Warty Bobbles

EZ's Phoney Seam

I find I am working from patterns (rather my own designs) this Fall – it is marvelously expedient (since someone else has worked out all the bugs!) and a good learning experience as I work through another knitter’s process.

 

Most especially Elizabeth Zimmermann’s process – which is the stuff of legends!  I have taken on her “Green Sweater” partially because I fell in love with it when I saw it on the  Brooklyn Tweed Blog and partially for the opportunity to work through her clever and efficient construction techniques.  It kind of goes:  knit, knit, knit…(for, say 6 or 8” of fabric), then do something kind of exciting, then knit, knit, knit….

 

I had gotten through the “knit, knit, knit 8 inches” part of the body a couple of weeks ago and had put the sweater on hold until I had some good quiet “brain” time for the “kind of exciting” part.  Last night, I had some time (and some brain!), so I tackled the set-up for the sleeves.

 

It involved putting 31 stitches (for each sleeve) from the lower body on waste yarn and  casting on 5 steek stitches which will stand in their place while I continue knitting the upper portion of the  body in the round (knit, knit, knit!) – the steek sections will eventually be cut open (yikes!) and, voilá, sleeve holes! 

 

The really interesting part of this procedure was putting in EZ’s Phoney Seam which adds the look and support of side seams to a garment worked in the round.  To do so, one drops the side-center stitch all the way down to the hem and then hooks up the stitches as one would for any dropped stitch – except that one alternates hooking one ladder bar and two ladder bars (at once – kind a vertical ‘knit 2 together”).

 

Here are some (very poor – sorry!) photos to illustrate (yeah, I took the photos at about 10:30 last night while I was in process and I should have tinkered with the lighting, I know – what will Sarah say?!):

All went smoothly – except for the ten minute of bewilderment and slight panic when I thought I had 16 extra stitches (I didn’t, as it turned out – just a counting oversight!).  Now, I (you guessed it!) knit, knit, knit…again.

 

 

A Time To Let An Error Stand

A couple of days ago, I found an error in the “cable” section of my Cape Christmas project.  The mistake was about 20 rows down and consisted of a traveling (crossed) stitch done on the wrong row. It looked like a hiccup in the diagonal line.  It was a subtle, but unmistakable mistake.  And I immediately resolved to fix it by “dropping down” and uncrossing the wrongly crossed stitches and crossing the two that were supposed to cross.  But I did not have the time to do surgery (as I call it) that evening, so I set it aside.

Two days later -- on a sunny afternoon with plenty of time to work -- I sat down with crochet hook and those little plastic safety-pin-type markers that I love and Cape Christmas.  I started dropping the stitches in the two columns involved in the error.  About 8 rows down, I stopped dumb-struck.  I had been approaching the problem as if it were a cable, but it was, of course, not a true cable, but a pattern of traveling stitches:  1^st stitch crossed with 2^nd stitch on row 1, 2^nd st. crossed with 3^rd st. on row 3, etc. over 5 sts.  So, all 5 columns of stitches were connected to each other. 

I would have to drop the stitches of all 5 columns for some 20 rows to get to the stitches that needed to be fixed!

I am gutsy.  But I am not that gutsy.  If I had only had 2 stitch columns to deal with, I could have used the other 3 columns to orient myself and make sure I was staying in pattern.  With all five columns gone, I would surely make mistakes not unlike the one I was hoping to correct.  And it would be a big, loose stringy mess.  5 columns of stitches for 20+ rows?  Over a hundred stitches to be re-done (with all those crossed stitches!).  Even if, after several (probably many!) attempts and pullings-out and re-doings, I got it all correct, I suspect the yarn (merino and silk)would have suffered and probably the stitches would be wonky and uneven. 

So, I am going to do that which I seldom do.  I am going to knowingly let the error stand –even though it is, theoretically, correctable.  I have assured myself that I am not being cowardly or lazy.  That a little humility is a good thing.  That I am not perfect, that my knitting is not perfect, that Cape Christmas is not going to be perfect – and am I pretty nearly okay with all of that non-perfection. 

And what is the Life Lesson I can take from this situation?  What we always tell our students:  to look at the work carefully and frequently!  If I had noticed the mistake after only a few rows, I could have fixed it by dropping a manageable number of stitches.  Now, it is just too late (since I am unwilling to pull back thousands of stitches, hours and hours of work to correct this small error). 

So, lesson (re)learned.  Time to move on.  Cape Christmas looks to be a gorgeous piece.

