The Doily Underground

The Knit-in-the-Dark/Bedside/Dishcloth Shawl

2011-01-19T13:13:00.006-07:00

I have this urge to write out some of my old patterns so I can find them in one place. Thus, this old pattern of mine for a simple triangular shawl. As far as I can tell, I first posted it to the knitted-lace list back in 1998, though it's possible it went to the old knitlist a few years before that. I've probably shared it around since then.

At the time, I needed some mindless stress relief. I had some yarn I didn't know what to do with -- maybe not quite enough for a sweater, but a pretty good pile in spite of that. I needed something soothing that could be knit in the dark if necessary. Something that could be knit while sitting with a sick relative, in a hospital, at an airport, at a boring meeting... Well, you get the idea.

Thus, the dishcloth shawl. It's not an original idea, of course. It's a very, very old concept. It is based on the classic garter-stitch dishcloth, except that one never decreases the triangle back down into a square (if you do, and you certainly can, you'll end up with a very nice square shawl). This plan for a simple triangular garter stitch shawl is published in many places, each time with a bit of a twist. One of the famous internet shawls of this type is the Truly Tasha shawl (also known as the Tasha Tudor shawl) by Nancy Bush, for example. My version of this shawl is as simple as I could make it, since I needed something as simple as possible.

I've knit many of these over the years. They're dull, which is absolutely soothing when the rest of your life is suffering from an excess of non-dullness. They're warm if you knit them from thick yarn, which I usually do.

The Dishcloth Shawl (also known as the knit-in-the-dark shawl or the bedside shawl)

Pick some likely yarn and needles. It's a shawl -- who cares about gauge? You can unravel and try again with a different yarn/needle combo after a few inches if you don't like your initial choice.

Cast on 5 stitches.

All rows: knit 2, yarnover, knit to end.

When the shawl is big enough, or you're almost out of yarn, or you're bored and can't stand it any longer, cast off.

That's it.

The only attention you need to pay to this shawl is that yarnover for the third stitch of the row. After that, you can zone out for the rest of the row. If you have enough attention to spare, you can double-check at the end of the row to make sure you're knitting into a yarnover in the third stitch from the end. If it's missing, create it on the fly by picking up the running thread between the second and third stitches and knitting that. If you miss a few yarnovers here and there, no one will notice.

I usually slip the first stitch of each row for my selvedge, but it's certainly not necessary if you don't want to.

What you end up with is a garter stitch triangle with an eyelet running up the two sides. It starts at the tip and gets bigger and bigger, deeper and wider, with each row. The first hundred or so rows go fairly quickly. After you get past about 200 rows, each row starts to seem endless. I usually call it quits well before 300 rows.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can do a row of *yo, k2tog* a few rows before you cast off in order to match the eyelets along the other sides. Or you can add fringe when you're done. Or you can add a lace edging. Or you can put in an interesting eyelet pattern as you knit the thing -- an occasional row of *yo, k2tog* would be both simple and lovely, for example. Or you can change yarns, knit colorful stripes, or anything else you can imagine.

Or you can simply knit, keeping your fingers busy while your mind is otherwise occupied. That's what I usually do.

I still have several of these around the house. The next time I drag out the camera, I'll take a photo to share.

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I've finished my Orenburg honeycomb lace scarf. I'll try to get a photo at some point. I've started some fingerless mitts for my offspring using a pattern in the Fall 2010 Knitscene. It's not the most clearly-written pattern in existence, but it is attractive enough to be worth reading between the lines. I'll post my thoughts if/when they get done.

The next lace project may be a lace scarf pattern from an old issue of Interweave Knits. I'd probably use the leftovers from that long-ago cable and lace rectangular stole I did. We shall see.

I'm also starting the dithering process on the next sweater. I'm thinking a gansey. But I often think that. I'm swatching some ideas with the yarn I'm thinking of using. The yarn is handspun, brown, somewhat fuzzy. So, if it becomes a gansey, the patterns must be simple enough to show up in a somewhat fuzzy yarn. I can still use a gansey construction even if I don't include fancy texture patterns. Garter and reverse stockinette both show up well.

A friend on a list mentioned the Elizabeth Zimmermann Adult Surprise Sweater. Hmmm.... I have a pile of yarn -- pencil roving, actually -- that might work for this. However, the yarn requirements are daunting. Do I really need 2000 yards? And, if so, do I have 2000 yards of anything? One of these years, I'd like to make one using EZ's method of using every little bit of odds and ends from the leftovers basket.

I could stand to start another dishcloth shawl. I should go stash-diving to see what I have that needs to get used up.

And that's enough dithering for me for one day!

Orenburg Honeycomb Lace Scarf

2011-01-16T09:45:00.007-07:00

I'm not quite finished with the scarf. It's longer than I am tall, but I still have half a skein of yarn left! Soon I'll call it quits anyway, then finish it. I'll give it a bit of blocking even though it looks quite good without any at all.

My inspiration for this was a pattern in the May/June 2010 issue of Piecework. The article is called, "An Orenburg Honeycomb Lace Scarf to Knit" by Galina Khmeleva.

She writes, "I discovered a lovely Honeycomb scarf for sale that a former student had knitted; I was so impressed with it that I purchased it for display purposes. The resulting demand for the written pattern for this scarf was enormous, so I immediately got to work to produce it."

The scarf in Piecework is more of a rectangular wrap than a scarf. Its finished dimensions are approximately 20" x 70", and then fringe is added to make it even longer! It is, of course, gorgeous. The pattern is pure Orenburg honeycomb stitch, as described in the article and in her books on Orenberg lace, with a border of garter stitch. It is made from a fine merino/silk laceweight yarn. The pattern is given in chart form only.

I wanted something a bit more humble. Thus, I went back to the basic version implied by Galin Khmeleva's words -- that image of the honeycomb lace scarf knit by a student trying to understand this basic motif of the Orenburg lace-knitting vocabulary.

Here is my version. As usual, I am rather vague about many of the details. My scarf is knit in the honeycomb pattern motif with a narrow border of garter stitch. I will provide the theory; you decide how to apply it to your yarn and your own personal scarf preferences.

My yarn is a very fuzzy mohair blend, 70% kid mohair and 30% acrylic. It runs 167 meters (183 yds) per 50 grams. It's about sock weight or slightly thicker for those of you who care about these things. By the time I give up, I'll have used about one and a half balls of yarn. My scarf will be about 7.5 to 8 inches wide and probably close to 6 feet long. The stitch pattern is remarkably open -- the scarf is more air than yarn! I love the fuzz of the mohair and how it looks with the pale aura of frizziness over the holes.

So, pick your yarn. Pick a needle size that's a few sizes larger than you would normally use for that weight of yarn. I won't tell you my needle size because I am a loose knitter and my needle choice won't necessarily be the same as yours. The first few inches of the scarf can serve as your gauge swatch. If your lace is too tight or too loose, if your scarf is too narrow or too wide, then unravel and start again.

I chose garter stitch for my border. I'm using 3 stitches on each side, and 6 rows (3 ridges) at the beginning and the end. You, of course, may make your border wider or narrower, or may choose seed stitch or something else besides garter stitch. For the selvedges, I am slipping the first stitch of each row as if to purl, with the yarn in front.

The openwork portion of the scarf consists of the Orenburg version of honeycomb lace. This is a garter-based lace stitch and looks pretty much the same on both sides. I've mostly seen it charted rather than written out. That's fine. When I started knitting it, though, I realized that the written version seems so much easier to follow than the charted version!

Orenburg honeycomb lace motif (over a multiple of four stitches)

rows 1 and 2: *k2, yo, k2tog*
rows 3 and 4: k4, *yo, k2tog, k2*

That's it! Rows 3 and 4 are just like 1 and 2, except that they are offset by 2 stitches. If you'd like, you can think of rows 3 and 4 as: k2, *k2, yo, k2tog*, k2. (I don't know if that helps you understand or just confuses you. If you're confused, simply forget I mentioned it, and just do the pattern above.)

If you can count to 4, you can knit this pattern. You do need to keep track of which row you are on, which is sometimes harder than you might think.

For your scarf, you will need a multiple of four stitches, plus the border stitches on each side. For my scarf, I chose 20 stitches for the center and 3 stitches on each side, for a total of 26 stitches. Hmmm, that means I'm getting about 4 stitches per inch before any blocking, not that it matters.

Orenburg Honeycomb Lace Scarf Pattern

Cast on 26 stitches. Knit 6 rows then start the pattern.

Rows 1 and 2: slip first stitch as if to purl with yarn in front, k2, *k2, yo, k2tog*, end k3.
Rows 3 and 4: slip first stitch as if to purl with yarn in front, k2, k4, *yo, k2tog, k2*, end k3.

When your scarf is long enough or you're just about out of yarn, k 6 rows and bind off. Block it if you'd like, then wear it.

I'll probably add a photo of the finished scarf after it's completed and blocked.

Another decade, another sweater

2011-01-10T10:39:00.003-07:00

Well, maybe not quite that bad. But I am not a very prolific sweater knitter.

This is the sweater I've been mumbling about for a while. I've done several rounds of rip-and-redo. Finally, I figured out exactly what I wanted to do. And then the knitting went smoothly.

The entire sweater is knit from spindle-spun yarn. I dyed the colored yarn; the gray and white are natural.

The body of the sweater is from a friend's Icelandic sheep. She had sent the fleece to a new processor and didn't like the results, so I ended up with it. It wasn't the easiest thing to spin. But it was fun anyway. The yarn is mostly bulky, thick and thin with slubs. I actually do like it a lot. It's white with some black hairs.

The rest of the sweater yarn is from commercial roving, though I'm not sure exactly what. Some of it was used two-stranded, since my normal spinning is quite a bit thinner than the Icelandic yarn is. It's from my Yarn Library, which is what I call all those small amounts of hand-spun and hand-dyed yarn I've accumulated over the years.

The yoke pattern is adapted from a pattern I found on the Istex website's free pattern page.

The sweater style is the typical Icelandic round-yoke pattern. I made it up as I went along, though it is mostly based on Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage system.

I finished it just in time for today's very cold weather. I'm wearing it now as I type this.

I think I might have enough of the Icelandic left for a second sweater, especially if I add even more color-patterning. This was fun to knit and I like the results, so.... Check back in a few years to see if it ever happens. I also have a couple of other batches of yarn in quantities sufficient for a sweater.

In the last post, so many months ago, I wrote about Opal socks I was starting to knit. Here's a photo of what they looked like back then. As you can see, it's a simple toe-knit plain sock.

The socks were finished soon after that post. I don't have a photo of the finished socks. Since then, I've knit a few other pairs. One sock was highly annoying. I knit it two-stranded. When it was done, I discovered that it was too tight! That's not very common for me. Usually, I know my gauge, I measure as I go, and I try on socks as I go. Oh, well. I unraveled it for future socks. Unraveling and re-winding a ball of yarn that has been knit two-stranded is Not Fun. But it is done.

My latest travel-knitting project is yet another scarf. It is based on a pattern from the May/June 2010 issue of Piecework by Galina Khmeleva. The original pattern is a very lovely and elegant wrap, a large rectangular scarf with fringe on both ends knit from laceweight merino/silk. Mine is a humble scarf knit in a thicker (and very fuzzy) mohair blend yarn. I took the honeycomb lace stitch pattern and went from there.

An open stitch pattern such as this really makes the yarn go a long way! The scarf is getting longer and longer and longer. I still have plenty of yarn left. Soon I will decide that it is Long Enough and that will be that. I'm not sure what I'll do with the leftover mohair. Will there be enough left for a cowl or neck-warmer? I can combine it with the leftover mohair from the other mohair scarf I did, the dark blue one with a cable and lace design.

The photo below is a close-up of the lace pattern. It's garter-based. It's very easy to knit -- two rows of one kind of knitting followed by two rows of another. The only stitches are knit, yarnover, and knit two together. The lace is quite open with no blocking whatsoever. There is a slight bias, though. I'll probably give it the usual minor wet-blocking treatment after it's done.

I might write out the pattern for others to use. If you like it, I urge you to check out Piecework. Galina Khmeleva has been publishing beautiful patterns there for a while.

There's been more knitting and spinning and crocheting and what-not since my last post. But it's all pretty boring, nothing worth going into unless/until I have photos. I don't even have any good doily-knitting photos to share.

I'm not sure what I'll be making next. Hats. Mittens. Scarves. Shawls. Another sweater, perhaps. Maybe a doily. In other words, the usual.

Still No Photos

2010-04-27T10:57:00.003-06:00

Still no photos.

1. I finished the giant granny square afghan mentioned in a previous post. And then I crocheted yet another. I think I'm done for the moment. I do like this style of lap blanket (or whatever you call it). It's good travel knitting, it's nicely mindless, and the results are pleasant. After three of them in a row, though, I'm taking a break.

2. The Opal socks mentioned in a previous post are almost done. These are what I use as travel knitting in places where dropped dpns can be easily retrieved. I have a couple of inches to go on the second sock, and then it's on to the next pair. I like these. The pattern on the yarn consists of narrow stripes in three different colors, separated by stripes with a speckled pattern.

I have whittled down the self-patterned yarn stash, finally. So, soon I get to decide whether to do another single-strand pair of socks, or if I should make some two-stranded socks. It might be heresy to some, but I actually prefer wearing the thicker socks. Most of the sock yarn I have left is either a single color, or consists of harmoniously-colored stripe patterns and thus could easily be knit double-stranded.

3. The Ashland Bay mystery roving I referred to in a previous post turned out to have something very, very slippery in it. I am spinning it up and doing a lot of cussing. I don't have a lot of experience with spinning slippery fibers on a wheel. It doesn't help that my brake band decided to be annoying. It either doesn't pull in at all, or it yanks the yarn out of my hand. I did some cleaning, adjusting, changing brake bands, etc., and it has helped somewhat.

The yarn has a nice sheen to it. I'm sure I'll like it just fine after it's done.

I'm also spindle-spinning various blobs of dyed roving whenever I'm in the mood. The blobs are all about 1-2 ounces each, a good size for spindle projects. I'm being very, very careful to wind the yarn on the spindle the correct way.

4. Next up has been a lot of little projects -- hats, mittens, scarves, etc. No doilies, alas. Nor have I finished my sweater yet. I did a bit of braiding and wove some narrow bands. I've also been starting to catch up on the sewing backlog.

My current travel knitting project is a plain black hat. It will be finished today or tomorrow. Sure, it's fairly nondescript, but that's by request. The recipient will like it.

5. I'll need a new semi-large travel project soon. Perhaps a lace shawl, quite possibly from handspun...

Important Reminder...

2010-01-26T11:10:00.004-07:00

...to myself.

When you are using a spindle, and you notice that you are winding the spun yarn on the spindle in the wrong direction, you should stop immediately and fix it.

Yes, it's a hassle to unwind a few dozen yards of yarn and then rewind it again, but it's far less of a hassle than it is to deal with the irritations that occur by winding the yarn on the wrong way for the entire batch of yarn.

Ugh.

Hassle 1: the yarn frequently flipping off of the hook so that the spindle drops to the ground and a bunch of already-spun yarn tries to escape, letting its twist run up into the half-spun yarn to the detriment of both.

Hassle 2: the yarn sliding around on the spindle as it spins, causing the spindle to lurch around at unexpected moments and also causing the already wound-on yarn to unwind and try to ply back on itself instead of behaving like a nice, well-behaved single strand of yarn.

Hassle 3: spending so much time dealing with 1 and 2 that one does not do a good job of spinning, both because I'm managing already-spun yarn instead of drafting roving, and because the whole thing is so annoying that I want to get done as quickly as possible.

This batch of yarn will have one ply that is not as consistent as I'd like. It will have thick and thin spots, sections that are underspun or overspun, and so on.

I'm spinning up a blob of teal roving, dyed by me. It is from some old Romney roving, originally mostly white with streaks of gray. It's slightly compacted (from before it was dyed). That's part of why I'm doing it on the spindle. I can spend a bit more time dealing with imperfect roving. It's also a very good quantity of roving for a spindle, since my spindle holds less yarn than the spinning wheel bobbins.

I'm sure the yarn will end up OK in spite of it all. Plying and setting the twist balance out some of the flaws. Knitting the yarn hides most of the rest.

But I re-learned a lesson the hard way. I haven't made that mistake for a long, long time. And I'm now quite sure I won't make it again for an even longer time.

What is the right direction? For me, it's the direction I'm spinning. I twirl the spindle the same way for spinning and for winding on the yarn. If you do it differently, more power to you.

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Whenever I get around to downloading photos from the camera, I'll put a few up on the blog. The photos include the last batch of spindle-spun yarn (red-orange), this batch (teal), the sock I'm knitting (Opal self-patterned sock yarn), and a few other odds and ends. By the time I actually deal with the photos, there might even be more.

Dithering

2010-01-14T14:17:00.003-07:00

Here are a few photos. The first is a close-up of the blue mohair scarf. I think you can see how there are cables on one side (the bottom half), and the lace panels on the other (the top half).

This other photo is of one of the hats I knit last year. I grabbed some oddballs from the stash, double-stranded them, and started knitting. When Color A ran out, I doubled Color B and knit until the yarn was pretty much gone. It's thick, warm, fuzzy, and very red and orange. I am happy to have gotten the yarn out of my stash.

That's it for photos.

I've made rather a lot of progress on the long-stalled sweater. No photos of that, though. I've finished the lower body and both sleeves. Now it's time to unite them all and do the upper body.

Here's where the dithering comes in. What kind of upper body? The last sweater I did from handspun was a raglan style. While it's very nice, and I always enjoy doing raglans, perhaps I should do something different this time.

I'm dithering between a saddle shoulder or hybrid saddle shoulder (either from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Workshop or Priscilla Gibson-Roberts Knitting in the Old Way), or perhaps a round yoke. If it's a round yoke, chances are I'll put in some nice color patterns. I've been looking around for interesting color patterns to use. I certainly have plenty of small quantities of handspun that would be perfect for this!

That's the excitement for the day. Everything else is progressing in a calm and placid manner -- socks, afghan, spinning projects, and so on.

Now you understand why I haven't been updating the blog all that much.

Other exciting ditherings are about the next sweater project. I have a couple of problems. One, I have a lot of smallish batches of yarn, and two, I am very neurotic about running out of yarn. Therefore, I am always convinced that my bigger piles of yarn are still not enough for a sweater. Of course, when I do knit the sweater, I often find that I have way more than enough. And then I have a smallish batch of yarn leftover, probably not quite enough for another sweater.

So... Do I take a chance on a smallish batch of yarn? Spin up another humongous batch that will be way too much for one sweater but possibly not enough for two? Plan on a mixed-color sweater, where the worries about Not Enough Yarn can be spread out over several batches of handspun?

You see the problem. It's good for a lot of dithering.

I have a batch of brown yarn that I'm pretty sure is enough for a sweater. Although it would be fun to turn it into a gansey, I think the yarn is too fuzzy to show off stitch patterns. I'd have to use something a bit more obvious, such as a wide rib or garter rib or moss stitch.

I also have a large batch of white yarn that I'm quite sure is enough. That would end up being knit into a top-down Aran-style sweater, drop shoulder with square-set sleeves, possibly also with saddle shoulders.

I think the white yarn I'm using now will have enough left over that I can use it as a major color in another Icelandic round-yoked style color-patterned sweater.

And so on.

Then I move on to dithering about hats and mittens. I won't bore you with that. Something should be cast on and started within a week or two. But for now, I'm dithering.

Boring Progress Report

2010-01-11T18:18:00.002-07:00

If I don't insist on including photos or interesting content, then maybe I can post more often.

Thus, a boring project report.

1. The blue mohair scarf is done. I used about one and a half 50g skeins of yarn (70% kid mohair, 30% acrylic, 167-ish meters per 50 gram skein). I could have kept going, but the scarf was plenty long enough, thank you. It wraps around my neck and hangs to a good length.

Pattern comments: This was a very pleasant little knit. I didn't block it all that hard, and so it's not all that wide. The cables aren't very obvious, but I think it does give the scarf a bit of structure, if that makes any sense. The scarf looks nice on both sides. It's warm and fuzzy and pretty. I'd make it again. It's quick and easy to knit, and it looks more elaborate than it is. It would make a nice gift if one was needed, especially if it's done in some kind of luxury yarn. I suppose kid mohair counts.

I found the specified bind-off to be too tight, at least for my knitting style. I redid it with a very loose regular bind-off.

Someone mentioned using this stitch pattern for a shrug. I think that would work great! The sleeves could be worked circularly, or they could be seamed after the shrug was done. You'd end up with something that looked good either way. Obviously, one would do more pattern repeats to make it wider.

For those who aren't reading all the archives, the basic pattern is by Charlotte Quiggle. It's in the Fall 2000 issue of Interweave Knits, and it's the second scarf in the article.

