Short Rows and The Principles of Knitting

The new shawl I'm designing has a center panel that I want to come down to a point before adding the border.  I think I'm going to try this doing short rows, but a quick swatch test showed me that wrap and turn short rows were going to be painful in lace weight yarn.

So off to my studio for the huge tome, The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt.  If you've never seen this 700 page book (I have the revised edition), you really should track it down.  Hiatt is the geeky-ist of geeks when it comes to knitting.  She has five different techniques for creating short rows, plus variations on those techniques!

You have to get used to some of the language in this book.  When she wrote it in 1988, knitting wan't as big as it is today.  She uses some non-standard terms compared to those in popular use today.  (For instance, she uses "inside" and "outside" instead of "right side" and "wrong side.")  However, this book has just about everything you ever wanted to know about anything having to do with knitting-- and many ways to do it!

Ocean Waves Stole Reflections

I finally finished the Ocean Waves shawl that I was designing and have uploaded the free pattern to Ravelry and to Craftsy.

My goal was to make a fully reversible shawl design that showed off and worked with the color changes in hand dyed yarn and I think that I succeeded.  The first problem was finding reversible stitch patterns that looked similar on both sides.  I settled on a modified version of the Old Shale Lace pattern where an equal number of rows of knits or perls alternate with a the lacy row that gives the pattern it's curves.  That was kind of dull by itself so I then looked for a textured pattern that was also reversible.  After looking through all my stitch dictionaries, a web search for reversible knitting patterns took me to the pattern for the Crown Stitch.  I modified this pattern slightly so that it, too, looked the same on either side.  and put them together.

This shawl is knitted lengthwise so that the color changes wrap around your body rather than going up and down the back,

I originally thought I might add some small fish beads to accentuate the idea of an ocean, but they were ultimately too heavy and too large for the pattern.

In designing the shawl, I knit until I ran out of yarn, so this pattern would work well for an unknown amount of yarn.  There are two stopping places in the 34 row repeat.  It could also be knit wider or narrower by adding or subtracting groups of 80 stitches from the cast on row.  Why 80 stitches?  The crown stitch takes groups of five stitches to complete and the waves of knits and perls are groups of 16 stitches plus 17 for the ends.  Turns out the multiples of five that work for both come every 80 stitches.

At some point I will knit at least some swatches of this pattern in different weights of yarn.  I think that the pattern could be modified for a variety of uses-- blanket, cushion, scarf, etc.

Grafting

A couple of weeks ago I grafted together the ends of the cowls for my BFF Cowl project.  It turns out to be nearly impossible to graft anything together that has a mix of knits and purls but I did my best.

I don't think you'd be able to see the errors from a galloping horse, which for something I'm not putting in a competition is a good rule of thumb.

I found that I got completely lost trying to read and follow standard written grafting directions.  They just make my head hurt.  But if I look at the diagrams in directions like this and then just tell myself where my needle should go to get knit stitches or purl stitches, then I do ok.  Not perfect, but ok.  This might be a result of being a very visual person.  It's like doing the long tail cast on, who can figure out these directions until you feel them in your hands?

Hopping into April with Daisy the Bunny

Last night I couldn't knit another round on the sleeves.  I had the desire to see something FINISHED, so I started this little guy while dinner was baking and finished him today.  I love knitting, but crochet often calls me back.  Crochet just seems so quick to me and I can read a pattern effortlessly.  And the few times I made an error and had to rip back-- you just tug and one stitch at a time comes out and when you've "erased" the problem you just start up again.  So much easier than tinking away on a knitting project!  So thank you Lyon Brand Yarn for this free and cute project!

Daisy

Two at a Time... Sleeves!

I'm making sleeves for my Alison Pullover.  After all the work on the body of a sweater, the sleeves seem like they should fly by, but I swear they take almost as long as the sweater body.  One thing that slows me down a bit is using the two at a time Magic Loop method.  I learned how to do this from this excellent post on Jimmy Beans Wool.  You have to keep going back and forth between two balls of yarn and readjust the sleeves on the cable.  The first couple of rows are hard as the knitting doesn't have a lot of weight and you have to be very careful as you pick up each sleeve that you don't turn them into mobius strips.  After a while, the rhythm starts to flow, but there's no getting around all that shifting on the needles and dropping and picking up a new yarn every twenty-some stitches.   The good thing is, though, you finish both sleeves at the same time!

While I'm talking about sleeves, here's my homemade hook on stitch counter.  It is a stitch counter that is supposed to go over the end of a knitting needle, only  I took an endpin (used to make dangle earrings) and beaded it so that the stitch counter fit between two largish beads.  I twisted the end into a loop and attached it to a removable stitch marker.  I keep moving it up the side of the first sleeve every time I do the increases so I don't forget to change the count.

Personal Design Challenges

I initially started designing lace shawls by taking Miriam Felton's amazing Lace Shawl Design Class on Craftsy.  I'm now working my way through several personal shawl design challenges to develop my skills:

1. Bottom up construction- DONE- Spring Chill
2. Top down construction- DONE- Vefr
3. Rectangular reversible- current project
4. Center panel triangular
5. Crescent shaped 
6. Rectangular with arms and symmetrical ends (inspired by this)
7. Cowl that also works as a poncho/shrug (inspired by this)
8. Shawl that alternates knit and crochet (inspired by this)

Emergency Knitting

It's a joke among my friends that I have "emergency knitting."  Some people keep jumper cables and first aid kits in their cars, I keep a knitting project.  (I keep those other things, too, and snacks for the kids, and spare shopping bags....)

My emergency knitting is a ball of Dishie or Sugar N Cream, a pair of size seven cheap bamboo knitting needles, and directions for a simple dishcloth pattern (which I have memorized by now so I'm branching out to some other simple patterns).  I don't care if it gets sand in it at the beach, or dirt on it in the woods, or food spilled on it at the park-- it's going to be a dishcloth and will see worse!

See that extra yarn over in the middle?  The ladle doesn't care!

This is what I pick up when I'm stuck somewhere without my knitting or my current project is too precious or picky to take with me into the wild outdoors.  Just important enough to do, but not important enough to worry if it gets lost or if I mess up a bit due to inattention.  A dishcloth with an extra yarnover will still do the dishes just as well!