Some Thoughts On Swatching

I have been doing a lot of swatching lately – for Cape Christmas and the One-Needle Q’mitl (which will get a less Seussical name when we get around to thinking sensibly).  And I have a few thoughts I would like to share about swatching – whether in a design process or working from a printed pattern.

 

1)      Swatching for Numbers

The usual focus, of course.  Getting gauge. Very important – whether you are following a written pattern or designing one.  How many stitches/rows per inch, what needle size to use.  Basic.

 

2)      Swatching for Yarn

I think of this part as the yarn’s audition.  It is also my opportunity to learn what will bring out the yarn’s special characteristics.  Bumpy stitches (like seed stitch), smooth stockinette, ribbings, lace, cables – all play up or play down a yarn’s coloring and textures in different ways.  How does the yarn look and feel at the required gauge?  It might be too drapey or too firm.  In which case, I would change the yarn or change the gauge (the second option being more practical when I am designing a piece than when I am working from a printed pattern because that would involve changing a lot of numbers that someone else has already figured out for me!).  Sometimes adding a second yarn (held with the first yarn) or changing the stitch pattern will improve the situation. 

 

3)      Swatching for Stitch Pattern

Frequently a pattern will give the gauge in the stitch pattern to be used in the piece.  Sometimes it gives the numbers for stockinette (as being a reliable stitch to measure), but I try out the stitch pattern in the yarn I plan to use anyway.  I want to see how the yarn and stitch work together.  Of course, when I am designing a piece, I will try a number of stitch patterns.  When  I use several different ones in a piece,  I choose stitch patterns that have similar lines (straight lines, scallops, circles or triangles, etc.) and I like to see them worked up next to each other.  I may play around with needle sizes, too, as the gauge affects the stitch pattern’s appearance.  Sometimes a stitch pattern will really surprise me when I swatch it up – it may be huge! or kind of mushy and difficult to see or it may be a lot more stunning in person than on the printed page.

 

4)      Swatching for Color

Seems kind of obvious – and green yarn will knit up green whatever stitch you choose, of course.  But swatching will give you a sense of how a variegated yarn will look in your project (bearing in mind that it will play our differently on rows of, say, 90 sts than it will on swatch-sized rows of 20 sts or so).  And when working with several colors of yarn (in Fair Isle or slipped stitch patterns, for example), you can play around with the color arrangement in a swatch to get the effect you want.  I also like to know that the lace or cable pattern I plan to do will show up clearly – esp. in a variegated or dark colored yarn.

 

5)      Swatching for Procedure

Practicing a difficult stitch (like nupps!).  Determining what kind of needles to use (metal or wood, circular or straight, etc.).  Re-writing a chart so that the symbols make sense to me.  Deciding to use a fish-hook style rather than a straight cable needle (or vice versa).  There are ways to smooth out the process and swatching helps me make these decisions.

 

Finally, I try to regard the first 2-4 inches of my actual knitted piece as a swatch – because even with all that useful information you gleaned from swatching you just don’t know how it is going to play out on the full rows of stitches until you are, so to speak, in the game.  (yeah, you are not going to want to pull back several hours of work, but better that than continuing on a doomed road – I usually get someone else to pull it out for me while I sulk in another room, but I am always glad I made the course corrections early on).

 

 

These are mostly problem-solving (and problem-avoiding!) techniques.  Swatching is also the greatest tool for creativity in knitting – a chance to play around with any “what if” ideas that catch your fancy.  Unusual color combinations, wacky gauge ratios (like wispy mohair worked in cables on size 15 needles….), intriguing stitch pattern combinations. 

 

So, swatch on! 

"Clever Girl!"

I think knitting attracts clever people (Think of all the yarn shops with clever names – nice teeth-gritting puns like “Commuknity” and “Ewe’ll Love It” and “Sutter’s Gold ‘N Fleece”) because there are so many clever methods in knitting.  Last night, Sarah and I were teaching I-Cord and twisted stitch cables – and everyone was so pleased with themselves!   I felt like I was teaching magic tricks.

 

And speaking of clever techniques, I am currently enamored of slip-stitch knitting.  Such a slick basic technique and such sophisticated results. 

 

Fun to do, too, since all that slipping makes the rows go quickly (making up for the fact that the scrunched-up nature of the knitted fabric means knitting more rows).  It is usually easy to see what you should be doing, too.  I think it is an Old School technique that is resurging.  Lots of possibilities! 