2. Another granny square afghan is underway. The first 5-ounce skein of acrylic yarn is used up, and I'm on the second (a solid-color 7-ounce skein). To make my life easy, I use roughly 3-4 skeins of yarn without worrying too much about the exact size or anything.

3. I've resumed work on a sweater. This one is from spindle-spun Icelandic wool, from a sheep raised by a friend. I'm doing it in the round, bottom up. So far, it's nothing fancy. I've finished the lower body. I need to do the sleeves. Then it will all get joined together as I decide how to do the upper body. Some of that will depend on how much yarn I have left at that point. I might need to add some color patterns to the yoke.

4. Spinning is occurring. I plied a couple of bobbins of brown wool. It ended up being 650-700 yards of 2-ply, about 4-5 ounces. That's a depressing quantity of singles. Well, not too depressing. The yarn is pretty even if it's taking longer to spin than I had initially expected.

There's a lot more of this stuff left. It will eventually become a sweater or two.

But since I'm not in the mood to spin more of this just now, I need to decide what to spin next. The two main candidates are each 8-ounce blobs of roving. One is some kind of Ashland Bay multi-colored stuff in dark shades. Dunno what the fiber content is, but it's probably mostly wool. The other is an old Mountain Colors handpainted targhee roving in soft shades of green and brown. What will I do with the resulting yarn? I haven't a clue!

5. Spindle-spinning is occurring. The latest batch is some semi-compacted mostly-Romney. The roving was never all that wonderful. However, it was a nice shade of pale gray with darker gray streaks. It ended up getting dunked in a dye pot a few years ago at a get-together with like-minded friends. I've slowly been spinning up all the dyed blobs. They're all in the 1-4 ounce range, a good amount for spindle-spinning. This particular blob is a bright orange-y red. I strip it lengthwise into a bunch of skinny little strips, then open it up a bit with my fingers to make it easier to draft. Color variations end up getting spread out throughout the batch of yarn.

A lot of these blobs have ended up getting turned into the quickie hats I've been cranking out over the past year.

6. Next sock is on the needles. It's a toe-up plain sock, done in an old Opal self-patterned sock yarn.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm tired of typing now.

A brief post about Lucets

2010-01-06T10:55:00.002-07:00

One of the things I did last year was playing on the lucet.

What is a lucet, you may ask. It's a fork-like tool that is used to make long cords. As far as I can tell, it makes a 2-stitch I-cord. If you want to see what it looks like and how to use it, do a quick internet search.

Making a cord with the lucet is really, really fast. It's also quite portable, useful for idle moments, and good for attracting attention when you're out in public.

"Here!" I say. "Try it! It's easy, see?"

Then comes the part where someone asks what you're going to do with a zillion yards of cord.

I don't know. But I'm thinking it would work as the core for some coiled baskets.

The Annual Blog Post

2009-12-31T13:58:00.002-07:00

Betcha thought this blog was dead forever, huh?

Nope. It's moribund but not dead.

Here's a post just to have one for 2009.

What did I do this year? Mostly not fiber things, unfortunately. Most of my knitting and crocheting was of small stuff, quickly done, possibly given away. I made hats, socks, little crochet doilies, small scarves, some braids, many skeins of handspun yarn, a bit of inkle weaving... You get the idea. I didn't take or save photos of most of them.

Here are two photos I took today, just so I'd have something to show off.

This first one is my current travel-knitting project. It's another scarf. I bought a few balls of mohair at a local yarn shop. It wasn't enough to do much of anything with, so a lacy scarf seemed like a fine idea. To make it nicely mindless, I went with an existing pattern. I chose a reversible scarf pattern by Charlotte Quiggle from an old issue of Interweave Knits (Fall 2000).

It's hard to see in the photo above, but there are three cables separated by two lace panels, all with a garter stitch border. The lace panels are simple eyelets on a field of purl stitches. And that makes it reversible, since the non-cable side looks like two columns of eyelets separated by purl ribs. I show both sides in the above photo.

The yarn behaves very well for doing cables without a cable needle. Each set of pattern repeats (6 rows) takes only a few minutes. One 50g skein, about 180 meters, did about 45-46 pattern repeats, long enough for a short scarf. This is going to be a very, very long scarf unless I stop the scarf before I run out of yarn.

I definitely like the pattern. It works quite nicely with the yarn/needle combo I chose. I have another couple of balls of this yarn in a different color. It might become the same thing. Or it might not.

Here is a crochet project. It's exactly what it looks like -- a large granny square. It's big enough to be a small lap afghan or baby blanket. It's made from glorious washable Red Heart, two 7oz skeins of brown and two 5oz. skeins of variegated camo colors.

I started with the standard granny square and kept going. When I was near the end of the last skein (and thoroughly sick of the endless rows), I added a small edging and stopped.

I don't think I need to give a pattern. Look up granny squares and you'll see what to do. But what the heck, here it is.

One Big Square (crocheted granny square afghan/blanket)

Get a bunch of yarn and a likely-looking crochet hook.

Chain 5 and join in a circle.

1. Chain 3 (which counts as the first dc), 2dc, ch 2, *3dc, ch 2* 3 more times, and join by doing a slip stitch into the 3rd chain of that first dc. You have four blocks of 3dcs with a ch 2 in each corner.

2. Slip stitch over to the first ch2. Then, ch 3 (counts as the first dc), 2dc, ch 2, 3dc, all into the ch2 space of the previous round. That's the two blocks in the corner. Ch1, then do it again, until you've done all four sides. After the last ch1, slip stitch into the third chain of that first ch3.

3. Slip stitch over to the first ch2. Then, ch 3 (counts as the first dc), 2dc, ch 2, 3dc, all into the ch2 space of the previous round. That's the two blocks in the corner. For each side, ch 1, 3dc into the ch1 space of the previous round, ch1. For each corner, 3dc, ch 2, 3dc. After the last ch1, join into the 3rd chain of the first dc of the corner.

4. For each round, continue in the same pattern. Slip stitch over to the ch2 of the corner. Each corner gets 3dc, ch 2, 3dc (although you ch 3 for the first stitch of the round). Each side gets ch1, 3dc, ch1, 3dc, ch1, etc., until you reach the next corner. There will be one more set of 3dcs per side for each round. So, round 1 has 1 block per side, round 2 has 2, round 3 has 3, and so on.

If the above seems confusing or has errors, it's because I'm not being all that careful about it. There are a zillion internet sites that discuss the venerable granny square. Go find another to see if it makes more sense to you. I might fix typos and obvious errors in the above, but don't bet on it being any time soon.

As you can see in the photo, I changed yarn colors whenever I felt like it. There really wasn't much of a plan. I did a few rounds in brown, then switched to camo until the first skein was gone. Then I finished the brown. After that, it was one more entire skein of camo, then the second skein of brown until the end.

When I got to the point where I was ready to scream, I finished. OK, I didn't have a ton of yarn left and didn't know if I could do another round and still have enough for an edging. Plus I was ready to scream.

My edging was suggested by some friends (thanks, gang!). It's very simple -- one round of single crochet, followed by one round of reverse single crochet. It gives a sturdy-looking finished edge. I like it a lot. Next time, I might turn over the afghan to do the edging on the reverse side. It will probably look just as good.

Some patterns call for 3 or 4 chains between the dc blocks at each corner, or 2 or 3 chains between the dc blocks on the sides. It really doesn't matter. Choose what you like. You don't even have to be consistent. I tried a bunch of variations on mine, and I can't tell at all which ones were used on which rows.

I'll be doing more of these things. The first couple of skeins' worth of blanket makes excellent travel crocheting. It's portable, mindless, not too bulky, and the rounds go quickly. After that, it gets rather tedious.

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So what's next? I certainly don't know! More socks, more scarves, more hats. We need some more mittens around here, so that's probably coming up soon on the agenda. Maybe finish a sweater and start another. Maybe do another shawl or two. You get the idea. One of these days I'll pick up one of my stalled doilies and finish it, and then I'll probably be off on another Doily Obsession. (There have been some great new republished pattern collections in the past year.)

In Crochet Land, a few more of the granny square afghans. More doilies. Maybe some other stuff such as some bags or scarves or shawls.

For spinning, continue on. I've been doing duty spinning, going through roving that isn't as fun to spin. I really ought to pick a few projects that are just plain fun.

Other fiber crafts: keep puttering along. This might be the year I really take up basket-weaving. Does that count as a fiber craft? I think so, but it might depend on the basket.

At the Other End of the Year

2008-12-29T14:11:00.007-07:00

This blog is not dead yet!

It's been a busy year, mostly involving non-fiber projects and commitments. And thus, the blog went quiet.

I don't think I knit any major doilies this year. I do have one or two that I'm in the middle of. I'm hoping they'll get finished next year.

I did knit some socks. Here are photos of a few of them. I'm trying to get through the self-patterned sock yarn stash. It would help if I'd stop buying self-patterned sock yarn. I keep getting tempted. I think I'm mostly going with simple stripes now instead of these more complicated patterns. That way, I can double-strand the sock yarn if I want to and still come out with nice socks.

I knit most of a sweater, then unraveled it and started over. I did some small projects that I can't remember right now -- a scarf or two, maybe some mittens and hats. I'm in the middle of several spinning projects. So it's been enjoyable, but not as productive as some years are. I didn't have much I felt like blogging about, so I didn't blog about it.

I did a fair amount of spindle spinning. I taught my oldest how to spindle spin in a ski lodge one cold winter afternoon.

I did do some crocheting. I decided that crocheting made for better travel projects than knitting. There's only one hook, inexpensive to replace. I didn't want the TSA to take a dislike to my expensive steel dpn's or circular needles, nor did I want to drop a think dpn on a crowded airplane or car. So I crocheted.

Crocheting doilies is different from knitting, but it's still fun. Here are a few. As you can tell, I haven't blocked any of them yet. The patterns are from online sources and from old pattern booklets. Dover has reprinted some, and I've collected some over the years. Not all were in English. Some were charted, some in text. As with knitted doilies, I'm OK either way.

As I wandered through the world of vintage crochet patterns, I wondered how and why the pineapple got to be such a popular motif. Does anyone know? It's fun and easy and attractive, but why this motif? And why is it called a pineapple?

I've also done some crocheting with yarn and not just thread this year. Right now, I'm in the middle of a simple square granny square afghan. One does a classic granny square. Change colors whenever you want. That's it. I will stop when I run out of ambition. Hopefully the thing will be big enough to be useful when I'm done.

Granny squares are also a very old motif. I was reading a book from the library which claimed that the pattern can be found in patterns from the mid-nineteenth century (1860's, specifically). I know that crocheting isn't all that old. So the granny square is quite a venerable pattern, not unlike some of our favorite lace knitting stitches.

I have some of Niebling's delta crochet patterns. No doubt I'll do some of them, too, as long as I'm crocheting. But first I have to recover from the most recent crocheted snowflake binge.

The Perfunctory January Post (with doily photo)

2008-01-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

As I wrote in my very first week of blogging, this blog would go dormant when Real Life got too busy.

It's been busy.

Some of the busy-ness may be of mild interest to others. However, I think I'm going to keep this blog mostly concentrated on my fiber interests for now.

I have finished one sock since the last post, and started on its mate. I don't have any photos of it yet. It looks like a sock, in case anyone was wondering. A photo of it in progress was in my last post to this blog.

I've also done a bit of spinning. Fuzzy brown singles on a bobbin do not make for interesting photos, even if I had any.

Here's a photo of a doily I knit a while back. It's a Marianne Kinzel design. I'm sure many of you will recognize it. It's the center portion of Kinzel's Sunray pattern, from the First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.

I was looking for a pattern that would look like a chrysanthemum, with several layers of overlapping petals. This is not it. However, it is very cute. It was fun enough to knit, tedious like many Kinzel patterns but not overwhelmingly so. (Unlike the Azalea doily, which is still sitting undone on my needles because it's so boring to knit.) I like the way Kinzel uses constant stitch counts in places to make the motifs spread out a bit as the doily grows.

This was also an experiment in seeing how the center would look as a standalone doily. I think it's a success. Dunno if I'll ever want to do the entire Sunray pattern. Probably not. If I'm going to do a large doily, it's going to have to be by some other designer. Kinzel patterns are lovely and straightforward to knit, but they tend to be rather tedious. I can take that for several dozen rounds of knitting, but not for several hundred.

I've thought about taking this center motif and modifying it a bit. The innermost part is very simple, just some eyelet rounds until the stitch count is where one wants it to be. The next part, the ladder motif, is also simple and easily modified. One can do fewer rounds or more, depending on how many stitches you have compared to the diameter.

The outer leaves are interesting. How many overlapping layers can one do? The leaves on each level could (and should) be taller and wider so accommodate the extra circumference. The leaves would have to grow even after the previous level had finished, in order to add more stitches to the overall pattern. The leaves could be changed to petals by changing the placement of the increases and possibly the decreases.

Someday, I'll write some thoughts about Marianne Kinzel's design methods. Her designs are an aesthetic success. And yet, they are simple in construction, especially compared to many of Niebling's more famous designs. Her lifetime output is not as prolific as his is, but she didn't publish any clunkers. Niebling's work is uneven, ranging from clumsy or undistinguished designs to the amazingly complex and gorgeous works we all drool after. It's possible that Kinzel published a lot more than I'm aware of, of course, and that some of it is clunky. However, even the simplest doilies of hers that I've seen are graceful and well-proportioned.

Snowflakes and Cameras

2007-12-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

Our household needs another camera. This post should have gone out over a week ago, except that I was waiting to get my hands on the camera and then transfer the photos over to the 'puter.

Not only do I need ready access to a camera, it would be nice if I could develop some skill in using it. Oh, well. That's another task for another time. I can see some improvement from when I started this blog. I suppose there is no Secret Photography Genius waiting to be unleashed here.

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Here at the Doily Underground, we do more than knit doilies. Sure, you all know that I knit other things. However, knitting is not the only thing I do. I spin. I dye. I braid. I weave (mostly narrow wares). Etc.

I also crochet. At this time of year, I crochet snowflakes. I have a serious weakness for crocheted snowflakes. Over the years, I've made dozens of them. I usually give them away, of course. Most people seem to think that they're rather cute, and not a sign that the maker is seriously unbalanced.

Scattered among this post are a few of the ones that are still around the house. I don't know if they'll stay here or if I'll pass them along to the next unsuspecting soul in need of a holiday gift.

My doily knitting habit provides the raw material for the snowflakes. I crochet them from the remnants of the threads I use for knitting doilies. The snowflakes don't take much thread.

I get the patterns from various sources. Some are off the internet. Some are from various publications one can find in the needlework stores, things from Dover or Leisure Arts and the like. One of my favorites is a German crochet magazine with a Christmas theme. Someone kindly gave that to me a few years ago. I try to restrain my buying habits, because how many snowflake patterns can one household absorb? (Let's not get into my knitted doily pattern collection.) I probably have a few hundred different snowflake patterns scattered among the various booklets, magazines, and internet print-outs.

Snowflakes are quick to crochet. They rarely take more than an hour per flake. The ones I do are usually less than 6 or 7 rounds. They're excellent stress relief. It's fun to have something to show for such a small amount of work.

After I've done a pile of them, it's time to get them ready for gift-giving. I prepare a blocking board, usually cardboard but sometimes styrofoam. I put plastic wrap on it so the snowflakes don't stick.

I prepare a blocking solution of Elmer's glue (or any white glue) heavily diluted with water. It doesn't need to be very gloopy. Then, I dump all the snowflakes in the solution until they're soggy.

I remove a snowflake, squeeze out most of the liquid, and carefully pin it out on the blocking board. I pin the points and anything else that needs pinning. I can manually stretch out some of the other parts of the snowflake if necessary.

After all the snowflakes are pinned out, I let them dry. (Big surprise, right?) After they're dry, I unpin them. I add a hook to a suitable point. The hook is often something simple like an opened-up paper clip. Then I give them away, except for the ones that hang around the house for a while.

I used to care passionately about realism in my snowflakes. They had to have exactly 6 points or they weren't worth making. Now I now longer care. They have to be fun to make. That's all.

What else do I crochet? Lace, of course. I like doilies, mostly the smaller ones. I don't like crocheted doilies as much as knitted doilies, but they're still fun to make when I'm in the mood. I include the amazing multi-motif crocheted tablecloth patterns in the doily category. I also have a weakness for lace edgings. In the yarn category, I find that crochet is good for afghans, cloths in general, some household items such as rugs or bags, and toys. I tend to prefer the elasticity of knitting for clothing items.

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A project report: Since my last post, all I've done is part of a sock.

It's another toe-up sock with a short-row heel. The yarn is a patterned yarn from Regia. It's very cheerful -- narrow stripes of red, blue, green, aqua, and black, separated by narrow bands of gray and white checks. It's very easy to count the rounds on this one!

I should probably do an afterthought heel to keep the color pattern looking good. Since these socks are for me, and since the sock-knitting is for stress relief, I'm not going to bother with that detail. I'd rather knit the sock in one piece, with only the beginning and ending yarn to darn in. A friend of mine was impressed at my ability to turn one long piece of string into such a complicated shape. I smile when I think about that. It is part of the magic of knitting.

I've also thought about doing a toe-up sock in the way that top-down mittens are made. I'd make the toe and foot from one end of the yarn ball. I'd make the heel from the other. I'd join the heel in as I got there, similar to the way that the thumb of a top-down mitten is joined to the hand. Maybe I'll do that for some future sock project. Or maybe not.

Since the photo was taken, I've done another few inches. I'm happily going 'round and 'round. I won't have to decide on the leg length for a while longer.

This morning, I managed to do another several rounds on my Icelandic yarn sweater. That had been waiting until I had time to ball up some skeins of yarn. I finally had the time to wind a few more balls, and thus I can continue for a while. This is the sweater of simple stockinette with a staghorn cable going up the middle of the front. I still haven't decided what the top part is going to be like. It might be a square-set drop-shoulder. It might be another raglan.

I'll try to take a photo of the sweater when I've done enough for it to look interesting.

Generic Ribbed Hat (pattern, sort of)

2007-12-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hats. I've been thinking about hats.

I won't bore you with all my musings just yet. However, I will note that they are excellent projects for using up small quantities of stash yarns, especially when you're not sure if you have quite enough for a pair (of socks, mittens, wristers, etc.). Hats make good travel knitting. They are fun to knit for quick gifts. And they are a classic for many of the charity-knitting projects out there.

Given that, I thought I'd share one of my standard no-pattern hats that I've been making lately. Some of them are photographed here.

I started making these hats because I had all these small skeins of handspun yarn in my stash. Many were dyeing experiments, or small quantities of variegated roving that had somehow made a home in my fiber stash. The handspun yarn batches were all roughly 2 ounces, give or take a bit. All were variegated, though most of the variegation was fairly subtle.

Hey, I like dyeing and spinning that kind of stuff. Only later do I wonder what to do with all the one-bobbin's worth of variegated yarn skeins that I end up with.

Anyway, I ended up knitting a bunch of hats. Since I wasn't in the mood for extensive planning and swatching, I made them simple.

Yes, this is a very basic ribbed hat. It requires no real swatching, just some vague idea of what your gauge might end up being. It's very elastic, and thus will fit a variety of head sizes. It's long enough to have a folded-up brim, which I find essential in a winter hat. The length of the brim doesn't really matter -- it depends entirely on how much yarn you end up using, plus the head size and preference of the wearer.

Given the flexibility of the pattern, it's a good one for charity knitting, and for stockpiling in case you unexpectedly need a hat for a gift or for a guest.

Generic Ribbed Hat

If you already have a good ribbed hat pattern, you probably won't be interested in this. If you don't, here's the way to do it. You don't need a pattern, just a basic template or recipe.

Pick some yarn. You'll need roughly 2 ounces. A little more is fine, a little less will work, too. Pick any kind of yarn you want -- solid, variegated, thick-and-thin, whatever. Feel free to strand two or more kinds of yarn together. I tend to do that for my thinner handspun, since I wanted these hats to be fairly quick knits. You can also change yarns every now and then if you like doing that sort of thing.

I have found that a single 50g ball of yarn may or may not be enough. It depends on the yardage, which of course depends on the yarn thickness. You may end up with a rather short hat.

Pick an appropriate circular needle. Have a rough idea of what your gauge is going to be. I usually go for worsted weight, more or less -- anything from Aran to DK weight, usually working up at 4.5 stitches per inch (for the Aran weight) to 5.5 stitches per inch (for the DK weight).

Cast on about 20" worth of stitches, rounded to a multiple of 4. Calculate this by using your gauge estimate; it may be anywhere from about 80 to 120 stitches unless you're working with fingering weight or finer yarn. When I cast on, I don't fret if I end up casting on a few more or less as long as I have a multiple of 4. Hats can vary in size from about 18" to 22", depending on the head size of the recipient. Anyway, these hats are stretchy.

Join the cast-on and start ribbing -- *k2, p2*, ad infinitum.

