from that ribbing, they would match exactly. Perhaps that’s the next step, provided I find a suitable yarn in a color set I like.
I make no claim as to inventing this concept. Entrelac is pretty standard. I’ve seen recipes for it going back to instructions for sock tops printed in the 1890s or so. Nor is doing it in a narrow strip unique. Quick searches on the Web will surface lots of other people’s experiments with directional knitting and narrow scarves. And I certainly can’t lay any claims to ribbing, or to using long repeat multicolor yarns in a narrow scarf. However, I can claim the serendipty that happened when I played with all of these concepts together. The trumpet like manner in which the ribbing spreads and curves is (to me at least) both amusing and graceful, and presents a different effect than working this idea in garter or stockinette stitch. I did work out the ribbed treatment for the final end, and have provided my own graph for it.
As far as using this with other yarns since the Kureopatora is now long gone – I suspect that Noro Silk Garden or Kureyon would work nicely, as would some of the Daikeito yarns that are
beginning to show up here in the US. (I haven’t seen the latter in person, but I’ve read reports of them on the Web.) What you want is a yarn in which each individual color lasts for about a yard (or more) before shading into the next one. The glorious hand-painted yarns that are hank-dyed in skeins that are about a yard around would NOT produce this wide stripe effect. They’d be lovely, but the color sections would not be long enough to make dramatic stripes like Kureopatora’s.
Just to annoy the natural-fiber-only crowd, I do observe that the yarn for this project needn’t be a top-drawer luxury product. There are some very inexpensive acrylics that have exceptionally long color repeats. I’m not fond of working with them in general, but if you’re thinking of knitting a rugged scarf for a little kid, those yarns might be worth considering.
Enjoy!
KUREOPATORA’S SNAKE – A KNITTING PATTERN
Materials
- US #6 needles
- Gauge
for this project, taken over 1×1 ribbing, at the midpoint of a section
where it isn’t particularly stretched out: approximately 6 stitches (3
ribs) per inch - 30 stitches at widest point
- Width of scarf: about 4.25 inches. Length of scarf: about 58 inches.
- Anticipated
yarn consumption for this size: About 250 yards of a multicolor worsted
weight yarn that normally knits in stockinette at 5 stitches per inch.
As
for working method, this scarf is done in a pretty standard Entrelac
edge column technique – think Entrelac project reduced to just the right
and left most columns, without the basket weave effect sections
between.
Row 1: Cast on 1 stitch, knit in the front, then purl in the back of this stitch [2 stitches on needle]
Row 2: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, K1 [3 st on needle]
Row 3: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1 [4 stitches on needle]
Row 4: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1, P1 [5 stitches on needle]
Row 5: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established K1, P1 ribbing [6 st on needle]
Row 6: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established K1, P1 ribbing [7 st on needle]
Row 7: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established P1, K1 ribbing [8 st on needle]
Row 8: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established P1, K1 ribbing [9 st on needle]
Continue
rows 5-8, adding one stitch in each row but doing it to maintain the
K1, P1 rib pattern. Keep doing this until you have 30 stitches on your
needle.
Entrelac body section:
Row 1: Knit in the front, then
purl in the back of the first stitch, SSK. Turn work over so the next
row heads back in the other direction. Note that this first row is only
3 stitches long.
Row 2 and all subsequent even numbered rows: Work P1, K1 ribbing as established.
Row
3: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1,
SSK. Note that from now on this row-ending SSK will be composed of one
stitch worked on the previous row, plus one stitch from the dormant
stitches on the left hand needle. Turn work over so the next row heads
back in the other direction. You now have 4 stitches in the row.
Row
5: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, K1,
P1, SSK. Turn work. You now have 5 stitches in the row.
Row 7: Purl
in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1, P1,
SSK. Turn work. You will now have 6 stitches in the row.
Continue
to work in the manner of rows 5-8, adding one stitch at the edge of
each right-side row in the established rib pattern until you have
incorporated all of the dormant stitches on the left hand needle. You
will again have 30 stitches on the needle. At this point your segment
is done. To do the next one, flip the work over (the and begin again
from Row 1 of the Entrelac section). Continue adding entire trumpet
shaped sections until your scarf is of sufficient length. (Mine maxed
out at about 58″).
Final section:
Rows 1-25 – work as for
a standard Entrelac section. At the completion of Row 25 you should
have fifteen active stitches on your right hand needle. The left hand
needle should hold the other fifteen stitches. Work Row 26 as usual
(marked in blue on accompanying chart).
Row 27 and all
subsequent odd numbered rows: SSK, work in established ribbing, ending
row with SSK and turn in the same manner as in the Entrelac section.
Rows 28 and all subsequent even numbered rows: Work P1, K1 ribbing as established.
Continue in this manner until you have completed Row 50, and three stitches remain on your needle.
Row
51: Slip, slip, slip, knit all three stitches together through the back
of the loop (this is a three-stitch variant of the standard two stitch
SSK decrease).
Darn in all ends.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
The Kureopatora snake scarf continues. It’s longer, but otherwise
looks the same. I will probably finish it up tonight and post my
how-to thereafter.
In the mean time, here’s another of the embroideries that litter my
house. This one is another doodle – a sampler in the true sense,
done to try out patterns that ended up in my book. It’s done in a
single strand red linen on a linen ground, at about 15 stitches per
inch on linen that’s about 30 threads per inch. The long dark
band at the bottom was done in long-armed cross stitch. The lion,
the knot at upper left, the narrow diagonal band next to it, and the
dark band at the left edge were in more standard regular cross
stitch. THINK was stitched on the count using chain. The
rest of the patterns were worked in double running (aka Spanish Stitch,
Holbein Stitch).
The dense rose corner surrounding the lion is original, the rest
(except for THINK) all have historical precedent, and are all graphed
out in The New Carolingian Modelbook. In general I’m not that
fond of this one. Done as a true sampler as it was, placement of
the motifs was very haphazard. I stitched whatever I felt like
trying out, and if the pattern didn’t fit – I didn’t care (the leggy
grapes are truncated at the bottom edge). I didn’t plan anything,
and the imbalance of the whole thing reflects that.
THINK ended up hanging in my husband’s office for a time. That
company he was working for in ’89 used the heraldic lion as a logo element, which is why
THINK and the lion both ended up on the thing. He’s no longer there and has another,
better embroidery at work now. THINK along with its obsolete logo
has been exiled to the upstairs hallway.
PROGRESS – MITTS AND SNAKE
In answer to so many questions – yes, I did finish the halfie mittens I showed last week:
Except
for darning in the ends, that is. You’ll note that the thumbs are on
the same side in the picture above. That’s because I’m trying to show
the palm (stockinette) and the back of the hand (textured) of the pair.
A little ending off, and they’re ready to go into my hamper of
potential holiday gifts. Or if it gets cold here before I get around to
distribution, being pressed into immediate service.
My snake scarf continues to grow:
It’s
just at the point of Scarf Length Viability, but not really long enough
yet As you can see I’m just about done with my first full ball of yarn.
That leaves just one. I don’t think I’ll be able to save out my second
for edging. It’s going to get consumed just doing scarf body. Some have
pointed out that I really don’t need edging, but I haven’t abandoned
the idea. Getting more of this yarn is of course impossible, but
perhaps something in black.
As soon as I end off the top end, I’ll write up a how-to on this one.
String-Or-Nothing 