 

On a more subtle note – though still in the realm of “clever,” I think – I was working up a stockinette swatch for the shoulder section of a rather heavy sweater and was concerned that the piece might be too stretchy.  So, I decided to try twisted stockinette stitches (twisting both the knits and purls by working through the back loop) and came up with this:

 

 

(The top portion of the swatch is the twisted stockinette and the lower section is the regular stockinette)

 

Wow!  Not only did the twisted stockinette make a firmer fabric, but it made the alpaca-silk-wool yarn (Knit Picks “Andean Silk”) glow!  I was pretty jazzed!  I called over to George “hey, do you want to see me doing something clever?”  And he kind of sauntered over – and I realized that people are quicker to come if you are offering to show them something you are doing stupidly….human nature!

 

The twisted stockinette biases strongly – but the shoulder section is only two inches high, so I am not concerned (though if something goes awry, I will be sure report – and George will be the first to know if I am doing something stupid after all!).

Dramatic Episode

The likelihood of my knitting memoirs being made into a major motion picture (at least of the Steven Spielberg variety) is pretty small.  Not for lack of plot twists or an engaging cast or characters, but because the most dramatic episodes are based on arithmetic.

 

Last night, for instance, as I was picking-up-and-knitting 372 stitches with DK wool along an i-cord border of Dune (lovely sparkly, slubby stuff wrapped with furry mohair), the suspense was so high that I could practically hear drumbeats escalating and the long drawn-out note of a single violin:

 

The i-cord (length-wise) measured out to 4 sts/inch.  The DK wool gauged out to 6 sts/inch.  So, in theory, by picking-up-and-knitting 6 sts of the wool over 4 sts of the Dune, I would be able to make the wool knitting grow smoothly out of the length of Dune i-cord.  In theory.   I marked off the i-cord into quarters (so I could check my progress) – with 372 stitches as my goal for the 62” i-cord (6 x 62 = 372), I would be able to see if I had attained 93 sts in each quarter (372 ÷ 4 = 93).  (maybe Spielberg could insert a dinosaur or something here)

 

I started picking-up-and-knitting and quickly discovered that Dune fights back.  Getting that clinging bit of DK wool through each sparkly, slubby, furry stitch was a battle (cue the war drums and bagpipes).  I had decided on yarn-overs for the 2 additional stitches I needed for every 4 i-cord stitches, figuring the tiny eyelet would get lost in the Dune (maybe a highly magnified shot of the Dune jungle here).  When I reached the first marker, I counted stitches and – DRAT – found I had 20 too many! 

 

Well, I could drop some yarn overs on the way back.  So, I re-calculated and decided to work 5 DK wool stitches for every 4 of Dune i-cord. 

Battle, battle, battle across the next quarter of i-cord.  Reach the next marker – YES!  Count the stitches – DRAT!  Ten stitches too few.  What to do?  Would 11 stitches over 8 work?  Seventeen over 12?  What with struggling to make the stitches and to keep working along the i-cord in a straight line, I could hardly count to 4 reliably.  So, I decided to persevere with the 5 to 4 ratio, figuring I could fix it on the return row.

 

So, I continued on for the second half of the i-cord (Spielberg would probably want to bring back the dinosaur here – or maybe several – as this part is kind of slow).   I reached the end – HUZZAH!  And counted my stitches and, as predicted, I had 10 too few in each of 3 quarters and 20 too many in the first quarter.  For a net difference of only 10 stitches – not too bad over nearly 400.

 

BUT!  If I had left it at that and knit merrily along with only slightly too many stitches, I would have had everything stretched out too thin over ¾ of the piece and rather a heavy mess over the quarter that had way more than its share of stitches!

BUT!  Disaster was averted (cue the screaming brakes) as, purling back on the next row, I evenly increased 10 stitches in each of the 3 thin quarters and evenly dropped 20 yarn-overs in the heavy first quarter.

 

Flash to the Final Count which shows 372 tidy little DK wool stitches growing blissfully out of the lovely, sparkly, slubby, furry i-cord.  And they all lived happily ever after. Annnnnd: Scene.

The Knit Stitch Is An Elegant Thing!

Teaching our knitting class has made me really think about the whole knitting process, the knit and purl stitches, the knitted fabric.  I think it was the “right side and wrong side” discussions that led me to the existential-esque questions that, in turn, made me really see the humble yet elegant loop that is the knit stitch for the first time.