As the hat grows longer, you can measure your actual gauge and thus confirm that the hat will fit. If you're using 2 strands or variegated or textured yarn, you can decide if you like the fabric. If you don't like the fabric or you think the hat will be too small or too big, unravel and start over. It was a gauge swatch, no big deal. You should also confirm that you're making a tube. It's annoying to accidentally put a twist into your knitting, but definitely better to realize your mistake sooner rather than later.

Eventually, you will be near the end of your yarn, or perhaps your patience. It's time to decrease the top of the hat and finish it.

I do different kinds of decrease patterns, depending on how long the hat is and how much yarn I have left. If I'm low on yarn and the hat is fairly small, I do very few decrease rounds, as few as two or three. If the hat is longer and I have more yarn, I might stretch it out over 6-10 rounds.

The fastest decrease is to do a round of *k2tog, p2tog*, followed by a round of *ssk*, and then rounds of *k2tog* until you're down to 12 or fewer stitches. This will make a very gathered-looking top, but it fits well.

If you have a bit more yarn, do a round of *k2tog, p2tog*, followed by a round of *k1, p1*, then a round of *ssk*, then a plain round of knitting, then *k2tog* until you're down to the last few stitches. You can separate some or all of the *k2tog* rounds by a round of plain knitting if you prefer.

The longest method is to do a round of *k2, p2tog*, followed by a round (or rounds) of *k2, p1*. Then, do a round of *k2tog, p1* (or *ssk, p1*), followed by a round (or rounds) of *k1, p1*. Then, do a round of *ssk*, followed by a round or two of plain knitting. Finally, do rounds of *k2tog*, separated by plain rounds or not as you wish, until you're down to those last few stitches.

To finish off, run the yarn end through those last few stitches, pull snug, and hide all ends.

If you're the kind of person who likes pompoms or I-cord or tassels, by all means go ahead and add them to your hat.

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This isn't the only kind of generic hat I knit. I tend to use these kinds of mental templates for basic hat structures, plugging in various kinds of stitch or color patterns as the mood strikes. I tend to do that with most other knitted items, too. I suspect that many knitters are similar in their approach to basic hats, mittens, scarves, sweaters, socks, etc.

The End of the Endless Scarf and other tall tales

2007-12-10T18:03:00.001-07:00

First, here is a photo of the completed socks that I mentioned in my last post. As you may be able to tell, they look remarkably like socks. They function like socks. I am pleased.

I don't make all that many socks at the finer gauges. I like making and wearing thicker socks. These 8+ stitch per inch socks are lovely, but not as warm as the 5 stitch per inch quickies. I don't usually wear socks with regular street shoes, so thinness is not usually an issue. It is fun to make the finer gauge socks as well as the larger-gauge ones. I'm going to make a few more pairs, interspersed with some of the thicker socks.

I finished the diagonal garter stitch scarf. That's a photo of it above, in all its variegated clown-barf colored glory. Autumn-colored sounds better than clown-barf, but the phrase, once introduced, has a certain unforgettable vividness.

I'm not sure of the exact finished dimensions, but it's something like 6 feet long by 6 inches wide, give or take a bit. I used about 400 yards of this worsted-weight yarn. Since it was all garter stitch, and since I re-knit half of it, it seemed to take quite a bit longer than necessary. I'm glad it's done. I'm tired of doing diagonal garter stitch for now.

I used the following diagonal garter stitch scarf pattern variation, mentioned way back when I first wrote about this project.

Cast on 3 stitches.

Increase row: knit the first stitch, knit in front and back of the next stitch, knit to end of row.

Repeat the increase row until the scarf is wide enough (measured along the selvedge edge).

Decrease row: knit 1, knit 2 together, knit to end of row.

Alternate an increase row with a decrease row until the scarf is long enough, or you're just about out of yarn or patience.

Then, do decrease rows until you're back down to 3 stitches.

Cast off. Hide ends. Admire. Swear off garter stitch for a while.

Here is a close-up of the scarf, showing the stitch pattern and how it interacts with the variegated yarn. You can also see the ever-so-lovely selvedge. I knit the first stitch of every row. Big deal. It's a good choice for garter stitch, though.

I do like the way diagonal garter stitch looks with this variegated yarn. It almost looks like tapestry or needlepoint or something. Or maybe clown barf.

The scarf is a good length and width for wrapping around my neck and face. It is warm and soft. We're expecting snow tonight and tomorrow. The scarf may well get its first workout this week.

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Now I am all out of travel projects. Yikes! What shall I cast on for my next travel project? It should be something that's on a circular needle, even if it's knit back and forth. It should have shortish rows or be totally circular, so I can put it down with very little notice. It should be relatively mindless.

Another shawl? Even the flat-knit ones can start out as travel projects, though they become house projects after they get large enough. I already have several circular-knit ones -- the usual pi shawls, spiral shawls, square shawls, doily shawls, etc., that any long-time knitter ends up having around the house. I could always use more, I suppose.

A hat? Another scarf? A plain sweater? (As opposed to the one with the cable up the front, which requires keeping track of where I am in the cable pattern.) A moebius thing?

The moebius thing has me thinking and plotting, since the moebius I've been wearing lately proved to have a few flaws when worn during a hike this past weekend. The weather was cold and foggy, with snow and some wind. The snow and ice encrusted on the outside of the moebius got my chin rather wet and cold whenever the wind blew. Given the temperatures and the wind chill factor, this was less than pleasant. Clearly, the design needs a bit of work. It's pretty reasonable for shoveling snow, and for hiking in less windy and/or snowy weather. I need something that will also work in yuckier weather.

One possibility is simply to make it a bit smaller in diameter. If it's a bit more snug, it won't blow around as much in the wind. Another possibility is to make a simple tube rather than a moebius. Those often go by the name of smoke ring or neck gaiter or wimple. It would keep my neck warm, yet I could pull it over my ears and lower face if necessary.

I'm doing research now -- online searches, checking out books, asking friends. Then it will be time to experiment and decide what works best for me. Perhaps I'll need several, depending on weather conditions and the social occasion.

In addition to the above, I've been working on my current socks, another toe-up pair at a relatively fine gauge. The sweater is coming along slowly, and ditto for the doilies. I've been in the mood for mittens and hats, so no doubt I'll soon be casting on for either a hat or mittens or both.

A Pair of Socks

2007-12-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

No photos yet, but sock # 2 is done. I have achieved sockitude.

The stripes on the two socks started out at slightly different spots on the toe. By the time I reached the top, they were at the exact same spot. I wonder why? I don't think my gauge could have shifted enough to make up the difference. As far as I can tell, the two socks are the same, both in the number of rounds and in the actual measurements. Are the repeat lengths in Opal sock yarn exact or approximate?

I have enough of this yarn left to make at least one more sock. OK. My chances of ever getting this dyelot again are close to nil.

I probably have enough to make some wristwarmers. Or, I could strand it with another yarn to make another pair of socks or some mittens or a hat. It's enough for a small bag, though I don't know what I'd do with such a thing. Most probably, it will go in the oddball bin. I'll use it eventually.

It was hard not to cast on immediately for the next pair of socks. Tomorrow. Or maybe later today. Chances are they will be toe-up, too. Dunno if I'll choose one of the patterned yarns or not.

I'll have to wear this pair for a while before I decide whether I like this style of short-rowed heels.

Ecce Sock!

2007-11-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if there's a Latin word for sock. The free online translator websites didn't seem to think so.

Sock #1 is complete as of a few days ago. It went fast. Sock #2 is nearly to the heel. It should be done in a few days.

The yarn is an old ball of Opal from my stash. As you can tell, the main color is gold/mustard, and there are occasional narrow stripes of yellow, red, and blue.

This is a toe-up sock with a short-row heel. I did Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' short-row version, with yarnovers instead of wraps. It's OK, though it seems more fiddly to me than the wrap or no-wrap versions. The two sides of the heel don't quite match; one set of decreases is slightly looser than the other. We'll see if I can improve on that in the second sock.

It seems like half the knitters I know are knitting socks right now. I wonder why? Is it the cold weather, the hibernating instincts of late fall? Is there some kind of Group Think going on? I know that a lot of knitters usually have socks on the needles at all times. However, those of us who knit them in fits and starts suddenly are knitting them again. New sock knitters are joining the Great Sock Knitting Conspiracy.

Not that there's anything wrong with this, of course. The world needs more hand-knit socks and more knitters who know how to make them.

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Fleegle wrote (in comments to the last post):

That's really a blue doily...don't know if I care for it. It looks a bit boring to knit. 5000 stitches for a doily round? Or is that the total number of stitches you have left?

The 5000 stitches is the approximate number for the rest of the Azalea doily, 12 rounds of knitting. Those are rounds 51-62. The doily has close to twice the usual number of stitches per round. They're tedious stitches, too. The design is economical, using only a few maneuvers to create its beauty. Most of the stitches are stockinette.

The blue doily is indeed blue! Actually, it was rather fun to knit. Only the outer rounds were a bit tedious, when I was at over 400 stitches per round. That's the section where those outer fan motifs are developed.

For most of the doily, you are doing something interesting every few stitches. Each little section of motif is small and easily memorized. There are remarkably few stretches of plain knit stitches, never more than 5 in a row. The rest consists of yarnovers, decreases, increases, twisted knit stitches, and so on. There are sections of double yarnovers in most rounds and plenty of k5togs scattered throughout the doily.

I'm not really up on art terms, but I like the aesthetics of this design. A lot of Niebling's patterns are flowing. They may or may not have a lot of symmetry. This one is very restrained and highly symmetrical. I like that. It has a different, more restricted kind of energy flow compared to the more swirly designs. However, this can look boring if your preferences are for the more open and lively doily styles.

I finally got around to fixing the dropped stitches in my Lyra. Talk about fiddly--I hate doing that. On to round 157 tomorrow. Can't wait to finish it so I can start Aldelaida. Or Lotus. Or something!

Congratulations on fixing the dropped stitches in Lyra! It's always a relief to be able to recover like that. For me, that's usually mixed with the self-annoyance that the time/effort was needed in the first place! I don't mind the simple errors that are easy to fix. Major fixes are stressful and frustrating.

Adelaida and Lotus are pretty patterns. Are you going to do them as doilies? As shawls? When a doily gets to a certain size, I usually consider whether it would work well as a shawl. With all the work it will take, I want the result to be large and readily displayed. Since I don't live a doily lifestyle, shawls tend to get way more public exposure than a large cloth would.

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It's almost December. Already! I'm not ready.

However, tomorrow is National Pie Day here in the US. Perhaps I should celebrate. National Cookie Day is December 4. I also have my eye on Eggnog Day (Dec. 24) and Chocolate Day (Dec. 28).

Happy Pie Day Eve to all!

A Doily Shot and Various Ramblings

2007-11-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

The above doily is Burda 085/15. It's from Folge 1, an early Burda lace-knitting special. The pattern is probably a Niebling design. Most of the patterns in this collection are Nieblings. The magazine starts out by celebrating Burda's purchase of the rights to many of Niebling's patterns.

The reason the doily in this photo looks blue is because it is blue. I'm pretty sure I used #20 Coats Opera thread, light blue in color. I'm not a huge fan of Coats Opera for doilies. It's nice to knit with and shiny in appearance. However, the cotton is fairly soft. Doilies made from Coats Opera seem a bit limp and lose their blocking fairly quickly. I have some in my stash I've slowly been using up. I don't know if I'll buy more after it's gone. It works well for a lot of other kinds of lace even though it's less than perfect for doily knitting.

This was a fun doily to knit. It has a lot of the Niebling touches, such as multiple decreases and berry/leaf/flower motifs that hang from stalks. Those outer motifs, the fan of feathers or open leaves or whatever they are, are also a common Niebling touch. I liked the way the pattern grew. It has a recursive aspect that appeals to me.

The pattern's structure is interesting. It is seemingly simpler than some of Niebling's designs. Each motif is in its own triangular wedge. The lines of each wedge are straight. The structural increases and the decorative touches all occur within each wedge.

Many of Niebling's most admired patterns don't separate the motifs so stringently. Each pattern repeat swirls into the next. The structural increases can occur anywhere, and rarely follow a straight line or even a simple increase pattern. There are no lines or obvious breaks between the pattern repeats.

Is this an earlier pattern of his? A way to experiment with some new decorative motifs without having to worry about uniting them into a flowing design? Or is it a design preference, a deliberate choice to use this motif in this particular way? It is by no means the only Niebling design with isolated motifs separated into distinct panels.

The doo-dad on the stalk motif is interesting, too. Are these leaves? Flowers or flower buds? Some kind of fruit? I don't know. Each one is relatively long and narrow, with a double decrease in the center keeping it the same width until it's attached to the stalk motif.

I have seen a similar motif in a Russian-language Niebling pattern that goes by the name of "birch catkins". (I've seen the birch catkin pattern somewhere else, too, but can't remember where offhand.) The birch catkin pattern looks very much like the famous "snowdrop flower" pattern that's been published in Burda and elsewhere. It consists of catkins (similar to the snowdrops) on stalks, all on a hex mesh background. The motifs seem to swirl and flow in a typical Niebling manner, no rigid separation like we see in the 085/15 pattern.

This pattern is also related to a group of other patterns, most around 72 rounds, that have berries or flowers on stalks. A few of them go by the name of Thistle. Most of the patterns don't have the motifs strictly separated into panels the way this one does. Of course, now that I've drifted onto this subject, I can't find any links to photos to share with y'all. Rats. Maybe next time.

Ramblings on Various In-Process Projects

I don't want to leave my poor blog neglected. Therefore, in addition to the above doily photo, I shall post a bit about current progress on various projects. I don't usually post that kind of stuff to mailing lists because it's too boring. I actually do like having a record of what I was working on, the issues I was considering, and so on. So here is this week's progress report...

The sweater I posted about last week is still teetering between a staghorn cable on the front and Something Else. The cable is fine. I like working it and I like the way it looks. However, I might simply want to knit plain stockinette for a while. I'm not sure if the cable detracts from the beauty of the yarn and thus the overall sweater fabric. I've been doing a couple of cable repeats while I dither.

If I ditch the cable, my next decision point will come at the underarm area. Then I can decide if I want to do a gansey or drop-shoulder style, and if so, if I should pattern the chest area or not. I'd pattern the shoulder/neck area for sure if it's a gansey. If I don't decide to do a gansey, then what? I can still add a color pattern to the yoke. Or I could do another EZ-style sweater, choosing something different from last time. I've also been toying with the idea of a V-neck sweater for this yarn. Anyway, there are plenty of things to contemplate as the yarn slides through my fingers and the sweater goes 'round and 'round.

My diagonal garter stitch scarf is nearing the end. This is good. I am getting very tired of doing diagonal garter stitch. The scarf is roughly 5 feet long with maybe another foot to go, give or take a bit. I still like the way the scarf looks. It's an effective way to use this particular variegated yarn. I think the colors are cheerful, but a certain person who shall remain nameless implied that it looked like clown barf. Hmmph.

The Marianne Kinzel Azalea doily is sitting. I have finished the third iteration of the leaf pattern. I am trying to decide if I have the fortitude to do the fourth and final iteration. I am thinking seriously of casting off now. There are only 12 rounds to do for the full-size doily, but it turns out to be something like 5000 incredibly tedious stitches. I can think of more interesting ways to spend 5000 stitches of my knitting life.

The Frosted Ferns doily is sitting. I think it's waiting for me to get the Azalea off the needles. I'm not inspired.

I did start a new project this weekend. It's a generic 64-stitch toe-up sock. I think I was inspired by the sight of all my other handknit socks. We've had cold weather lately. It's time for my first sock-washing session of the season. The sight of all those socks, ready to wash, always fills me with a sense of satisfaction. One can never have too many socks, so it's time to start another pair.

Yes, I always do have some sock yarn in my stash; why do you ask? Sock yarn is no different from any other household staple such as flour or soap.

I'm trying Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' short-row heel for this sock. It's the one where you use yarnovers instead of wraps (or neither) as you work your way down and up. The yarnovers get knit or purled together with neighboring stitches as the sock heel grows. One ends up doing k3tog's and sssp's as each heel stitch is joined together with two yarnovers. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I will reserve judgment. It seems rather fiddly. I'm not sure the results will justify the efforts.

After all the doilies I've been doing, a 64-stitch sock seems to go quite quickly. I'm more than half done with the first sock already.

My spinning wheel project is going slowly. I'm almost done with another bobbin of singles and thus will soon be plying several hundred yards. Every time I sit down to spin, a cat promptly comes over to sit on my lap. I don't mind that too much, except that the cat will occasionally, and quite surreptitiously (he thinks), lean over to grab the roving and take a small nibble. This does not lead to harmony, tranquility, and good yarn.

What else can I bore everyone with? I don't have other fiber projects that I feel like writing about. I'm thinking about posting a generic k2p2 ribbed hat pattern, but that will be at some future unspecified time.

I have been doing some hiking. With every snowfall, I've been retreating to lower elevations. It's interesting to see some areas in late fall that looked so much different in spring or summer. The world seems monochromatic, a million shades of gray and brown. And yet those shades are so beautiful -- purplish grays, rosy browns, sage greens, the russet-tinged gold of dried grass, the pale blue glitter of ice crystals. It makes me want to drag out the paints or bring along my camera. Hiking always makes me think and reflect as my body moves along the trail. With winter hiking, there's enough beauty for appreciation and reflection without the distractions of summer's gaudy riot of colors and sights.

I like winter hiking. When the snow gets deep enough, I like snowshoeing, too. Skiing is OK but requires too much interfacing with the equipment, rather like biking. It's a different kind of experience.

There's something very satisfying about wearing proper clothing while out in the cold. Of course, I especially enjoy those items I made myself. Which, of course, is part of why I do it, both the making stuff and the wearing while hiking.

The New Project Dance

2007-11-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

Two steps forward, one step back.

I have trouble following actual patterns. (Doilies excepted, for some unknown reason.) This means that I usually end up designing my own stuff. I choose the yarn, some likely needles, do some swatching, and so on. I have a few ideas about what I'm trying to do. I take the info from the swatches and draw up a bunch of different ideas.

Eventually, I narrow the possibilities down to what I think I really want to do. And then I cast on. After a few inches, I evaluate. Do I like it enough to continue? If so, then I commit to the project and keep going. If not, then I rip and go on to Plan B.

I did a lot of ripping and re-doing this week. I have several possible sweaters planned out on paper, using different batches of yarn. The swatches seem reasonable. However, when I started the actual project, I changed my mind after a few hours of knitting.

As I wrote recently, ganseys have been on my mind lately. I'm pretty sure this next sweater will have a gansey-style shaping. It will be knit in the round. At the armholes, I'll split the front and back and work them separately. I'll do something at the shoulders before knitting back and front together. Then, I'll pick up the sleeves and work them downwards.

Easy enough. But what embellishment shall I add to the sweater? What about borders?

The gray yarn I used for my last sweater does not show knit-purl patterns all that well. I liked the idea of doing a gansey with horizontal bands of reverse stockinette and basket stitch motifs, until I tried swatching it and realized that it wouldn't show up clearly enough. Vertical patterns do show up nicely. I came up with something I like -- columns of simple 2x2 rope cables, crossed every 4 rounds, separated by a couple of columns of ribbing. But then I started to dither. Perhaps I want to save the gray yarn for a round-yoke color-stranded sweater.

Now I remember why it's so hard to get started on sweaters for myself. Oh, well. I have two sweater concepts all sketched out and ready to go.

So, on to the next potential batch of yarn. This is about 1200 yards of bulky 2-ply Icelandic yarn. I love this yarn. It was spindle-spun from cloud batts that didn't draft very easily (which is why a friend gave the fiber to me). The yarn is thick and thin. It's wonderfully fluffy, since it was from a double-coated animal. It's mostly white, with a small percentage of reddish brown and black fibers. It has an interesting luster, a sheen almost like fresh cream.

I have another big batch of these cloud batts in black with a few white fibers. It's not as nice as the white batch. It's even harder to draft. The fiber isn't as soft. It's not all that fun to spin in comparison with the white. I've been slowly spinning it for years and still have a ways to go. It's ending up a lot more uneven than the white yarn.

I had initially thought I'd do a black and white color stranded sweater from the Icelandic. But instead, I think I'll knit a mostly-white sweater and use any remainders with the black yarn.

My first attempt had a crochet cast-on, a rolled hem followed by a couple of rounds of ribbing, and then stockinette with a wide staghorn cable panel in the middle of the front.

Bleh. I think I need to loosen up a bit on the gauge and I didn't like the bottom border.

I'm now on my second attempt. I've gone up in needle size, I did a plain old long-tail cast-on, and I'm doing a k1p1 rib for a couple of inches. I like it so far. Soon I'll need to make more decisions.

I still like the staghorn cable. It's a 20-stitch panel, with 16 stitches used for the cable and 2 purl stitches on each side to outline it.

Round 1, 3, and 5: p2, k16, p2
Round 2: p2, k4, 2x2 Z cable, 2x2 S cable, k4, p2
Round 4: p2, k2, Z cable, k4, S cable, k2, p2
Round 6: p2, Z cable, k8, S cable, p2

The Staghorn Cable is in Barbara Walker's First Treasury, in case I added some odd typos. She has it in V upward and V downward configurations, depending on which way you're knitting and which cable you prefer. I've used the V downward configuration before in a top-down Aran-style sweater.

The yarn is great fun to knit with. It's soft under my fingers. I like the slight hairiness of the outer coat of the fleece, which is where the color variations are. I like the fluffiness of the inner coat. I like the way the looser gauge allows both of these characteristics to be expressed. This is going to be a very cozy sweater once I figure out what kind of embellishment to add so I can get it done.

Option 1: Use the idea of a stockinette sweater with a staghorn cable pattern going up the middle of the front.

Option 2: Something else...

It's the Something Else that always gets to me.

Some Eastern Mediterranean Socks

2007-11-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

Deborah added a clarification about the quote I used from Knitting in the Old Way:

It could have been either of us by philosophy, that's for sure, but those words are Priscilla's. Most of the book is Priscilla; I just contributed enough over the three years we were working on the expanded version that Priscilla said, "Your name should go on the cover, too." So there it is.

We both have Japanese-influenced aesthetic and practical ideas.

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Marie asked if the sweater was slightly A-line.

It is not A-line, at least not deliberately. It does have a slight flare in the photo. That could be due to the way I posed the sweater. Or, it could be because of the seed stitch border. The border is slightly wider than the rest of the sweater because I wasn't in the mood to change needle size or use fewer stitches.

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The sweater is indeed warm and cozy. I've worn it already. We've had some very cool weather this week.

I'll probably start another sweater soon, whether or not I start another shawl. I am mulling two or three options.

Option 1 is a round-yoke sweater with color patterns.

Option 2 is an Aran-style sweater from some white yarn I have. I'm attracted to a stitch pattern in a Kathy Zimmerman design that appeared in Knitters magazine several years ago. It has vertical columns of a fish- or trellis-like cable pattern on a seed stitch ground. Of course, I'd merely steal the stitch pattern concept and use it with my own gauge and shaping ideas. I might not even use that exact same cable; I might well replace it with an OXO cable.

Option 3 is a gansey-type sweater. I've been looking through Rae Compton's book on ganseys. There are a couple of sweaters in there that really appeal to me. One is the Campbeltown sweater that she gives a pattern for. It consists of columns of simple rope cables separated by ribbing (note a theme?). The yoke and sleeve tops are in basket stitch, which is Compton's name for moss stitch. There are some similar sweaters shown elsewhere in the book, from Robin Hood Bay and somewhere else I can't remember.

An aside: I wish someone would republish this wonderful book, along with Compton's other ethnic knitting book.

There are other ideas simmering in my brain, but the above three are the ones I'm most attracted to right now.

I might have to actually do some swatching to see how well different patterns show up in the yarns I'd like to use for a sweater. Oh, yeah, and get an approximate gauge, too. I tend to use the sleeves as my gauge swatches, since they are usually more accurate. I mostly do swatching to find a needle/fabric/stitch combo I like.

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As most of y'all probably already know, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts published a book on Ethnic Socks and Stockings. It features socks from eastern Europe, western Asia, and the Mediterranean area.

Reading Knitting in the Old Way reminded me of this, and I dragged out some old eastern Mediterranean socks to photograph and share. I don't know exactly where these came from or how old they are. They are most likely from either the early 1970's or the late 1950's, given how they came into my possession. They are probably from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region, though I don't know which country or ethnic group/tribe they might be characteristic of.

The photo above shows the top/front side of the socks. As you can tell, they mostly feature simple stranded-color patterns. The foot shows some very small areas that use a third or fourth color. I didn't turn them inside-out to check out what kind of stranding or intarsia-in-the-round methods were used.

The red dye is not colorfast, alas, as I discovered when they got wet once. The white areas are really white, not pink. The other colors are black, red, purple, green, and orange.

The colorwork and stitch evenness are not all that expert in their execution. I don't care; I like them anyway.

The above photo shows the bottom of the socks. You can see the pattern on the soles. The heel (an afterthought heel) is done in black and white. The bottom part of the heel (foot bottom) uses a different pattern from the top (back of heel). You'll see that detail in the small photo to the left, wherever it happens to turn up. The bottom part, shown above, consists of diagonal stripes of black and white. The other side has vertical columns of black and white which also contain single stitches of the opposite color.

These socks were knit from the toe up. The heel stitches are knit downwards, from the foot/leg to the point of the heel.

To the left is a photo of the back side of the sock. You can see the heel pattern on this side of the sock. You can also see the bands of color patterns that make up the sock in slightly better focus than the first photo shows.

These color bands only use two colors per round. I like the way the patterns are simple yet effective. Green, purple, and orange turn out to work well together. The use of a different color in the middle round of the pattern motif ends up making the pattern look more complex than it is.

There are vertical bars at the edge of the pattern bands for the purple/orange spider-like patterns. Front and back look the same -- two spiders with a bar on each side. The diamond motifs continue all the way around.

To the right is a close-up photo of one of the diamond motif bands. What this really shows is the yarn and the general knitting technique. I'm pretty sure the colored yarn is wool. It is scratchy and coarse. The white yarn does not seem to be the same. It could be cotton, but I don't know enough about the possibilities and how to distinguish between them.

The socks show distinct vertical lines that were probably where the knitter transitioned between dpn's. Some areas of stranding aren't all that clear and distinct.

I can't remember the exact gauge on these socks. It's something like 6 stitches per inch.

The photo to the left shows the top of the sock. It's in the black wool yarn. I think it's a couple of rounds of purl stitches followed by a loose cast-off. The yarn ends are left to float free. They are united in a loose overhand knot on one sock, but separate on the other.

I took some other photos, but I won't upload them right now. They show various parts of the sock in slightly more detail.

I love these kinds of ethnic socks and other ethnic knitting. I wish I had more. I appreciate Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' efforts in documenting some of the techniques and patterns used, both in Ethnic Socks and Stockings and the occasional articles in the various knitting magazines. She's not the only one who has done that, of course. Betsy Harrell's Anatolian Knitting and Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet are other good compendiums. One can find bits and pieces in other sources, such as occasional blurry photos in books on folk arts of various regions.

There are blogs with great photos, too. One of these days I'll go searching and compile a set of links. For example, Marcy shows ethnic knitting, including the wonderful NATO Latvian mitten collection. Joy is currently living in northern India, and sometimes includes photos of people wearing various handknits. And so on.

Plain Gray Sweater is Finished!

2007-11-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

An interesting quote

I came across this in the expanded edition of Knitting in the Old Way, by Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts and Deborah Robson. I'm not sure which of the authors is responsible for the following words. It's on the bottom of page 95.

"We can secure more reliable satisfaction by having a few possessions that satisfy our souls, instead of many disposable items that briefly assuage fleeting desires."

The first part of the paragraph is worthwhile, too:

"Hand knitting was taken for granted until 'progress' did away with the need for its regular practice. But the cost to humanity in the loss of these skills and the ability to employ them has exceeded the value of the theoretically higher standard of living. We need to work with our hands, creating objects that are unique and also enduring."

I think that applies to many, many things, not just knitting.

Speaking of soul satisfaction, here is:

The Plain Gray Sweater

Isn't it beautiful?

The borders are seed stitch. I wanted a sweater that would hang instead of cling. Blocking did indeed take care of the flipping bottom band.

The pattern is Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage sweater with a raglan sleeve style, taken pretty much directly from Knitting Without Tears. I made the sleeves a bit bigger around, in accordance with modern tastes.

As usual, my favorite project is the one I just finished.

Here is a close-up of the knitted fabric. It's not as sharp as I would like. (My photography skills are improving, but there's a long way to go before I call myself proficient.)

You can see the bits of texture in the yarn. However, you can also see that the knitted fabric is far more even than a glimpse at the yarn would lead you to expect. The transitions between different balls of yarn are not at all visible.

The yarn color is closer to the top photo than the close-up photo. It's a medium gray color, somewhat heathery due to variations in the roving.

I took a photo of the seed stitch sleeve cuff. However, between my so-so photographic ability and the fuzziness of the yarn, it's hard to make out any interesting details.

I need to remember that the yarn is too fuzzy to show textural patterns clearly. Do not make a gansey with subtle knit-purl patterns, for example. Even seed stitch or moss stitch wouldn't look all that great. A big honking cable might work. Ribs might work if they're simple. Color patterns would show up well as long as the blocks of color are fairly large.

Today is probably going to be a doily-knitting and yarn-spinning day. I'll be doing some mental planning for my next big project. I'd like to finish one more of my in-progress projects before casting on for something new. But you never know.

Cutting the Cord

2007-11-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

A few more thoughts about the (yo, sl 1, k2, psso) stitch pattern:

This stitch pattern is used in some of the shawls in the Icelandic shawl book, Three-Cornered and Long Shawls, by Sigridur Halldórsdóttir (translation by Marilyn van Keppel).

In Beyer/Burda charting, and also in the Icelandic book, the (sl 1, k2, psso) maneuver uses a chart symbol that looks a lot like an H or an N with a squiggle instead of the horizontal or slanted crossbar. It will be similar in other chart styles that borrow from the Beyer/Burda conventions.

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Fleegle indicated a preference for knitted tutus over knitted ponchos. Well, you're in luck!

I was idly flipping through Handknit Holidays (edited by Melanie Falick), and came across the poncho/skirt pattern by Carrie Brenner (on p.112). The description says, "This versatile piece had its beginnings as a poncho... until the model wearing it pulled it down over her hips. At that moment, it was transformed into a playful skirt."

So, you can have it all! Knit those poncho-like doilies to your heart's content, but wear them as tutus instead.

If you do this, we want pictures.

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I have finished the knitting on my sweater!!!! (How many exclamation points can I use before the punctuation police smack my fingers?)

I need to cut the yarn (always difficult), graft the underarms, hide the yarn ends, and block it.

The sweater fits. It's nicely oversized. It's beautiful in a rustic sort of way.

This is the kind of sweater I thought I'd never knit, because who would ever knit a plain gray sweater? Well, I did. It takes exactly as much time and yarn as a non-gray sweater, and less time than a patterned sweater.

I am bouncing around happily. A sweater! For me! And it fits! And it's done before winter! And I made it out of my very own handspun! And there's enough left for another sweater! And now I can start the next sweater with confidence!

But first I have to cut the yarn. That for me is the point of commitment. Snip! For some reason, it can be a psychological difficult moment. Do I really like the item? Am I willing to inflict damage on my preciousssss handspun?

Yes.

(exit stage right, scissors in hand...)

Continuing the themes from my last post...

2007-11-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

My sweater is very close to finished. Now all I need is some knitting time. That's been in short supply this month.

The comments I got from my last post have inspired this post. Thank you!

Elizabeth wrote:

yarnover, slip 1, k2, pass slipped stitch over
Ok, this I've not run across (obviously I don't knit many doilies). You're slipping 1, knitting two, then passing the slipped stitch over the two knitted stitches, leaving a yo and two stitches on the needles? Hmmmm.

Yes, you slip a stitch then pass it over a couple of knit stitches. In this case, it's a 3-to-2 decrease. The yarnover adds a stitch, keeping the total stitch count constant. You are indeed left with the yarnover and the two stitches on the needle. The slipped stitch puts a horizontal to slightly diagonal line across the base of the two stitches, a loose wrap stitch effect. You can slip that stitch either as if to knit or as if to purl, depending on what you like.

I've included a close-up of how this pattern looks in my Mommes Lysedug doily/shawl. It's hard to see the details, unfortunately. Blame my poor photography skills! It's a very attractive and sturdy-looking motif. When I first started the Mommes Lysedug pattern, I thought it was a typo.

It's not a very common stitch pattern. Most doilies do not use anything so complicated! Many doilies only use yarnovers, knits, twisted knits, k2tog, SKP, and SK2P. I'm not sure if Christine Duchrow ever used this stitch pattern again. Herbert Niebling used it occasionally; it's one of his characteristic stitch patterns. I don't know about any other doily designers.

You'll also find this pattern in Shetland Knitting, where it's often called Mrs. Hunter's stitch pattern. It's in Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting, on page 70. That version calls for slipping a stitch, knitting 3 stitches, then passing the slipped stitch over. The motifs are stacked vertically rather than offset diagonally.

Barbara Walker put Mrs. Hunter's stitch into one of her pattern treasuries, probably the first volume.

I vaguely recall someone on the knitlist, many years ago, who used Mrs. Hunter's pattern as part of a hap shawl she knit. It would make a good hap shawl pattern. I'd actually try to use it in a center-out square, so that it would automatically look like the offset/diagonal version that is in the Mommes Lysedug pattern. I could start the square with one pattern, add a wide band of Mrs. Hunter's stitch, then transition to something else. Would I finish with an outward-knit border or a sideways-knit border? How would this look if I changed colors, too?

Fleegle wrote:

I have been mentally toying with the idea of knitting half-circles and 3/4 circles instead of the entire round thing...then I run into the purling concept and sort of wimp out.

Another gray sweater! You clearly have more patience than I do. I can't remember the last time I knitted anything gray.

I go for a cabled vest...if you have enough yarn, you can then proceed on to the sleeves.

In reverse order:

Cabled vest... Although it would be fun to knit, I would never wear it. I'm not a vest person. If I'm cold enough to put on a sweater, then I need something that will keep my arms warm. I've tried vests in the past. I end up uncomfortably warm in the areas under my vest and uncomfortably cold in the areas not covered.

This batch of gray yarn is rather fuzzy. I'm not sure if there's enough stitch definition for complicated cables. I do have a different batch of yarn that would be perfect for a cabled sweater, with sufficient yarn to knit the entire sweater. Some day...

I probably will do a cabled vest someday, simply because it would be fun to do. I'll use a different batch of yarn that will show the cables well. I have no idea what I'll do with it when it's finished, though. In the past, I gave my knitted vests to a family member who loved them. That person is no longer alive.

However, I do like your idea of doing a vest, then adding sleeves if there's enough yarn.

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Gray sweater... It helps that I spun the yarn myself. I love knitting with my handspun. The yarn is heathery rather than being a flat gray. It also has some thicker and thinner areas to give a bit of texture to the sweater. I love the way the yarn feels as it runs under my fingers.

Anyway, the sweater is dead plain, an almost by-the-book Elizabeth Zimmermann percentage sweater, raglan variation. I'm not sure if it matters that I'm using gray rather than another color. A plain gray sweater isn't the most exciting thing in the universe, but it's been fun to knit. I don't have to pay attention most of the time. I go round and round and round, letting my mind wander on to other topics. There are few decision points or areas where I have to plan and think and count.

The goal was to knit a sweater for myself. I'd started several over the years that never got finished. I decided that the Keep It Simple option was my best bet for getting something done. If I used boring yarn, then I wouldn't care as much if it wasn't perfect. I don't have to get every detail right. I just want something that I can wear when the weather is cold. I don't even have to wear it in public.

Sometimes I have to psych myself out. This was one of those times.

The next sweater from this gray yarn will be different. Period. One option is to add stranded color patterns to the yoke, sleeves, and bottom band area. If I do that, I'll probably do a round yoke. I'd start in the middle of the sweater (and sleeves), knit upward. Then, I'd pick up the stitches and knit downward to finish. Or, I'd do it totally top-down.

The other possibility I'm considering is a gansey-style sweater. Yes, it would be plain gray (unless I added some color anyway). But the shape would be different. It would be close to fleegle's idea of a vest, with sleeves added if there's enough yarn. Any stitch patterns would have to be very simple, since there wouldn't be a lot of stitch definition.

A third possibility is to make the next sweater from a different batch of yarn, thus avoiding an overdose of gray.

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Half-circles and 3/4 circles... Yep, I go through a lot of the same mental contortions. The endless purling can get to me.

There are other issues, especially if you're adapting a doily pattern.

The biggest issue is that a lot of doily patterns do not have an easy break between pattern repeats. The break may occur in the middle of a motif. It is usually not a straight line. You'd have to do some re-charting to get something attractive.

One option is to make a poncho-type shawl. Skip the innermost motif. Cast on at the point where there are enough stitches to go over your head. Knit the rest of the doily. You can add or subtract a pattern repeat or two if you want something a bit fuller or less full.

Another option is to knit the doily or other pattern in the round, and then slash it after you're done. Knit as many pattern repeats as you'd like. Start in the middle or skip the innermost motif as above. When you're done, baste the area you think ought to be cut, and then go for it. Pick up edge stitches and put on a suitable border.

Personally, I don't like slashing my knitting. Consider the above to be theoretical advice. I've never tried it.

I do like the circle, square, and other polygonal shapes because they are knit circularly. The intermediate rounds are usually plain knit, making for a restful interlude. The disadvantage is that they take twice as much yarn as the half-circle or triangle would take. Also, one usually needs to fold part of it over, like a collar, to wear it over the shoulder.

However, a square is a very useful shape. Having a square shawl automatically turns you into a hoopy frood who knows where his/her towel is. A circle is merely a square with the corners lopped off. Or something.

Triangles are useful shapes for shawls, but not as useful for other purposes. A lot of patterns can be turned into garter stitch. Other times, it really does make more sense to purl the wrong-side rows. It's not horrible, really!

I find that a stockinette-based shawl will end up being larger than a garter-based shawl, for example. There's probably not as much difference if you're using fine yarn and a loose gauge. For shawls with thicker yarns, the difference is very obvious.

Mommes Lysedug

2007-11-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

The above photo is a close-up of the Mommes Lysedug doily pattern, does as a lap blanket or small circular shawl. The pattern is available here at Nurhanne's yarnover website. It is a design by Christine Duchrow. The basic motif and charts can be found in Volume III of the Lacis compilation of her work.

I did take a photo of the shawl on my bed. As you can tell, it is not a great photo. I was standing at an angle, the bed is not flat, and so on. The shawl/doily/blanket really is circular, I promise!

I knit this shawl from sport-weight yarn, Jaggerspun 3/8 Heather, to be exact. It was a lot of fun. I only had the text version of the pattern at the time I knit it. It was accurate and easy to follow. I think I found one very minor error which also turned out to be in the Duchrow charts for the pattern.

Since this is a Duchrow pattern, there are quirks that strike the modern doily knitter as being a bit odd. In particular, there's a section where there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the decrease directions in the motifs. I never did get that straightened out to my satisfaction. I ended up knitting it as directed, and it worked out well enough.

Duchrow's doily designs were mostly intended to be knit with very fine thread. Decrease directions don't really matter when the thread is fine enough. A lot of her designs are a bit arbitrary about decrease directions as a result. I change decrease directions as needed according to my moods. It's not all that important most of the time. I try to stay consistent within a pattern, but don't worry too much beyond that.

This doily upsizes quite well. The 110-round pattern ended up giving me a doily close to 4 feet in diameter. It is a warm lap blanket and a small but quite adequate shawl. It drapes down to my elbow level, and it can be pinned in the front so that it stays on without effort.

As a lap blanket, it is quite successful. It works especially well for cuddling small children who are napping or who do not feel well. It would work as a baby blanket for similar reasons. (I won't get into the whole issue of whether eyelets are dangerous for babies.)

I've included two photos of the shawl on a local 10-yr-old. I've shown the back view and the side view. Two cats are in the photo for scale.

The shawl took about 8 ounces of yarn, almost exactly. I had 2 yards left (out of 740 yards) when I finished. I modified the crochet cast-off to use less yarn, which did indeed turn out to be necessary.

I used this for several years before I ever got around to blocking it.

More thoughts:

I like Jaggerspun Heather. I should buy more and use it for shawls or sweaters or lap afghans. It comes in a couple of different weights, not just sport weight.

Circular shawls are not the most practical shawl shape in existence. However, they work well enough. Since they are fun to knit, I put up with the impracticality.

This is a good size pattern for small shawls or lap blankets. Even with a short attention span, I can get it done before I get bored. Duchrow has plenty of other patterns that are similar in size and complexity.

Christine Duchrow uses an interesting stitch pattern in this doily. It's a (yarnover, slip 1, k2, pass slipped stitch over). It's offset on each pattern round. You can see it in the top photo, the closeup. It's quite decorative and fun to do. I've seen similar patterns under the name of Mrs. Hunter's pattern and a couple of other variants. It's a fairly uncommon stitch pattern for doilies, especially the ones I've seen from this time period. Herbert Niebling sometimes uses it, too.