It was Monday evening (the evening after knitting class) that I was sitting up in bed knitting away on the Gull Pi Shawl pondering the day’s events (including the “right and wrong side” discussion) that I suddenly thought: what is the purl bump?  I knew what it looked like, of course, but I did not know what it was (I have used more italics tonight than I have all month – but I digress).  So, as I had the knit side of the shawl facing me, I carefully turned the work over and peered at a purl bump and…

It was the top of the knit stitch loop bent gracefully backward and tucked under the needle!

The lower portion of the knit stitch (or the purl stitch!) shows as a V and the top part is the top curve bent under and behind the needle (or ducking slightly forward!).  The only difference between a knit stitch and a purl stitch is the nod forward or backward!

I was floored!

A Versatile Border Technique

I have a weakness for complicated knitting.  I find stitch patterns exciting and I love combining different yarns in the same piece – happily working several panels of lace, cables, textures all at once with 2, 3, 4 balls of yarn hanging off my needles.

Sometimes, though, I want to use a bulky yarn next to a dk weight yarn – or some such combination – and the two will not work up well on the same size needles.  I have resorted to putting one yarn on a larger double-pointed needle while knitting the other yarn on a smaller straight needle.  It is a little awkward and sometimes the stitches vary more in height (a super-bulky yarn knit on the larger needle towering above demure lace-weight stitches worked on a finer needle) than I would like.

All in the past!

I searched through  The Principles of Knitting (June Hemmons Hiatt)   and found an add-a-border technique that allows me to execute one panel in a thin yarn and then work up a second panel in a heavier yarn (on a larger needle) while simultaneously cozy-ing the two together as if they had been intarsia-ed.  In the immortal words of Queen:  It’s a kind of magic!

One knits up the first panel with a slipped-stitch right selvedge.  Then, one picks-up-and-knits the right selvedge edge with a long double-pointed needle (or a couple of them if necessary). 

Then, with these nice live stitches all along the selvedge of the finished panel, one knits the second panel and joins it to the finished panel on each right-side row by working a slip-knit-passover decrease utilizing the last stitch of the row just knit and the live stitch on the dpn.  Turn and work back along the wrong side.  Turn back and work the right side, perform the little do-si-do move with the next stitch on the dpn and so on.

I can pick up every other slipped stitch (or 2 out of 3) to even things out as the stitches worked on the finer needle are probably shorter than the bulky stitches.  

 

It looks a bit surreal at first – sort of a Salvadore Dali kind of knitting, but it is not at all awkward to do.  The dpn just sort of hangs in back of your work until it is time to join stitches.  Now that I have worked half the selvedge stitches – and there is room on the dpn for my rather narrow 2^nd panel – I can just skip the other straight needle and work my new stitches onto the dpn.

 

In addition to handling the bulky/dk issue I faced, this technique could be used to add width to a piece of knitting or to make invisible side seams or to attach an edging.  It is a great “afterthought” technique.  If you have not done a slipped stitch selvedge, you can use a crochet hook to pick up the stitches on every other row (each join occurs on the right side row only – so each join represents 2 rows.

And then there are even more possibilities if I should want to work perpendicularly – i.e. with normal live stitches on a straight needle, I could start working a 2^nd panel across the top at right angles to my work…. 

It is starting to get a little trippy, so I will stop here.

Just a little Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-Di-Ay for the very cool Border Technique that is making my complicated knitting a little simpler!

Bead Minion Needed

I need a Bead Minion.  It would be kind of like the Yarn Ball Minion I would like to have sitting at my feet untangling the yarn when I knit with multiple balls, except the Bead Minion would slide beads up and down as needed (or not needed ).

I am knitting my Columned Beaded Flagon Stitch with beads strung on the yarn.  There are other ways of knitting with beads, but this one suited my purpose best.  I strung the beads before starting to knit with the yarn (a mauve DK weight wool – the beads are gray and kind of look like beach glass).  And since I couldn’t/didn’t-want-to calculate the exact number of beads I would need, I estimated:  a lot.  Then, added some more – since I apparently thought it would be less trouble to manipulate 20 or 50 extra beads than to break the yarn and string on more if I ran short.  (It is not that this is a first-time foray into beaded knitting – this is just my established method)  

So now, I knit along -- sliding up the require 3 to 6 beads every other row – until I come to the snake of strung beads.  I stop, shove them down a couple of feet, maybe a yard or so if I feel particularly motivated, and start up again.  It seems like just when I hit my stride with the knitting and the pattern is beginning to feel like a dance, I run smack into the snake of beads.  Stop knitting, sigh, shove, shove, shove.  