Although the basic motifs for this doily are in the Lacis compilation, this exact pattern is not. Apparently, Duchrow's patterns were published in several different variations as well as several different languages. (The original for this was in Danish.) One version of a particular pattern pamphlet might contain slightly different doilies from another version. That intrigues me. Why was this done? What does it say about the European doily publishing business during the time these were being printed and sold? One of Duchrow's designing strengths was her ability to use a small set of motifs to create a variety of different but related doilies. How many more variations exist besides the ones in the Lacis book plus these other few that I'm aware of?

I'm sure I had more thoughts, but they seem to have abandoned me for the moment.

Sweater Progress

My plain gray sweater is almost finished. Getting past the decision point did turn out to get me past my knitting block. It's gone quickly since then. I hope I got the raglan yoke calculations right on my first try. If not, I'll have to rip and re-do some of it.

My yarn paranoia stood me in good stead. I'll probably have enough yarn left over to do another entire sweater. It will be somewhat different, since it would be rather silly to knit two identical play gray sweaters.

Should I do a fancy cabled vest? Although it's enticing, I don't wear vests.

Therefore, I'll probably do another sweater. Do I have enough yarn to add a cable panel? It's iffy. (yarn paranoia...) I could do some kind of stitch pattern. Or, most likely, I'd add some stranded color patterns at the neck, cuff, and bottom edges.

Should I do another gray sweater immediately? Or should I do a sweater out of some different yarn?

One of the fun things about getting towards the end of one project is dreaming about the next.

Mary Walker Phillips

Rest in peace.

Her book on Creative Knitting contained many interesting and influential ideas, even if the wall hangings look a bit dated for modern tastes. Her descriptions of eastern, western, and combined knitting techniques are quite informative. Her book on Knitting Counterpanes is one of the definitive books on this style of knitting and the patterns typically used for them.

She wrote other books on knitting, and she also wrote about macrame and knotting. She was an accomplished weaver and artist. According to Wikipedia, she was born on November 23, 1923. She died on Saturday, November 3, 2007.

Gratuitous Doily Shot

2007-11-02T15:25:00.001-06:00

It's been a while since I posted a doily picture.

This doily is Lavori 11/04. It's from Mani di Fata's Lavori Artistici a Calza #11, often referred to as Lavori 11. It is still available from several reputable lace vendors. All previous Lavori lace-knitting publications are long out of print and available only on the secondhand market. None have been published since this one.

The magazine shows this doily in three different thread weights. It looks good in all of them. I believe I did mine in Omega #10. Omega is a crochet cotton thread from Mexico. It's sold in 30gram balls. The cotton has a cabled construction and is nice to work with. I probably found this in an ethnic grocery store. It is sometimes carried in craft and needlework stores.

This is a fairly small doily, maybe 60 rounds at most. I made it several years ago. It was a lot of fun to do. I like the results. It's a good doily for less experienced doily knitters as well as those who are looking for a quick and relaxing knit that yields an attractive result.

I have no idea who the designer is. There are many wonderful designs by people whose names we do not know. I think that's sad. I've love to find out more about the people who created these beautiful designs.

Lavori 11 is a fun magazine. I've knit a fair number of things from it and have plans to knit many more. It's a good source for doily patterns for those who are looking for a variety of sizes and styles. The text is in Italian. The patterns are clearly charted and straightforward to knit from. Some are unattributed Nieblings and Engelns.

More on the Lacy Cables Shawl

2007-11-01T13:12:00.001-06:00

Here is a close-up of one of the cables in the shawl. The shawl is folded in half, which is why the open areas to either side look like they have another layer or two of fabric underneath.

My other photos of the shawl did not turn out well enough for my tastes. The camera needs new batteries, so I will try again some other time. How many times can I inflict photos of this shawl on everybody before the boredom becomes terminal? I'll stop after I get a good photo that displays the shawl to advantage.

Soo asked:

"I really like the lacy cable shawl - is that your design or is there a pattern somewhere??"

It's not my design. It's by Gayle Roehm. The Lacy Cables shawl was published on the back page of the Fall 2001 issue of Knitters Magazine. It's issue 64, with the Cable Ready theme. Here is a link to a vendor on the XRX website who sells a yarn pack for the pattern. It shows the photo that appears in the magazine. You can see that the shawl looks somewhat different in white!

Here are more photos I've found of the shawl.

Gayle Roehm designed the well-known Sleeves in your Pi sweater/shawl/shrug thing. Her designs have appeared in many publications. She is a very talented designer.

The shawl is easy if you are looking for a lace shawl project that is relaxing to knit, easy to follow, and able to be put down and picked up without trouble.

I like the pattern's concept of columns of fagoting that get cabled every now and then.

Elizabeth commented:

"Your comments about its wearability are interesting, as my initial reaction when you gave its dimensions were pretty much in line with your original posted thoughts on the question. If I were making it I would tend to start with the idea of widening it, so your later comments are good to know."

It would be quite easy to make the pattern wider. Each additional pattern repeat requires another 28 stitches. That is the only adjustment, aside from total yarn requirements, of course.

If you feel like knitting this but don't think it would be useful, do it in cotton and call it a table runner. Or a curtain or wall-hanging.

I am wearing the shawl right now. When I drape it over my neck, it looks and feels like the front of a tabard-style vest. It stays on all by itself without slipping. I have no idea if I look ridiculous.

It's not the most practical thing I've ever knit. However, it's more useful than I feared it might be. I definitely like it. It's pretty, it's comfortable, and I made it myself out of my very own handspun. Part of me has never grown beyond the child who was thrilled to be able to make things with my own hands.

Speaking of practical, I finally am making progress on the stalled sweater. Whew. Even with the maximum number of stitches per round (just above the sleeve/body join), it has fewer stitches per round than many doilies. If I can knit a complex doily, surely I can manage a decidedly non-complex sweater, right?

I'd share a photo of the sweater, but that's when the camera batteries went dead. Maybe next time. I'm sure you can imagine what it looks like -- a heathery gray thing mostly recognizable as a sweater, consisting of two sleeves, a lower body, and lots of stitch holders.

Lacy Cables Shawl is finished!

2007-10-31T12:40:00.000-06:00

Everyone else seems to be posting in honor of Halloween. I'll join the crowd.

My Lacy Cables shawl is finished, finally. I started it back in late September. It's the Lacy Cables Shawl, design by Gayle Roehm, published in the Fall 2001 issue of Knitters magazine (issue 64, Cable Ready theme).

The above photo is of the wet shawl slowly drying on a towel on my bathroom floor. I'm not doing too much blocking. The photo shows the columns of lace fagoting and the way that the cable sections cause the columns to undulate. You can see the unevenness of my spinning and a bit of the yarn variegation. Since the shawl is still wet, the colors are darker and less variegated than they will be once dry.

I did indeed end up doing 10.75 repeats instead of the 11.75 in the original pattern. It's a good length for me. I have several yards left from the ball of yarn I was knitting from, along with two more skeins that didn't get used at all. My estimate on yardage is around 650-700 yards used, and about 3-4 ounces.

Before blocking, the shawl was about 1 foot wide and not quite 5 feet long. I haven't measured it too closely now that it is blocking, but it looks to be a few inches wider and several inches longer.

Here is a photo of a section of the unblocked shawl. The variegation shows up a bit better in this shot. The undulation shows up clearly, but you can see that the columns of fagoting look a bit uneven.

Somewhere on the right will be a close-up photo, showing a bit more detail on the cables and the lace. Blogger's preview thingy is not all that reliable, so I'm not totally sure where the photo is going to end up. We shall see!

Things I learned from this project:

1. I do not have to fear knitting with my handspun singles. It works just fine. I did not have any problems with biasing or with the yarn drifting apart or anything like that. Some sections of the yarn were thinner or thicker than others. This too was not a problem. Even though some sections of yarn looked frighteningly thin, they had sufficient strength. That actually was not a big concern, since I knew all the yarn could withstand the weight of a spindle and the tugging it took to wind onto a niddy-noddy and then get hand-wound into a ball.

2. This kind of quietly variegated yarn looks just fine with lace. A very open pattern with strong vertical lines, as above, shows up beautifully. The cables were more problematic. They have a solid fabric. The colors were just dark enough and just variegated enough to obscure the cabling more than I liked. The kind of yarn I used (singles, probably Ashland Bay) and the loose gauge (lace-like) may have contributed to this. If I ever knit this again, I should use a yarn that is a fairly solid, pale color.

3. This particular cable and lace pattern was genuinely easy to knit. I didn't have to pay attention all that often. There was an easy rhythm to the pattern. I could pick it up, do a set of 8 or 10 rows at a time, and put it down. I could make steady progress without getting bored or lost in the pattern.

4. In my last post about this shawl, I wrote that it seemed to be quite a useless item. I've changed my mind. I tried on the unblocked shawl and was pleasantly surprised. It is both wide enough and long enough to look good and be comfortable to wear. It seems a bit odd not to have a lot of fabric across my back (as with a larger shawl). I can't see my backside, so it's not a major concern. The ends hang nicely and attractively across my front. All I'd have to do is add a pretty shawl pin to secure them together and I'd be set to go. I'll try to get a photo of the shawl being worn at some point in the future.

My next shawl will not be rectangular.

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Here's a photo of the diagonal garter stitch scarf, still in progress. I'll probably get a fair amount done on that one tonight. We're going to Suburbia for trick-or-treating with some friends.

I still like this scarf and how well the simple stitch pattern works with the colorful variegated yarn. The scarf will probably be about 6' long when finished, give or take a bit. That's a good length for cold winter days.

We're having our traditional Halloween weather today, as usual. It's not all that terrible, really -- light snow and freezing rain, low clouds, and temps just a bit below freezing. Yum. Hey, the roads are warm enough to not be icy. I'm not going to complain!

My next priority will be the sweater. I won't start a new big project until it is finished. I'm not going to make any promises about the small stuff, though. I do want to finish at least one of the in-progress doilies before starting any other doilies. That still leaves me plenty of room for fun -- socks, hats, mitts, bags, and so on.

Shetland Hap Shawls (a mini-review)

2007-10-29T11:22:00.000-06:00

My weekend was fun and busy and involved no fiber activities whatsoever unless you count the bighorn sheep we saw.

So, I thought I'd inflict a mini book review on everyone. I wrote this for a mailing list a while back, thus the slightly disjointed tone.

Shetland Hap Shawls

Shetland Hap Shawls is by Sharon Miller, who has also written the book Heirloom Knitting. Heirloom Knitting is about fancy Shetland lace shawls. Shetland Hap Shawls is about the everyday warm shawls. These were ubiquitous. Far more of these plain shawls were made and sold than the fancier lace shawls. Since they weren't considered special, few of them survive compared to the elaborate fine lace shawls.

As far as I know, the book is not available for sale in the US. You can see it and buy it from Sharon Miller's website, here. As of now, they offer free shipping with purchase. Yes, even to the US. I received my autographed copy about a week after I ordered it.

The book is interesting. It's thin, but the pages are densely packed. There are some typos and other small mistakes I've found so far, but nothing terrible. The one known chart error (which appears in a few different places in the book) is listed in an included errata slip.

The book is mostly history, an exploration of the ethnic form in the context of the knitting and clothing of the era. There's not too much in the way of formal patterns, probably because the Hap Shawl is a fairly simple item.

The Shetland Hap shawl is usually a square shawl, designed for warmth. The center is usually a garter-stitch square, either knit from one end to the other, or on the diagonal. Sometimes it may be patterned, but that info is only in the text. The center is surrounded by a wide border, which is usually a garter-stitch feather-and-fan. The outermost part may be plain but is more often a scalloped lace edging.

Sometimes the shawl is a single color, anything from natural sheep colors through bright dyed colors such as red. Often, the feather-and-fan section is striped, either in dyed colors or natural sheep colors.

There are also triangular half-hap shawls, and hap scarves (which are long strips of f&f or one of the chevron-ish lace patterns).

Since these were considered everyday items, very few of them survive. Much of the information in the book comes from old photographs and artwork, including old tourist postcards.

The construction methods are the traditional Shetland shawl construction methods. Method A is the outside-to-inside method, where the edging and borders are knit inward, then a central square is knit, and everything is sewn together. Method B is the inside-to-outside method, where the center square is knit, the borders picked up and knit outward, then an edging applied. One can either do the borders in the round, or knit them back-and-forth with a seam or two to close the corners. Shawls of both construction methods can be discerned from old photographs and drawings.

Elizabeth Zimmermann's Stonington Shawl (from XRX Best of Knitters Shawls and Scarves) is very similar to these shawls, except that hers features a plain border while the Shetland hap shawls usually use feather-and-fan. The f&f borders on the Shetland hap shawls are usually quite a bit deeper than the one EZ uses in her Stonington shawl.

This f&f is totally garter-stitch based. The patterning may occur on every 4th or 6th or 8th row. I don't know how I'd want to do it in the round. The idea of purling every other round doesn't sound restful for my knitting temperament. I could try one of the flat-knitting-in-the-round techniques. I could knit it flat and seam one or more of the corners. I could turn it into a mostly stockinette-based f&f, purling every 4th round instead of every other round. I could use the EZ Stonington shawl method, but that would only work for plain-colored f&f borders.

Sharon Miller gives the details of the two basic methods, with a couple of small variations. She provides charts of several f&f variations and some of the lace edgings that were often used. There are discussions on blocking, yarn choice, seaming methods, etc. The rest of the book consists of charts showing various striping sequences, lots of old photographs and drawings, a discussion of Scottish costume history, details from the old Shetland knitting-for-sale systems, and other ethnographic details.

I can think of many variations on the basic theme of a hap shawl, even though only the traditional kind is shown. I do like ethnic-knitting books, and this one is quite pure. Miller is very careful about distinguishing between fact and speculation, between genuine old patterns and more modern adaptations.

One of my kids' books is about a family in England during WWII. One of the drawings in it is of a knitting grandmother wearing a shawl with striped f&f borders. I've wanted to knit a shawl like that for years. I could have done it before, but would have had to wing it on the details, since a cute drawing is not the same as a photograph or detailed schematic. Thanks to this book, I now know more about the history and construction of these shawls.

Summary: the brand-new knitting stuff is a bit scant but sufficient, and the wealth of historical information is very inspirational. There is very little overlap with Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting book.

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Needless to say, I've been wanting to cast on for a Shetland hap shawl ever since I got the book. I think it will be a great way to use the smallish quantities of dyed handspun that are lying around in my stash. A Shetland hap shawl is definitely in my shawl to-do list.

The baskets pictured in the book quite fascinate me, especially the ones used by the women gathering peat. I worry that basket-weaving may be in my future...

Last Friday in October

2007-10-26T12:16:00.000-06:00

And here we are, at the last weekend of the month. October went quickly.

This weekend is the big Halloween party weekend. Some interesting logistics have been required. We are busy tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night, and all day Sunday, sometimes with different people going in different directions at the same time. Not all of the events are Halloween events.

Usually, we get dreadful weather for Halloween, the party weekend, or both. I'm not sure what will happen this year. We might get some snow tonight and tomorrow, but nothing major (in theory). So far, Wednesday night looks pretty good.

Here is a picture of some pretty yarn. In my last post, I wrote about the virtues of spot-dyeing. The above photo is an example.

I call it "sherbet yarn" because the colors of the roving looked a lot like orange and lime sherbet. A friend and I used cheerful spring-like shades of yellow, green, and orange. We left plenty of white. I don't remember what kind of roving we used, but I suspect it's generic Brown Sheep white roving.

We used our usual method for this kind of stuff. We mixed up dyestocks. We soaked the roving in a mixture of water and vinegar, then gently squeezed out most of the liquid. We placed the roving on a piece of plastic wrap. Then, we dribbled dye all over the roving. We rolled the plastic wrap over the roving, then steamed it for a half hour or so. We use a large canning kettle for steaming, with a steamer basket or rack set above some steaming water.

The dyed roving made us smile. I spun it up and self-plied it, and you can see the results.

As usual, I don't have all that much of the yarn, maybe 200-250 yards and 2 ounces of each. I have no idea what I'll do with it. For now, I take it out when I'm in the mood to look at something cheerful.

I think that warm shades of yellow and green are under-rated, too.

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I am almost done with the Lacy Cables shawl that I started in September. I am ready to be done with it. I decided to make it one repeat shorter than the initial pattern calls for. That's actually one of the variations recommended in the pattern. My reason? I don't want to have to ball up another skein of the yarn. I'm pretty sure I can finish with the ball of yarn I'm using now. If I am mistaken, then I'll go ahead and add that last repeat.

I'm hoping to have photos of the unblocked and blocked shawl by next week.

It's been a fun pattern to knit. I like the combination of lace and cables. I like the way the cables cause the columns of lace to undulate. The rhythm of the pattern made for pleasant knitting. I like my handspun yarn, and I like the way it interacts with the stitch patterns.

I am somewhat dubious about the utility of the shawl. What will I do with a lacy rectangular item that is about 1 foot wide by 5 feet long? It's not really a scarf. It's not really a shawl. I suppose it's closest to a stole. But I do not live the stole-wearing lifestyle.

Some of that is my own fault -- I chose a darker colored, variegated yarn. It may be a bit too informal for the pattern. If I make it again, I'd probably choose a more formal-looking yarn, something that's white or a solid color. And yet, I do like the way the yarn looks with the pattern.

I'll have about 450-500 yards of yarn left, and I'll have used about 650-700 yards. This means that I'll have yet another small batch of yarn in the stash, not quite enough for a major project.

My current plans for the leftovers are to self-ply them and then use them in a stranded-color pattern such as a hat or mittens. But who knows what I'll really end up doing.

I'm having fun dreaming of the next shawl. There are several possibilities. The most likely one is a doily pattern adaptation. I've seen a few different versions of the doily, shown on the right. It's composed of 2 or more square motifs that are joined and then edged with more lace. This particular photo shows a 1x2, but I've seen 2x2 and 2x3. It's pretty in all its incarnations. Yes, it's probably a Niebling design.

I'm going to take a single motif and do only 2 pattern repeats, to end up with a half-square triangle shawl. I thought about doing it as a square. However, I only have about 1000 yards of yarn in the batch I'm thinking of using. A half-square triangle is more likely to fit with that quantity. It'll end up being about 130-140 rows of knitting. That's a bit bigger than the Hyrna Herborgar shawl.

I'll add a narrow garter stitch border for the top edge. It's possible that the half-square adaptation won't look very good. In that case, it's on to Plan B. I'll gather enough yarn to do one full square someday, but won't worry about it for now.

I think this design looks great as a half-square triangle, as a square, and as a multi-motif rectangle. I could do it as a doily, but I think it would look good upsized to a shawl.

There are a few other candidates for The Next Shawl, any of which could be my Plan B if necessary. One is another doily, a circular pattern that is about 120 rounds and has flowers and leaves on a hex-mesh background. The same batch of 1000 yards of yarn would work well for it. Another possibility is a diamond-motif idea I've been wanting to play with. I'm also interested in doing another shawl from the Icelandic lace book, or a Shetland hap shawl using small batches of handspun for color stripes, plus several more ideas.

The yarn is from Robin and Russ Handweavers, a long-ago purchase. It's white, some kind of blend. I can't remember if it's wool/silk or silk/mohair, but something like that.

Although I dream and make plans about my next project, I am often seduced by some totally different pattern without any warning. So don't be too suprised if this shawl idea never gets mentioned again, and I start rambling about some totally different project next time.

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My other projects are progressing. The scarf is past the halfway point. It's good for productive fidgeting in public. I do like the way it looks. It should be a warm and attractive bit of neckwear when it's finished. It has satisfied any garter stitch cravings I might have unknowingly been suffering from. I'm ready to be done with it.

The Azalea doily is slowly chugging along, too. I'm finding it quite tedious to knit. I'm in the third set of petals. Will I bug out after this set is done, or will I find the fortitude to go all the way to the fourth set of petals and round 62? I probably will get to round 62, but it will take a while. Snooze city. I'm definitely not going to do this pattern as a lap afghan. I bet it will be lovely, though. Kinzel's patterns usually are.

The other stuff is still progressing, but I don't feel like writing about any of them.

I am finding it somewhat stressful to have so many projects going on at once. Usually, I have one main project and one smaller project, with occasional quickies in the middle. I might actually finish my sweater before starting another shawl in order to relieve this mild anxiety.

As you may be able to tell, I'm also suffering from a multi- mid-project malaise. I'm sure that will dissipate once I finish something.

I am thinking about doing some braiding and kumihimo posts. I'll need to be organized, though. I want to take a series of photos of the braiding process. We shall see.

(It took a couple of tries to get Blogger to upload my photos. I wonder what's going on?)

The Spot-Dyed Chevron Lace Scarf (with a pattern)

2007-10-23T10:12:00.001-06:00

It's been a busy week, too busy to post anything here. I won't bore everyone with the details. We did get our first substantial snowfall, about a foot of it. I was too busy trying to drive in it to be able to revel in all its lovely wool-wearing potential.

Not much of interest is occurring in my fiber-ish projects. Things are progressing. I have no photos of the in-progress stuff, nor would they be of much interest if I did have any.

So, I'll share the saga of a previous project, complete with a pattern and a chart.

Chevron Lace Scarf

The above photo is a scarf I made a few years ago. It's seen a fair amount of use, since it is warm, soft, and more attractive in real life than in the photo. The photo makes the scarf look more blue than it really is.

A friend of mine sent me a couple of ounces of merino roving. It was spot-dyed, to use her terminology. At the end of a fun dyeing session, she'd dripped the last few dye leftovers on this blob of roving. The roving ended up being a mix of various shades of purple, pink, and aqua, with much of it still being white.

I spun it on my spindle and then self-plied it for a variegated 2-ply yarn. I like the way it turned out. It has semi-long stretches of each color, with the variegation providing even more shading. I don't remember the exact yardage or how much it weighed, but I think I had about 2 ounces and roughly two hundred yards of roughly sport-weight yarn.

I didn't have very much yarn, and it was variegated. What to make with it?

I decided on a scarf, using some kind of scalloped pattern. A non-scalloped pattern would have looked too stripey, in my opinion. I like lace, so lace it was. As long as the increases were offset from the decreases, I'd get scalloping.

I could have chosen something like Feather and Fan. But I decided on this chevron lace pattern instead. It's easy, with little counting involved. There's only one pattern row, followed by a plain return row.

It turned out well, in my opinion. The stretches of each color interact well with the pattern. I like the way the different colors transition into each other, and I like the randomness of the striping. Since I didn't have tons of yarn, it's a rather small scarf. It is still adequate for my needs.

What did I learn from this project? A few things:

White is an under-appreciated color, especially in a variegated mix. I have to keep reminding myself of that whenever I haul out the dyepots.

Merino is soft against my neck. It spins differently from some of the other kinds of wool I had been spinning at the time. Its fibers are relatively short. It feels cottony, for lack of a better word. It has a very matte luster. It really sproings up when the yarn twist is set.

Scalloped lace patterns really do work quite nicely with variegated yarn, depending on the length of the variegation.

This was a very good travel project. It's hard to get lost in a pattern with only one simple pattern row! It would be a good beginner lace project, too.

I probably did learn more than that, but those are the things I remember.

The Written Pattern

You can choose any yarn you like. It doesn't have to be variegated. This particular pattern does happen to work well with variegated yarns as long as the length of each color is long enough to form stripes instead of spots. I don't know how it would work with very short color lengths; you'll have to try it and see for yourself

If you'd like to change yarns every now and then, this pattern would work very well with stripes of different colors and/or textures.

Choose a needle size that goes with your yarn. You should probably do some informal swatching to figure out what kind of fabric you like. You also want to see how many repeats of the stitch pattern you want. I was very conscious of my limited quantity of yarn, so I made a narrow and not very long scarf. Yours can be as wide and as long as you wish.

You will be knitting back and forth, i.e., flat knitting. I use circular needles for everything. You can, of course, use straight needles.

Cast on a multiple of 10 stitches, plus 3. I used 43 stitches for my scarf.

For all rows, slip the first stitch of the row as if to purl, with the yarn in front. Knit the last stitch of the row through the back loop.

Knit 2 rows.

Then start the chevron lace pattern. It's a 2-row pattern. The chart is below, if you'd rather work from a chart than from text.

Row 1: slip 1 stitch as if to purl with yarn in front, k2tog, *k3, yo, k1, yo, k3, S2KP2*, ending with k3, yo k1, yo, k3, SSK, k-tbl.

Row 2: purl (except for the edge stitches, as described above)

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until the scarf is long enough or you're almost out of yarn, finishing with row 2. Purl two more rows. Bind off purl-wise on the right side.

Block it. It doesn't need too much. The edges have a slight tendency to curl, since I didn't bother with a garter stitch border on the sides. Get your scarf thoroughly damp and lay it out flat to dry, gently manipulating it to get the lace pattern and the edges to look right.

My abbreviations:

k is knit. p is purl. yo is yarnover. k2tog is knit 2 together. SSK is the left-leaning decrease -- slip two stitches knitwise, one at a time, then stick them back on the left needle and knit them together through the back loops. If you prefer another left-leaning decrease, go ahead and substitute it. S2KP2 is a double decrease -- slip 2 stitches knitwise (together), then k1, then pass the 2 slipped stitches over. You can substitute a different double decrease if you'd rather. k-tbl is knit through the back loop, i.e. a twisted knit stitch. The stuff between the *'s is to be repeated as many times as needed.

Variations

If you are feeling ambitious, you can change the lace pattern a bit. Instead of k3's, do k2's or k5's or whatever. Big whoop, right? There are a bunch of other possible changes, but then you start transitioning into other well-known lace patterns with their own well-known names. Heck, even the chevron lace name is only one of several names this stitch pattern is known by.

You can do this as a garter-stitch lace if you like that texture better. Knit all the wrong-side rows instead of purling them. Or knit an occasional wrong-side row instead of purling, similar to some of the standard feather-and-fan variations.

You can do more rows of garter stitch before starting the lace. You can add a garter stitch border if you'd like. Or add rows with eyelets before and after. Or use your imagination!

If you make it wider and choose the yarn appropriately, you can call it a wrap or a rectangular shawl or even an afghan.

The Pattern Chart

Here is the chart for the lace pattern. I didn't show the 2 garter stitch rows at the ends, of course.

I seem to have charted it as if it was a circular pattern instead of a flat pattern, not that it really matters. Just remember that row 2 is a wrong-side row, and thus you'll purl the stitches instead of knitting them (so they look like knit stitches from the front). You'll also go from left to right on the chart, whereas row 1 (the right-side row) goes from right to left.

I also see that I didn't define the double-decrease symbol. It's the one at the left end of the 10-stitch pattern repeat in row 1. I did them as a vertical double decrease (slip 2 knitwise at the same time, knit 1, pass the slipped stitches over). It will look fine if you'd rather substitute some other double decrease.

This is my first time trying to upload a chart to this blog. It was more of a hassle than I expected! I'll have to work on that...

Boring Progress

2007-10-16T10:47:00.000-06:00

Well, it's not really boring to do, only boring to read and write about. I don't even have any photos of the in-progress stuff to share.

I had promised photos of the Azalea doily-ghan. I lied. It was too barf-tastic in the thrift-store yarn. I quit in horror. Maybe it's time to give up and donate the yarn to some other thrift store. However, that's a rather cruel thing to do to the next unsuspecting purchaser. I'll toss it back into the depths of the closet, where it can help insulate the house this winter.

After abandoning the Azalea doily-ghan, I idly grabbed some perle cotton weaving thread and re-started the pattern as an actual doily. My poor Frosted Ferns KAL doily sits neglected.

The Azalea doily is coming along quite well. The cotton is too soft for my tastes, but works well in this particular pattern. The color is somewhere between champagne and a light pumpkin tone. It's pleasing enough.

The pattern is interesting. There's very little actual lacework in it, if you define lacework as fabric with yarnovers. A few yarnovers do occur on every 10th round or so. Most of the doily is solid stockinette with a few increases and decreases. It's a very easy pattern to remember and follow.

The pattern's movement is created by the lines of decreases that separate one leaf/petal from its neighbor. The new petals grow by doing a (k,p,k) into the center stitch of the petal. This does create a somewhat open texture in the middle of the petal, and it also causes the stitches of the petal to bias in a pleasing manner. The neighboring motif is a petal, created in the previous set of rounds, that is shrinking by means of decreases at the edges. The motifs swirl and flow, creating harmonious patterns as the light interacts with the stitches.

As usual with a Kinzel pattern, there are zillions of stitches per round, and it's rather tedious to knit in spots. I use the general rule that a doily needs to have approximately 4 stitches per round. So, by round 36, I should have 144 or so stitches. This pattern has about twice that number of stitches at that point. It works anyway, for various reasons I won't go into right now, but it makes the rounds slow-going.

I expect that when I block the doily, it will be a lot bigger than one might expect. All those stitches take up a certain amount of space. If you squish them horizontally, you will end up squeezing them vertically. I am using a fairly loose tension, to help the stitch distortion occur while still getting the pattern to lie flat.

The Azalea pattern still seems to meet a lot of my criteria for a decent afghan pattern. If I were to try it as an afghan, I'd do it as a square, with only 4 pattern repeats per round. It could be an interesting open-square shawl if worked flat. The pattern motif runs from corner to corner. It would be very easy to adapt it to flat knitting by adding a narrow border.

I do like the way that the doily grows by iterating the same pattern motif, adding more of the motifs as the item grows. Kinzel has a lot of patterns that do this, especially her square patterns. It's also a common concept for a lot of modern shawl patterns.

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The Frosted Ferns doily is at a point where new motifs are starting. I need to pay attention for the next few rounds. For some reason, I'm having a tough time with it. It doesn't help that my cat likes to sit on my lap and "help". He butts his head onto my hand. Several stitches fly off the needle and promptly run as many rounds down as they can. Since I'm at this point of new motifs, it can be very hard to figure out how to repair the dropped stitches. The first time, I simply started over. Now, I've done enough rounds that I'd prefer not to have to do that. It takes me a while to do the repairs, and then I'm frustrated and not in the mood to knit on it any more. Send it to its room (actually a small pencil box that serves as my Emergency Doily Knitting Kit) -- it's grounded for poor behavior!

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My lacy cables shawl is roughly 2/3 to 3/4 done unless I decide to make it longer. It's looking like Gayle Roehm's estimate of 750-ish yards of yarn is about right. I might use as much as 800 yards or as little as 700. I'll have a few hundred yards of yarn left. I suppose it will join my stash of small batches, and I'll wonder what to do with it every time I see it. I do have a few ideas, though, starting with doing another few repeats of the shawl stitch pattern.

I do wonder what the heck I'm going to do with the shawl. It's a fairly formal-looking pattern. I don't really live a lifestyle that requires formal-looking stoles. Also, the yarn I'm using is not formal-looking. It's variegated, and it's in shades of brown and gray. I do like the way it looks. So, what does one do with a long and lacy rectangular item like this? I guess I'll find out. It will no doubt join the rest of the shawls in the pile, brought out to wear around the house for the pleasure of wearing it, but rarely getting any public exposure.

It is fun to knit. That is the real reason I'm doing it. Some items I make are practical. A lot are done for the sheer pleasure of the doing.

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Speaking of practical, I am procrastinating on my sweater. I need to make sure the two sleeves are the same length, and that the sleeves and body are the approximate correct dimensions for me. Then I'll unite them and knit the yoke. I suspect that the sweater will go a lot faster when that occurs.

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Let's see; what else can I bore everyone with?

The scarf is doing well. I like the wider version. I'm about at the halfway point. The mindless style of increasing and decreasing is working well for me. (Mindless style: either increase or decrease one stitch near the beginning of the row, and then knit to the end.)

Spinning continues in fits and starts, depending on my mood. It's mostly boring-looking yarn, so I won't bother to take photos. The cats like to "help" with the spinning. One will wake up from a nap elsewhere in the house to come and sit on my lap while I'm on the wheel. He occasionally has to take a swipe at the roving or the drafting yarn. I have to stay alert to make sure that the yarn stays unchewed and that no cats get hurt by the wheel.

They are fascinated by my spindles, too.

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I am dreaming of new projects. There are yarn blobs I want to spin, shawls and other items I want to knit.

The shawl is the current project likely to finish first. That means I'll allow myself to start another large shapeless shawl-like item. There are two doily-shawl conversion projects I have yarn for, another one I need to order yarn for, plus this doily-ghan concept rattling around in my brain, plus a couple of other shawl ideas. I will share the photos of the shawl candidates when they are closer to getting cast on.

Oddly, I don't really have a must-knit doily candidate. The ones I want to knit are big enough that I'd rather do them as shawls or afghans. That could change at any time, of course. I'm easily seduced. Witness the Azalea doily.

Sweaters -- I want to finish this sweater so that I can wear it this winter. I also have my eye on the leftover yarn I'll undoubtedly have. That nice neutral gray will be useful. It would be nice to add another few sweaters to my winter wardrobe. I even have some yarn in sufficient quantities that would work. The next one will be top-down. Should I do cables? Stranded color-work? Another plain sweater?

There are several small items I want to play around with. They might get started sooner, or they might wait until my scarf is done. Wristers, mittens, socks, scarves, hats, bags... We had our first snow this weekend. Those warm knitted items are starting to be used. We can always use more.

I need to set up the marudai or a braiding disk and make a few braids, possibly for knotting purposes. I've been reading a couple of weaving blogs, and am feeling vaguely inspired to drag out the inkle loom or set up a card-weaving project. I haven't dyed anything in a while, and would love to get out the colors to play with. Looking at previously dyed roving and yarn always makes me want to do more.

And so on. I won't bore everyone further by listing all the ideas and plans I have.

A Tale of Three Doilies

2007-10-13T09:12:00.000-06:00

And they're all pink. How odd. I guess it's not really all that odd. I made the doily above from a brand new ball of DMC Cebelia #20. There was enough thread left over to make a few more small doilies.

The first doily, in all its poorly-blocked glory, is a Herbert Niebling pattern. It's roughly 82 rounds. I don't think it has a name. It certainly didn't in the pattern source I was using! The flowers look a bit like tulips, so I often refer to it casually as the tulip-like doily. The flowers look more like campanulas or penstemons, some kind of bell-like flower. In any case, they were very interesting to do. The stamens near the top of the flowers are defined by a wrap stitch. That's the first time I've encountered a wrap stitch in a Niebling pattern! I have since done others.

The pattern is not attributed to Niebling, but it contains a lot of his characteristic quirks. The hex mesh background, the floral motif, the way the different stitch patterns are used for textural contrast... Who else would have designed it? (That's an honest question, by the way. I'm always interested in learning more about other doily designers and their design styles.)

As usual with Niebling patterns, it was a fun knit. There were a few rounds that didn't flow as well as they could have. Most of it was very nicely put together. It's not the best knitting or blocking I've ever done, alas. The blocking can be fixed, but I'm stuck with the uneven knitting. Oh, well.

The second doily I knit, from the leftover pink thread, is Kinzel's Coronet doily, from the First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.

If you've gone through the archives for this blog, you'll see an off-white Coronet in my first post. I like the pattern, so I've knit it more than once. The Coronet pattern is a typical small Kinzel pattern, very elegant and restrained and with a whole lot of stitches. It has 46 rounds.

After this doily was finished, I still had thread left over.

So, I knitted up a quickie pattern by Erich Engeln. This one is the descriptively-named #9F. It has 42 rounds.

OK, it's not a descriptive name. Engeln patterns usually do not have names. Those of us who own the pamphlets call them by their pamphlet name. This is from pamphlet #9, and it's pattern F in the pamphlet. It's small but cute, perfect for the amount of thread I had left.

There was thread left over after this one, too, but I decided that enough was enough. It's in my crocheted-snowflake stash. After that, it will go into the weaving/braiding stash.

Anyway, one rather interesting thing about all the above doilies is that they all use the same hexagonal mesh lace pattern as a background lace stitch.

What's really interesting is that each designer uses a different method to increase in pattern.

Niebling uses many different kinds of increase methods, depending on the pattern. Some are clunkier than others. This one is both elegant and simple. The edges of the hex mesh, where it butts up against the tulip-like flowers, start and end with double yarnovers. This sets it up perfectly for the next round. It's all hex mesh -- either \OO/ or O/\O. It starts with one double yarnover and goes from there.

Kinzel's is almost as elegant. It has a kludge or two at the beginning. It starts with a single yarnover and works its way up to a (yo, k3, yo). The next round, which is the real start of the hex mesh, is slightly asymmetric in order to get to an even number of stitches.

Kinzel uses (yox2, k1) at the edge of each hex mesh section. (It finishes with a k1, yox2.) The middle part is all \OO/. The double yarnovers plus a single knit stitch allow the hex mesh section to grow effortlessly. But it is different from Niebling's version. And the first couple of rounds are not as seamless as Niebling's beginnings.

The Engeln pattern uses yet another method. The first round is a single yarnover. Then, he goes immediately to an even number of stitches by doing (yo, kp in stitch, yo). His way of increasing in hex mesh varies. The ones used for the patterns in this pamphlet are similar. The increases at the sides will be single yarnovers. The following round twists the yarnover (yo, k-tbl, yo). After that, he'll use single knit stitches at the edges instead of decreases to keep the pattern flowing until there are enough stitches for the full \OO/ pattern repeat. And by then, he's starting to develop the next set of increases.

I know that what I really should do is scan all three charts, and excerpt the small areas that demonstrate the differences. However, each pattern uses a totally different chart style! It's hard to follow unless you're already familiar with those charting styles. Someday I'll try to chart up the three different chart sections to show you the three different methods these designers used to increase their sections of hex mesh lace.

So, can these kinds of differences be used to identify the designers of unattributed patterns? Yes, I believe so. It's not definitive, but it's one more bit of evidence that allows us to infer the designer's identity.

Someday, I may design my own complex lace patterns. Should I choose to use the hexagonal mesh stitch pattern, looking at the way other designers do it will help me to develop my own style.

These are the kinds of things that fascinate my doily-obsessed mind. The doilies were fun to knit, too.

Wristers!

2007-10-12T08:41:00.001-06:00

Last week sometime I mentioned my current House Pattern for wristers. It's an easy pattern, and as a result, is an excellent template for playing with yarns. It's also a good pattern for cranking out quick gifts or for quickly outfitting a cold-handed friend or family member.

On the right, you can see a photo of a few of the wristers. They are simple tubes with a big buttonhole slit for the thumb. So what if they're simple? They're functional, warm, and fun to make. The ribbing makes them elastic enough to fit a variety of hand sizes.

Last weekend, I was out hiking in cool weather. Not really cold, but in the 40's and rather windy. By the end of the day, clouds had rolled in, and the occasional raindrop or snow-blob was added to the mix.

I wore my wristers. They kept my hands quite toasty, which helped keep the rest of me toasty. I brought along several pairs, and doled them out to other members of the hiking party.

We also wore other hand-knitted wool items such as hats. For the cool but not cold weather we were in, the items worked very well. I'll probably share the current House Pattern(s) for hats one of these days. It turns out that hats are a good way to use up a 2-ounce blob of variegated dyed roving that turns into a 2-ounce batch of variegated yarn. Variegated dyeing and variegated yarns are so much fun, but dang, they're hard to use effectively.

Wrapid Wristers

My current no-brainer pattern for wristers. Wristers are also known as fingerless mitts, wristwarmers, pulsewarmers, and probably by a few other names.

Gauge: about 3.5-3.75 stitches per inch. Don't worry about getting too exact. Anything between, say, 3-4 stitches per inch ought to work.

Don't worry about a gauge swatch. The actual item is your gauge swatch. Knit a few inches and put it on to see if you like the fit and fabric. If yes, continue. If not, adjust the yarn, needle size, and/or pattern and try again.

Yarn: This is the fun part. You need a yarn or combination of yarns to get the above gauge. It will end up being about bulky weight. You'll need about 80-90 yards, give or take a bit. I must confess that I don't really pay attention when I use combinations of leftovers. However, I can make a pair of wristers from one generous skein of bulky yarn. A skimpy skein will necessitate short wristers.

I usually choose at least two different yarns. Go ahead and play! Choose thick and thin yarns, either one or both of the strands. Choose variegated yarns. Choose a mixture of yarns. Experiment with color and texture and composition. Play with your leftovers.

Some examples of yarn combos I've chosen:

(a) two variegated thick and thin yarns. One was a 2-ply in shades of blue. The other was a singles yarn in bright colors.

(b) one strand of brown alpaca, one strand of a variegated thick-and-thin wool/mohair/silk yarn in shades of green (for the camo-loving family member)

(c) one strand of brown alpaca, one strand of variegated wool in shades of orange and purple (this was an oddball of beige yarn that I unevenly overdyed orange, then overdyed purple. It is actually quite pretty.)

(d) one strand of gray wool/mohair, one strand of blue wool (simple yet effective)

My next pair is probably going to be one strand of bulky black 2-ply wool, one strand of a thin boucle mostly-mohair pink/purple variegated yarn.

I could do stripes, but I usually let the variegated yarn do the work for me.

Needles: A set of dpn's that will give you the gauge you need. If you'd rather use the 2-circulars or the magic-loop circular method, go for it!

Pattern:

Cast on 24 stitches. Join. Do a k1, p1 rib for 5.5". (Rib pattern: *knit 1, purl 1* ad infinitum)

On the next round, cast off 3 stitches. It can be any 3 stitches in a row. Sometimes I choose a p-k-p sequence, and sometimes I choose a k-p-k sequence. I usually choose 3 stitches somewhere in the middle of the round, but it really doesn't matter.

On the following round, cast on 3 stitches over the gap.

Continue to knit (in the k1p1 rib pattern) for 2 more inches. Then, cast off in pattern.

Make the second wrister if you want one for your other hand.