It is kind of like a game of Red Light, Green Light.  I turn my attention from the strung beads and they promptly rappel up the yarn to my needles.  (I am aware that “rappelling” is a downward movement, but that just shows how sneaky those little beasties are)

So, I would love to have a Bead Minion to keep sliding the beads down the yarn as I knit. 

It runs as a little song in my head (to the tune of “I’m A Girl-Watcher”):

I need a Bead Minion, I need a Bead Minion, da da da da da….

I intended to post a picture of my Columned Beaded Flagon Stitch, but Sarah is down with the flu and I can’t quite manage the technology on my own.  So, maybe tomorrow.

A Design Elephant

I am still not doing much knitting – a few rows here and there.  I did sit down to knit after I came home from Bible Study on Tuesday.  Due to unpredictable and random events, there was no one in the house when I arrived.  Just the 6 cats.  I admit that it felt a little creepy.  But, determined to take advantage of the quiet, I sat down to knit.  Got up to shut the kitten in my bedroom and sat down to knit.  Got up to answer the phone and sat down to knit.  Got up to put a load of towels in the washer and sat down to knit.

Anyhow, I did finally start to knit – and discovered that my pattern was off – that is, I had been doing it wrong for 6 rows or so.  Nuts!  Except I did not say “Nuts.” 

It was a matter of not off-setting an off-set pattern.  So, instead of the traditional every-other-sort-of-thing, I had a column of every-other-ness beside another column of every-other-ness.  Since this pattern (The Flagon Stitch done with beads, for the record) constitutes the right side of the piece while a lace pattern (which was going along swimmingly with no errors, thank you very much) makes up the left side, I really-really did not want to rip back and start all over.  So, a Design Elephant was born.

A Design Elephant is an error (a large and unmistakable deviation) that I decide I can live with by treating it as a part of the design.  I coined this phrase at Stitches West last year.  The instructor was explaining that something inadvertent can become a Design Element and I quipped up something about it sometimes being a Design Elephant – and the phrase stuck in my mind and has come up again more times than I would like to admit. 

I am actually pretty fond of Design Elephants. Come to think of it, I like them a lot! They make my knitted pieces so much more interesting.  And they force me to think outside the repeat-between-the-lines box. 

There is a line from an Ogden Nash poem that reads: Where there is a monster, there’s a miracle.  It is kind of like that – I space out a bit and suddenly Columned Beaded Flagon Stitch exists.  The creative process is pretty cool.

Lace: Hole-istic Knitting

Okay, that was a terrible pun. For some reason knitters seem unable to resist puns (books, shop names, yarn names, knitting classes). All the purl/pearl bits, the “yarns” (as in “tales”), the infinite use of the word “needle.” Sheep, wool – and then we get into stitch names!

But I really meant to write about lace knitting and lacy knitting – which, savvy knitters will tell you, means knitting an openwork pattern that has a plain knit or purl row between the complicated yarn-overing and knitting-2-togethering, etc. rows. True lace knitting has pattern stitches on all rows. I do not know what it is called if there is only an occasional plain row – in knitting there always seem to be some exceptions to the rules since knitters tend to be maniacally creative.

There is “Always slip stitches purl-wise -- unless the instructions say other-wise – except in SSK when you slip knit-wise,” for example.

But back to lace(y) knitting. I seem easily distracted today! Which means I should probably avoid lace(y) knitting. There is no forgiveness in lace(y) knitting. It is either right or it isn’t. Now, the degree of isn’tness the knitter can live with is purely a matter of personal choice and individual degree of maniacal correctness. I felt a particular lightness of heart the day I noticed an error in an extraordinarily gorgeous book of lace knitting (it was an extra row which made one line of the pink floating lozenges in the all-over pattern a teensy bit taller – and I am well aware that the fact that I remember these details demonstrates my personal degree of maniacal correctness).

So, when I find an error in my own lace(y) knitting, do I:
A) Stomp my foot and tear up a little
B) Stomp my foot and tear back a little
C) Stomp my foot, but decide I can live with the tares among the wheat, as it were
D) Stomp my foot and speak in puns

It depends. If the error detracts noticeably from the beauty of the piece (highly subjective criterion!), I will – but only if I think I can put things to rights without doing serious damage ( to the piece, my brain, my family life, etc.) and if I can do so without undoing 2 weeks of work. If not, I won’t. Imperfections are a hallmark of handwork – and artisans in several cultures intentionally include them in their work for spiritual reasons (taking maniacal correctness to a whole new level – go team!).

Which all goes to show that knitting helps me keep my perspective. (My family is probably laughing hysterically – maniacally, even, to the point of tears…)