That's it!

The circumference is about 6-7" (since it's elastic ribbing, I don't usually measure this). The part below the thumb is 5.5", the part above the thumb is 2", and the total length ends up being around 8".

Variations and Comments

If your yarn is finer or thicker, or you want a wrister that is bigger or smaller, you can easily add or subtract stitches from the pattern. Instead of 24 stitches, use 22 or 28 or 30 or whatever. Make sure it's an even number, though, to maintain the k1p1 rib. Make the thumb opening about an inch, but use an odd number of stitches. So, for example, if your gauge is 4-5 stitches per inch, and you're using 32-ish stitches for the wristers, make the thumb opening 5 stitches wide.

I've tried making these top-down instead of bottom-up. However, I like the way the cast-on fits at the wrist, and I like the way the cast-off snugs up the top.

You can easily make these a bit shorter or longer to fit the preferences of the wrister-wearer.

If you hide the ends well, the wristers are reversible.

Mitten variation

This pattern is a good basis for mittens, too. Put the thumb stitches on a yarn holder instead of casting them off. Continue the k1p1 rib on the hand until it's almost long enough (5-6" after the thumb), then decrease (2 rounds of SSK will get you down to 6 stitches). Pick up the thumb stitches plus one on each side (8 total), knit (k1p1 rib, of course) until the thumb is long enough, then decrease (one round of SSK is enough). I'll give a more formal pattern for this some other time.

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I do make finer and more complicated wristers. Those are fun, too, and often better for cold weather or more formal occasions. However, I like the quickness and simplicity of this pattern. I like its versatility and its potential for playing with yarn combos. It's a good use for oddballs and yarn remnants, especially the weirder yarns.

Give them a try!

Not in Focus

2007-10-09T12:33:00.000-06:00

Today is being one of those days. You know, where you want to get certain things done but just can't stay in focus. I flit from project to project.

A general observation: Spinning very slippery laceweight alpaca feels very different from spinning somewhat grabby thick-and-thin Aran-weight Icelandic wool. Like duh, right? The other spinning project is a spongy, sproingy, short-staple wool which is a fairly fine single and will end up being a jumper-weight 2-ply.

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I spent a few minutes rummaging through the stash looking for a doilyghan-suitable pile of yarn. And I found something! It's an old thrift store purchase, a single-ply worsted-weight wool/viscose mix in an off-white.

Some people get lucky with their thrift store finds. I usually don't. The worst was that cone of dusty wool yarn. Two weeks later, it became obvious that it was infested with moths. That turned out to be an expensive purchase. Usually, I find overpriced oddballs and odd-smelling partial balls of Knit-Cro-Sheen in ugly variegated colors, or mis-matched and incomplete sets of dpn's. I don't bother buying those.

The wool/viscose yarn was one of my better buys. But that's not saying much. It was bagged up in the thrift store, so I couldn't inspect it as closely as I wanted. When I got it home, I saw that all the wool was balled up. That's OK. Except that all the balls are two-stranded. Well, I guess I can live with that, because it would be a pain to separate them back into individual yarn strands.

I used the yarn to knit an Elizabeth Zimmermann Ribwarmer vest. In the middle of the project, it also became apparent that I was dealing with at least two different dyelots. Ugh. I finished the ribwarmer because I wanted the experience of doing it. I've never worn it in public -- it needs a dip in a dye bath at the very least. If I were being realistic (and someday I will be), it really needs to be returned to its primal yarn state.

The ribwarmer pattern is a lot of fun and deserves to be knit again in a decent yarn someday.

Anyway, there's still plenty of this thrift store wool/viscose left. I think it will get turned into a doilyghan experiment. I am rationalizing to myself that different dyelots won't look quite as awful when they're concentric circles of varying widths. If I dye it afterwards, it will still look good.

If I were feeling very virtuous, I'd skein the yarn and dye it before I knit with it. I am not feeling virtuous. I'd love to get this yarn out of my stash and made into something I'm willing to live with.

I'm going to do Marianne Kinzel's Azalea pattern. I'll let y'all know how it goes. With photos. Even if it's barfomatic.

The next time I'm near a decent yarn store, I clearly need to add a few basics to my yarn stash. Or the next time I place a mail-order with an internet fiber company. What I'd really like to use for a doilyghan is something like Jaggerspun's 3/8 heather yarn. Brown Sheep's wool/mohair single ply yarn is another possibility. I also need some laceweight yarn for a planned doily-to-shawl conversion project.

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As usual, rummaging through my stash leads me to rediscover all kinds of interesting things. I've used most of the large batches of stuff. Most of what's left are smaller batches, impulse purchases and oddballs and leftovers.

I enjoy knitting socks, mittens, hats, etc., from these small quantities. I'll often use two strands. It makes for faster knitting, it makes a small quantity of yarn go a bit farther, and it's a great way to experiment with color/texture/etc. mixing.

The unspun fiber is equally inspiring. I have several large batches and a lot of smaller batches, including a lot of stuff I've dyed with friends. Note to self: spin more, and spin faster!

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My lacy cables shawl continues to grow. I am still enjoying it. Soon I'll get to the obsessed stage. When that happens, everything else gets dropped and I work exclusively and obsessively on that one project until it's finished. I'm looking forward to that. There are several projects I'd like to drop into the "shawl" slot.

Scarf, sweater, and doily all continue to progress in fits and starts. The scarf and sweater are perfect for no-focus knitting. Pick it up, knit a few minutes, put it down, go do something else. The doily takes more commitment, since I hate putting it down in the middle of a round.

It's a cute doily so far. I like the way Niebling developed the leaf motifs on this pattern. He uses 4 yarnovers in the middle of the leaf to represent the midrib of the leaf. Two are structural; they cause the leaf to grow in width. The other two are decorative. They are balanced by decreases at the edge of the leaf. The leaf edges are nicely defined by the decrease lines. Having the yarnovers offset from the decreases causes the stitches to bias, another deliberate and decorative effect.

When the leaf is wide enough, two of the yarnovers drop out. The appearance of the leaf doesn't change much now that the yarnovers are balanced by the decreases. Finally, all the yarnovers stop, and the decreases then reduce the leaf stitches to the center tip. There are extra decreases along the sides of the leaf every now and then. They make little serrated points, which is Niebling's way of trying to make the leaf resemble an actual oak leaf.

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I think I'm going back to play in the stash and flit from project to project. Maybe I'll cast on for the Azalea lap blanket. Maybe I'll see if one of my medium-sized batches of yarn is suitable for a proper Elizabeth Zimmermann Ribwarmer. Maybe I'll get bored with that and write up my wrister pattern. Or take photos of the Mommes Lysedug that I did as a small shawl and lap blanket.

It's one of those days. Not in focus.

More thoughts on doily-shawl-afghan conversions

2007-10-08T09:29:00.001-06:00

How to estimate how big a particular pattern will be with the yarn or thread you're using

Z's Momma asked in a comment to my previous post:

"I was wondering how large of a lap blanket can be made with a doily pattern using sport weight yarn."

You can make a lap blanket as large as you wish, depending on how much yarn and patience you possess.

The size of the lap blanket will depend on the size of the pattern and upon your blocked row gauge. It's very straightforward to estimate the final size.

Question 1: What is your row gauge? You can start with the approximate row gauge in stockinette. Remember that you may well be using a looser gauge than usual. You may well have some idea about how much blocking you'll do, anywhere from none at all to stretched very tightly or somewhere in between.

Question 2: How big is the pattern you're thinking about (number of rounds)? Take that number and double it, to get the number of rounds from the edge to the middle to the other edge. This is your diameter.

Answer: The diameter divided by your row gauge will give you an approximation for the final size of your lap blanket.

Conversely, to figure out what size pattern you need, take your row gauge and multiply it by the size you want to determine how many rounds you need to knit (edge to edge, not center to edge). Divide that by 2 to get the number of rounds in the pattern.

Example: for sport-weight yarn, let's use 7 rows per inch for the blocked row gauge.

If you have a pattern that is 105 rounds, its diameter is 210 rounds. The size of your lap blanket will be 210/7 = 30".

If you want your lap blanket to be 40" in diameter, it needs to be 7 x 40 = 280 rounds in diameter, or 280/2 = 140 rounds. You need a pattern that has approximately 140 rounds, give or take a bit.

After you've started knitting, you can refine the estimate a bit. After you've done, say, 30 or 40 rounds, measure it. Then extrapolate to the total number of rounds. Or measure your actual row gauge somewhere in the middle of those 30-40 rounds and extrapolate to the total number of rounds. Check again when you're farther along.

You can change your yarn (or your needle size) and thus your gauge if you want to use a specific pattern and want to end up at a certain approximate size. Make sure you like the fabric you're getting. If it's too solid or too open, it would be better to try a different approach.

There are ways to increase the size of your pattern if it's not big enough. They are easiest if you choose a pattern that doesn't finish in a flourish of scallops or fans. You can add another set of motifs, you can add an edging (either outwards-knit or sideways-knit), you can add a few rounds of crocheting, etc.

If a pattern is too large, you can often find intermediate points where you can stop knitting and still end up with something lovely. Some designers do this deliberately, creating a series of patterns that build on each other.

The other easy way to make sure the lap blanket is about the size you wish is to choose a general recipe instead of a specific pattern. In other words, choose a pattern or template that is infinitely expandable. The Hemlock Ring blanket is partly in this category. It starts with the center motif. But the feather and fan can be stopped whenever you think it's enough. It can be expanded for quite a while, too, though eventually you run into the dreaded f&f cupping problem

Someday I'll blog about some nice patterns that are near-infinitely expandable. I'm sure many of you are familiar with some of them through the writings of Elizabeth Zimmermann -- the pi shawl, spiral shawls, the square baby shawl, and other good templates for your creativity.

Intro to the long and boring part of this post

One nice thing about having a blog is that I can post whatever I've been thinking about lately, following digressions to wherever they may lead me. The last post got me thinking about the whole issue of converting doily patterns to shawls, afghans, and other items that are not made with fine, smooth threads. I did some abstract thinking, but then got distracted by a particular pattern. So, this post will be some mix of the abstract and specific. It's not the last post on the subject, since the topic is still rattling around in my skull. This is an interim set of thoughts, subject to modification.

A few thoughts on doily shapes

Doilies come in a lot of different shapes. Which ones do you like? What do you think is a good shape for a shawl, a lap blanket or afghan, a baby blanket, a rug, etc.?

Circles are common. They make reasonable shawls, excellent area rugs, and pretty good lap blankets (and baby blankets). Some can be blocked into polygons (octagons, for example) instead of being perfectly circular.

Polygons are also common. Some can be blocked into circles. Some are very definitely octagons or hexagons or some other shape.

Then there are squares, a common polygon. Some of these can be turned into triangles by only working one or two repeats (flat knitting instead of circular).

You can put several squares (or hexagons or other shapes) together to form a multi-motif pattern. There are a lot of multi-motif patterns out there already. The multi-motif patterns can be any final shape you choose, depending on how you arrange the motifs. Needless to say, you can choose to do only one motif of a multi-motif pattern as a stand-alone doily.

Some patterns are rectangular or oval. Some of these are done in one piece, using various methods to achieve a rectangle or oval. Some ovals start with a central motif, then have wings added to the sides to make it oval.

Have I missed any of the common shapes? Triangles are not very common in doily patterns. They are great for shawls, though.

Variations

I already mentioned the variation where you can take one or two pattern repeats from a square and work them flat to make a triangular shawl. It depends on the pattern, but a lot of squares' charts go from corner to corner and thus are easy to adapt. (The Hyrna Herborgar shawl feels very much like a half-square triangle adaptation; it wouldn't be all that hard to turn it into a square. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that there is a square doily pattern out there that the Hyrna Herborgar designer used as the basis for the shawl.) You can knit the entire square as a flat pattern, too.

You can often (but not always) do something similar to circular and polygonal patterns. If the pattern repeat lines are straight, you can easily knit it flat. You can choose the same number of pattern repeats as the original pattern has, or you can choose to do more or fewer. A narrow border of garter or seed stitch will help keep the shawl from curling. If the edge of the pattern repeat is more variable or is in the middle of something important, it's harder to adapt.

Another thing you can do is to omit the central portion of a pattern. You can continue in the round, ending up with a poncho-like garment, or you can knit flat, ending up with a cape-like garment. Meg Swansen's Mananita pattern is like this. I've done that pattern and will share the photos at some point. There are also some other wonderful shawls out there that use this idea.

Marianne Kinzel's Azalea pattern

I was idly flipping through patterns, thinking about afghan possibilities. I tried to limit myself to patterns that were easily available, so that I could blog about them without having to frustrate the casual doily knitter. I'd already mentioned the Mommes Lysedug pattern and the Egleblad pattern as being good possibilities (see previous post for links to the patterns).

Marianne Kinzel's Azalea doily, from the First Book of Modern Lace Knitting, jumped out at me. The photo is at the right, hopefully around this point if the blogger preview thingy is not lying to me.

It has a lot of elements that would make it a good pattern to use for a lap blanket, an area rug, a shawl, a baby blanket, a facecloth, you name it.

Good points: It's a relatively solid fabric. It would look good in a variegated yarn with long color repeats, or a variegated yarn with relatively subtle color changes. It would look good if you choose to change yarn colors every now and then. It would look good at many scales, from very fine thread to very thick yarn.

Bad points: It's boring to knit. I've tried to knit it twice. The first time, I ran out of thread at a crucial point and unraveled it in frustration. The second time, I simply got bored and then was distracted by a different pattern. However, maybe it would be more fun in yarn than in thread. Also, my definition of boring is not the same as anyone else's.

However, there are some cool things about this pattern that make it ideal for shawls, lap blankets, and other variations.

It's expandable. Each of the doilies shown in the photo is exactly the same as the one smaller, except that it has one more leaf/petal motif per side.

Obviously, one can keep going, making the pattern larger and larger by adding more motifs. The pattern chart and instructions are already set up to do this. The largest version in the original pattern is only 62 rounds. That's a good size for an area rug or for a small lap afghan made with thick yarn. But it's a bit small for other purposes.

Each additional level of leaf/petal motifs adds 12 rounds to the doily. So, even if 62 rounds is too small for your purposes, 74 or 86 or 98 or 110 might be about right.

Each additional set of 12 rounds also adds 14 stitches per pattern repeat. That may eventually become an issue, leading to ruffling due to too many stitches per round. But I don't think it would be a problem for another few sets of leaves. You'll need to block it well in order to get the thing to lie flat. You'll find that you'll get a bit of extra diameter out of the pattern as the stitches get squished horizontally and thus grow vertically.

Given the large number of stitches per round, you could cut this pattern down to 5 or possibly even 4 pattern repeats and still do OK. Do you like it as a pentagon? A square? Those could be increased to a much larger size without having to worry about too many stitches.

You could turn this into a flat-knit shawl. Do you like it as a hexagon? A pentagon? A square? A triangle (made from one or two pattern repeats)? A half-hexagon hexagon? An overlapping octagon (more than circular works fine for a flat shawl)? You could omit the center motif and start with enough stitches for the second or third level of leaves.

The pattern ends with a relatively flat edge. You can add something beyond that to make a more interesting finish. You could finish the half-leaves while putting little fans or plain stockinette between each leaf. You could transition to a totally different lace pattern. You could add a sideways-knit lace edging to finish off.

If you google terms such as kinzel and azalea, you'll see a few versions of this pattern, some done as shawls. Here's Rosemarie Buchanan's shawl, done flat as a cape-style pattern. Here's Schmeebot's shawl, with its interesting technique for finishing those last leaf motifs.

I am very tempted to try this pattern as a shawl or lap blanket. I don't know if I have a reasonable batch of yarn in my stash, though. I could go shopping for suitable yarn, of course. I'd probably do it as a circular-knit hexagon, just like the pattern, and continue for another few levels of leaf/petal motifs.

By tomorrow or next week, I will no doubt be entranced with a totally different idea.

Egleblad (a Christine Duchrow classic)

2007-10-05T16:34:00.000-06:00

This is the famous Egleblad doily. You can find the English translation on Nurhanne's site here. Egleblad means something like oak leaf, which is probably a reference to the leaf-like motifs in the outer rounds.

The doilies on that portion of Nurhanne's site are actually designs by Christine Duchrow, a talented early doily designer. Her works are in the public domain. The Egleblad doily is the first pattern in pamphlet 64 in Volume III of the Lacis compilation of her patterns. Volume III has the most doilies, in case you were wondering.

I knit this doily years ago. (It needs re-blocking after being stuffed in a drawer for so long.) I don't know exactly what I used, but I'd guess #10 cotton and 2mm needles. If I were to do it again, I'd use finer thread or larger needles to get a more open fabric.

Actually, that's not true at all. Because I am thinking of doing it again, but as a lap afghan.

I did the Mommes Lysedug pattern as a small shawl or lap afghan around the same time as I did the Egleblad as a traditional doily. It turned out great. It took about 748 yards of sport-weight wool yarn. This was good, because I only had 750 yards of yarn available. Someday I'll get a decent photo of it to share with everyone.

Anyway, there's been a lot of recent chatter on the various mailing lists about Jared's (aka brooklyntweed's) lovely adaptation of the Hemlock Ring doily into a lap afghan. There's even a KAL mailing list devoted to it. It reminds me yet again how satisfying the proper doily pattern can be when it's upsized. Facecloth, shawl, lap afghan, area rug... If you like to knit doilies, you'll look for any excuse to knit them, right?

No offense to those who love feather and fan, but it's not my first choice when something more interesting is available. I do have a couple of f&f patterns on my tentative to-do list, but they keep getting bumped by other projects. The Hemlock Ring doily, whether small or large, is not one of them.

So, what would make a good doily pattern to do as a lap afghan? I like the relative solidity of Jared's Hemlock Ring blanket. An open lace pattern is not as snuggly and is prone to snagging.

I don't want anything too enormous. This is a lap afghan, not a kingsize bedspread. Given a row gauge of roughly 5-7 rows/rounds per inch, I'm probably looking for something in the 75-150 round range, preferably at the lower end. I can add edgings or another motif or something to smaller patterns if necessary.

The pattern has to look nice and show up well when knit in a thicker yarn. It's not as critical as a shawl, where I'd prefer not to look like I'm wearing a tablecloth. However, the decorative elements of the pattern have to look good at the gauge I'd be using.

The Egleblad would work.

So would a lot of other patterns. Clearly, I'll have to go through my pattern collection and my yarn stash to identify some good candidates. This is such a hardship. The things I do for my addiction.

However, I am a good little lemming and find the prospect of a warm doily/blanket project for fall to be very enticing. Will it happen? We shall see. I'd like to finish one of my other projects before I start anything new.

The Well-Tempered Drop Spindle

2007-10-04T12:57:00.000-06:00

I've been in the mood to spin on my spindle lately. The above is the result. It's the contents of a Snohomish Custom Carding Mill grab bag bought long ago at a fiber fair of some sort. I love these little grab bags. They consist of 6-12 blobs of roving, all somewhat different. There's usually some wool, a bit of mohair and alpaca, and a bunch of interesting blends. The colors are fun. The quality is high. The roving is well blended, drafts very evenly, and has very little VM.

This particular bag had 13 blobs of roving. It tended heavily to blues and purples, obviously. I've been grabbing a bit of roving and spinning at odd moments. Each blob got self-plied into a 2-ply yarn. I have about 30-50 yards of each 2-ply yarn. Dunno what I'll do with them. I have an idea about a hat that these might be used for.

Here's a photo of my favorite kind of spindle. My cats have helpfully moved into the photo to give a sense of scale (and to see if the spindle is secretly a cat toy).

Yes, it's a CD spindle. I love CD spindles. I've been spinning on them for close to a decade.

Why do I like them so much? Two main reasons: balance and momentum. It's a very well-balanced type of spindle. Slight adjustments to the CD whorl can fix any little problems.

The momentum is awesome. One quick whirl down my leg, and the spindle will spin for as long as I need. I reach down and stop it when I've drafted as much length as I can, and it's still spinning. It spins wicked fast, too. Even a finger-twirl will give me enough of a fast spin to draft out a meter or more of fiber into yarn.

Another reason I like the CD spindle is because it seems like the epitome of a modern ethnic tool, something quickly made from materials easily found in one's local environment. Dowels, grommets, screw-eye hooks, and spare AOL CDs are a lot easier to find than traditional ethnic materials such as sticks, carved gourds, big beads, and shaped wood.

True, these are not works of beauty compared to many of the gorgeous and useful spindles one can buy from deserving vendors. However, the incredible functionality of this tool makes it a very worthwhile piece of spinning equipment.

I have several CD spindles. They're easy to crank out. I have a few tucked away with various larger spinning projects. Some are used for traveling (the whorl comes off the spindle for portability). Some hang out with the other spinning tools, ready and waiting to be used for the next spindle project.

A lot of the CD spindle directions I see online and in print look like they make clunky and heavy spindles compared to mine, or maybe it's a difference in spinning preferences. Mine are made from dowels that are about 1/4" to 5/16" in diameter. They are roughly 14" long, give or take a bit. I use two CDs. The balance seems best when the CDs are a few inches below the hook.

Over the years, I've broken any number of whorls. Luckily, my environment provides many replacements. The shafts are getting very smooth, some combination of spinning oils and the polish developed through long use.

In general, if I have a few ounces of roving, I'll use the spindle. If I have more than that, I'll use the wheel. There are exceptions, of course. Also, I spun exclusively on a spindle for many years before I bought a wheel.

Here are some samples of yarn I've spun on my spindles. I'm tempted to call them Yarn Porn.

This first one is finer than it looks. It's Targhee, from Mountain Colors, in the Northern Lights colorway. I bought it and spun it years ago. I have about 2400 yards of yarn. I can't remember if I have 4 ounces or 8 ounces of yarn, but either way, it's relatively fine.

When I decided it was time to spin the roving, I stripped it lengthwise into 16 long and skinny lengths of roving. Each was spun separately. This way, the color lengths were fairly short and each skein had a similar sequence of colors. I wanted to maximize the variegation. I loved spinning it. I love the bright colors.

It's in singles form right now. Some day I'll decide what to do with it... Ply with another yarn? Self-ply into a 2-ply? Navajo 3-ply? Use as a singles? Until I decide, it will sit in my stash. I take it out to admire every now and then.

I have another 8 ounce batch of roving from these folks in the Sagebrush colorway. I'll probably do that one on the wheel. I probably will spin from the one long piece of roving. That way, I'll have long color repeats instead of short ones. I might very well 2-ply it, though I never know for sure until the inspiration strikes.

The yarn on the right is llama. I won it as a door prize at some fiber show many years ago. I only had an ounce or two on a small cone. It was another fun thing to spin. I ended up with over 700 yards of genuinely laceweight yarn. It seems like a shame to ply it. It's enough for a small shawl. The last bits of roving were darker than the first bits, something which was not at all visible when I first started to spin it. I wonder if that's why it was donated as a door prize, but that's a rather uncharitable thought.

I had another photo or two to share, but they're not as well-focused as the above two are. I'll re-shoot the photos and inflict them on everyone in the next Yarn Porn session.

Here are some applicants for my next spindle project -- several blobs of dyed roving. Every now and then I get together with friends and we have a dye day. We take a real Mad Scientist approach to dyeing and end up with beautiful results. Even the un-beautiful results are interesting, and look much better after a dip into a different dyepot. The photo below shows some of the results of our last dye day. The yarn is a light gray Romney. Some of these might be spun on the wheel, though they're about the right size for a good spindle project.

Yeah, we did a lot of red and purple that day. It looks good with the light gray roving. I wasn't sure that yellow shades would work as well. I also like the greens, blues, and the bright orange. Although it's hard to tell from the photo, one of the blobs is a beautiful deep teal. I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks as a yarn. Ditto for all the others.

And now it's time to publish. I have a doily to knit! Not to mention all the other fun fiber projects, plus all the non-fiber obligations.

We shall see if blogger puts the photos in the same place where they appear in my preview. If not, I'll be doing some editing and rearranging.

A Short Discourse on Needle Sizes

2007-10-03T09:11:00.000-06:00

Old patterns and incomprehensible needle/thread sizes

Marie asked about some of the needle sizes listed on old patterns. In particular, she wrote, "I've never heard of size 14 knitting needles."

One of the interesting things about old doily patterns are the needle sizes and threads they call for. They often do not correspond to modern American sizes or the modern millimeter size standards.

Here is a chart listing old English, American, and millimeter equivalents.

In general, for the old English sizes, the English size plus the American size will equal 14. So, subtract the English size from 14 to get the American size. Size 14 knitting needles will be an modern American size #0, or a 2mm needle.

This isn't fool-proof, but it gets you in the right area. The English sizing system will show up in patterns published in the UK, from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The old US dpn sizing system is similar to the old UK system, but not exactly. (Please don't run away screaming!) Marianne Kinzel says that the UK 14 is equivalent to a US 13 steel dpn, and that the UK 13 is a US 12 in dpn's and either a 1 or 2 in US circular sizes (I can't remember offhand, though there may not be an exact equivalent US circular size).

This Wikipedia article lists Japanese sizes as well as the US/UK/metric sizes.

Some old foreign-language patterns use needle sizes that I haven't figured out at all. What is a 2/0, for example? Is it 2mm? #00? Something totally different? What if the only needle size given is "a set of brass needles"? If the thread recommended is something like "fine crochet thread", that doesn't really give any further hints.

For some of the old German needle sizes, Catherine Kehr posted the following to a mailing list: "Ages ago I asked someone about the N/0 sizing, they said it was an old wire gauge system, that 0/0 would be .5mm and 8/0 would be around 2.5mm." She was interested in getting more information about it, so don't assume any of us know what we're talking about!

I should look through some of my older stuff in French, Italian, and Spanish to see how they approach matters. The publisher and the age of the publication all seem to have an effect on what terminology is used for needle size.

Since the title of this post is "a short discourse..." I will not continue further. It's an interesting topic, though. I'll look through my pattern collection and report on the results. It will be a limited sample set, though. I don't have a lot of really old doily patterns (pre-WWI), and I don't have a lot of old, foreign-language, non-doily patterns. I haven't been able to find anything online or in the library that includes a detailed history of knitting needle sizes in different countries and different eras.

How to deal with old patterns' needle and thread sizes

The way I deal with it is: I ignore them.

Some threads available today are pretty much the same as the ones called for in old patterns. Some aren't. Also, sometimes I'm not in the mood to do a large doily in thread thinner than sewing thread. Maybe I want to turn a pattern into a shawl, or I'd rather use a particular thread that isn't the same as a pattern. Or I don't know what thread is meant by the description.

The other big factor is personal. How tight or loose do you knit? How gauzy or solid do you like your lace to be? Those have such a huge influence on how you match the thread and needle size.

It can vary, too. In fine thread, maybe you want a very gauzy piece. If you were to do the same pattern as a shawl or an area rug, you might want a much firmer fabric, with the holes correspondingly smaller to minimize snagging.

So. What do you do? You experiment.

When I first started out knitting doilies, I picked a small 24-round pattern. I knit it several times. First, I used the same thread but changed needle sizes. Then, I did something similar with different thread sizes. After a while, you start understanding what needle size you need to use to get the kind of lace fabric you like with different thread weights.

As I continued knitting, I gained yet more experience. Sometimes I thought a doily was too tight or too gauzy, and would use that information the next time. Sometimes I would deliberately try something different, and thus would learn something I hadn't previously known.

Now that I have plenty of experience, I have a pretty good idea about which needle/thread combos I like and don't like. I still experiment and still continue to learn.

One really great thing about lace knitting is that it tends to look wonderful at a whole lot of different gauges and fabric densities.

If you've never done it before

If you are totally new to doily knitting, you can try using the pattern's recommendations (if you can figure them out). Or, you can ask others for recommendations. This only works if your knitting style is similar to the style of the people giving the recommendations.

In general, you want to choose a needle that is a few sizes larger than what you would use for stockinette. Most knitters already knit with yarn, so that makes it easy to select an appropriate needle size for the first round of swatching. If you don't knit with thread, though, it can be harder to make that initial choice.

I am a very loose knitter, so my usual choices are too small for most people.

I looked at the thread and needle choices different people mentioned for the BlätterspitzenKAL. Thread sizes ranged from #10 to #80. (No one chose to do it in thick yarn for use as an area rug.) Needle sizes ranged from 1.5mm to about 3mm. The larger threads tended to use the larger needles, but it wasn't perfectly consistent. So that might give you a place to start.

If you're using #10 crochet thread, try a 2mm needle if you're a very loose knitter, anything from 2.5mm to 3.5mm if you're a more average or a tight knitter. For #20 thread, the range I see is 2mm to 2.75mm. For #30, 2mm to 2.5mm were the sizes mentioned, though I've used 1.5mm with good results. Even the #80 thread was worked with 2mm, to give a very open fabric.

Until recently, no one made #00 (1.75mm) circular needles. So, you won't see that choice mentioned very often. Now that a few manufacturers make them, you'll start to see them being used.

You can, of course, do a rough block on your doily when it's only partway done. You can evaluate your needle/thread combo to see if you like the contrast between the open and solid parts of the lace. If you like it, keep going. If you don't like it, adjust your needle size accordingly. You can either rip and re-do, or change needle sizes at that point and keep going. Use your judgment to decide which to do.

Some people deliberately change needle sizes as they knit the doily. Some will do the center in smaller needles, then shift upward about 1/4 of the way through the doily. Some will change needle sizes at potential problem areas, where the motifs arrangements shift dramatically. Others systematically go up several times, looking for that "more-than-circular" effect popularized in the XRX Knitters Best of Shawls and Scarves book.

Potential complications

Some old patterns do not have a regular increase pattern. The number of stitches per round can vary quite wildly. This can create binding issues when you block the item. Some of us have speculated that the very fine threads and loose gauges of the past helped to compensate for this problem.

Other patterns have zillions of stitches per round, way more than seems necessary. Again, getting the finished item to block flat can be a problem. My speculation on this issue is that it's a way to get loose, gauzy fabrics to look more solid in areas where they're supposed to be solid. It's probably more of an issue with the modern preferences for thicker threads and more solid fabrics. There are a couple of other possibilities for why some patterns have so freaking many stitches per round, but I won't go into my other speculations for now.

A third potential complication is if you're knitting a shawl. When I use a thicker yarn, I tend to want a more substantial fabric. I want the holes to be smaller in comparison to the rest of the pattern, and I want the solid areas to look relatively solid. I like drapy fabrics, but I don't want to put a huge amount of effort into something that will snag on the first wearing. So I tend to choose a relatively smaller needle for the lace than I would if it were done in thread. This can exacerbate potential binding issues. So, when I knit a shawl, I try to minimize potential difficulties by choosing patterns that I think will work well. I'll probably babble on about that topic in some future blog post.

Is everyone asleep now?

Here's a photo of that first doily pattern I knit. It's the Rose Petal coaster pattern in the Coats Dazzling Doilies to Knit booklet, which goes in and out of print. The doily is something like 24 rounds. The patterns are given in text only, but no one has ever reported any errors. There are roughly 8-10 patterns in the booklet, ranging from 24 to 130-ish rounds.

I don't remember when I knit this particular version of the doily. I don't know what thread and needle size I used, though my guess would be either #10 or #20 thread and 2mm needles. It's a cute little thing, very quick and easy. It's a good pattern for a beginning doily knitter.

At some point, I'll do my standard discourse on good choices for beginning doily knitters. But not today.

First Monday in October

2007-10-01T10:40:00.000-06:00

October 1. Yikes, the year is zooming by!

However, we did manage to make it all the way to October before turning on the heat for the winter. We're probably going to have to give in tonight. Passive solar doesn't work on cloudy, windy, chilly days. Another cold front is due to arrive tonight. Warm shawls and cuddly cats only go so far.

Blätterspitzen

This doily was called Blätterspitzen in the issue of Lena magazine in which it appeared. (There's an umlaut over the a -- blatterspitzen -- in case it decides not to show up for some reason.) I have it in a couple of other formats, though it does not have a name in those versions. The Lena magazine even credited it to Herbert Niebling. I had wondered about that. The doily contains several stitch patterns and motifs that Niebling often used, but in a format that wasn't definitively his. I didn't know if it came from his design house or if it was a pastiche, created by someone who wanted to design something in a similar style. It's good to see a definitive credit.

Every version of the doily I've seen is slightly different. Maybe the center is a little different, maybe a chart symbol was interpreted differently, maybe the cast-off was different. The photos that accompany the patterns are sometimes different from the charts! I find this fascinating. Is there some Ur-Blätterspitzen in some old, obscure, very out-of-print source, and all of the more modern republications re-interpret it? Or were several slightly different versions of the pattern sold to different publications, and the newer versions simply republish from the original source they have rights to?

My version is different from the published version, too. The original pattern (all versions) finished with several rounds of stockinette stitch. I decided to quit at the last non-stockinette pattern round. If I had planned ahead, I could have done it more gracefully, but I like it well enough the way it is. Another minor difference is my use of directional double decreases instead of only using the one called for in the chart. (Someday I'll blog about context-based stitch variants for chart symbols.)

The Blätterspitzen doily was a summer KAL project on one of the lace mailing lists. That was a fine excuse for me to do it. If you look around, you can find photos of this doily in a lot of blogs and websites. After Lena published it (in the 09/06 issue, I believe), a lot of people knit it. One of the KAL people is putting together a blog to record the KAL and display pretty pictures. Once it's up and running, I'll share the URL for it.

I like seeing how different people have approached the pattern. It looks great with the stockinette framing. Different people used different materials and gauges, blocked it differently, and so on. One person didn't like one of the motifs and substituted a totally different one. Her version is lovely, too. No one chose to use thick yarn or twine and do it as an area rug, alas. I think it would work well for that.

Blätterspitzen means something like leaf tips or leaf lace. There are a lot of doilies with similar names. It's hard to come up with a good, unique, descriptive name for a doily. Some doilies have several names, while others have none.

My photo is somewhat out of focus. Drat! What I like best about it is the differing textures of the different motifs, and the way that the shapes combine and seem to intersect each other.

It was fun to knit. If you've never knit Niebling patterns before, you'll find it educational. The doily is almost like a series of mini-lessons on Niebling techniques. It's not a good doily for a beginner, though any determined knitter could accomplish it. It's a nice challenge and a good learning experience for the intermediate doily knitter. An experienced doily knitter will enjoy encountering familiar motifs in an unfamiliar arrangement. Fun and excitement start very soon after the cast-on.

Now I get to cast on for the list's fall KAL, the Frosted Ferns doily. It's another Niebling pattern, larger than Blätterspitzen. I'll cast on sometime this week.

In a somewhat related rant, I am finding it more and more difficult to acquire good doily-knitting threads from local sources. Even places that carried them a few years ago no longer have anything finer than #10, if they carry them at all. Soon I'm going to have to do an internet order to replenish my stock of certain thread sizes. This is too bad. I like being able to fondle the stuff in person, admiring the colors as I make my selection. I like being able to patronize a local store. Oh, well. Doily-knitting is an odd little perversion. Perhaps the local population isn't quite enough to support the market. I could probably find a decent source if I were willing to go 50-100 miles from home. However, at some point, the costs of sales tax and gas prices and driving time each way versus shipping costs and one-click shopping from home make it an impractical choice.

I'm going to use DMC Cebelia #30 cotton thread for this doily. My stash choices are light blue, dark red, and ecru. I'll probably choose ecru. The brighter colors I have don't seem quite right for a doily with leaf and acorn motifs. I think one 50g ball of #30 should work. It's between 550 and 600 yards. I don't feel comfortable with #20, which is somewhere between 400 and 500 yards. If I were to do this as a shawl (it's big enough for a small shawl!), I'd want 800-1000 yards of sportweight yarn.

I'll blog my progress here as well as on the mailing list where the KAL is taking place. I don't usually take part in KAL's, but I make an occasional exception for doilies.

Weekend Photos

2007-09-30T20:07:00.000-06:00

The above photo is what I've been seeing from my driveway these past few days.

The small photo to the left shows one of the trees with its mix of yellow and green leaves. The small photo to the right is a close-up of the leaves. I love the way the leaf margins and veins are golden while the interior is still green. In a day or two, the leaf margins will go brown. Some leaves never do this. They just turn yellow. Or they turn in a more splotchy manner.

I live in a rural area, obviously. It's very peaceful most of the time. Most of the trees you see in the top photo are evergreens, with Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine predominating. At this altitude, the aspen groves are the most conspicuous deciduous tree.

I don't know if it's my ISP or blogger, but it took several tries to get these photos uploaded. Is it a Sunday night thing? An end-of-the-month thing?

My attempts to take decent photos of fiber and fiber-ish objects did not fare as well as the above driveway photos. This is something I'll need to work on. I'm sure that taking the photos outdoors would help, but it was too windy today.

The yarn from the Hyrna Herborgar shawl continues to look like an out-of-focus brown blob. I suspect I'm going to give up on that little photography project.

Here is a photo of the Lacy Cables shawl from yesterday, totally unblocked, of course. The photo is not as well-focused as I'd like. You can see that progress has been made. The undulations created by the cabling are very obvious. My yarn's variegation is subtle but pleasant, I think. It looks better in reality than in a poorly done photograph. I've done about 5 pattern repeats so far. The original pattern calls for almost 12 repeats. I might do that. If I have enough yarn, I might do a few more repeats and make the shawl a bit longer. We shall see.

What else should I share today? I took photos of dyed strips of roving and of pretty yarn spun from previously dyed roving. I'll save that for some future post. I have some shots of pretty yarn dyed by others yet spun by me, along with some natural-colored yarn in pretty colors grown by the animals themselves.

This blog post has enough photos already. I don't want to overwhelm the people with slower internet connections. Yarn photos can wait until I'm in the mood to babble about spinning and dyeing.

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We had cool and frosty weather this morning. I got to wear my wristers for the first time this fall. Wristers are also known as fingerless mitts, wrist warmers, and pulse warmers. I enjoy knitting quick and easy wristers from combinations of yarn remnants. They make good gifts. They're fun to wear. They're fun to make. They provide a good opportunity to experiment with color and texture combinations.

These wristers are not great in the wind or if you already have cold hands, but they work very well if your hands are still non-frigid and you're out of the wind. They're also more effective when the air is a bit nippy rather than wicked cold.

I'm going to share the pattern I use for these Rapid Wristers (or should that be Wrapid Wristers?), but not until later this week. Until then, here's a rather dim photo of a few pairs of wristers I happen to have lying about the house, along with a very out-of-focus shot of a wrister on someone's hand. I'll have better photos by the time I write it up, I hope.

As usual, I will give a basic pattern with a few rambling digressions in the middle, and then add a few variations and ideas that seem related. I might even add the mitten pattern that builds on this. Someday I may give some patterns or recipes for more complex wristers. However, these are the ones I've been happiest with in the past few years. The ratio of effort to results is very much in its favor.

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Ugh. The preview option in the blogger new-post window does not look much like the final version of the post. Edit, publish, edit, rearrange, wave arms in rude gesture and try again.

Weekend Roundup

2007-09-29T09:42:00.000-06:00

I love the tracker thingy at the USP website. After I mail-order something, I can watch in fascination and increasing anticipation as the item slowly makes its way towards me.

I live out in the boonies. There are several different scenarios for how a UPS item reaches me.

1. The wonderful UPS people deliver it to my doorstep. This is my favorite, obviously.

2. The semi-wonderful UPS people deliver it to my mailbox. My mailbox is a few miles away, on a paved rural highway.

3. The UPS people keep it in their truck for a day or two until they get around to delivering it. They're allowed to do that kind of stuff in rural areas, apparently.

4. The silly UPS people decide that I don't exist, and put the item into limbo in some storage warehouse until I can track it down and convince them that I really do exist and my address really is valid.

Yesterday, they chose option 2. I wanted that package. So, I headed out after dark to get it.

Getting toys in the mail is so much fun.

What was in it? Nothing too major, really. A few books, on lace knitting and on braiding. A #00 (1.75mm) circular needle, which is a beast that hasn't existed until recently. The braiding books and the circular needle were the most exciting.

I might do a few book reviews later. For now, I want to read the books and think about them while I form some opinions. First impressions are important, but not always complete.

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A commenter on the Hyrna Herborgar post asked about the handspun I used.

She wrote:

"Wow, that's handspun?? That is lovely. You must spin a VERY even thread.

"I have the book but haven't knit from it yet. I did see that a lot of people are enjoying knitting the Hyrna. Maybe me too?"

Thank you for commenting, Lynda! You are my very first commenter, and I appreciate it.

Yes, it's really handspun. Yes, it's fairly even. It's not perfect, but plying and knitting hide a lot of imperfections.

I've been spinning for many years. Experience helps. I'm not sure how many miles of yarn I've spun, but it's a lot.

However, the single thing that makes the biggest difference in how even a particular yarn turns out is fiber preparation. A smooth, VM-free, nep-free, easy-drafting roving makes it easy to achieve a smooth, even yarn. Compacted, VM- and nep-filled, hard-to-draft roving makes it easy to achieve a lumpy, bumpy yarn. I like both styles of yarn.

In general, I don't bother to fight the roving. I usually spin for fun and relaxation rather than for a specific project. The easy-drafting rovings are a lot more fun to spin than crummy roving. One of the ways I've acquired experience over the years is by spinning both.

Sometimes when I dye things, I get a bit too enthusiastic with the admiration during the dyeing process. The roving can get a bit compacted (that's a euphemism for "half-felted"). Or, if roving sits in my stash, it can sometimes start to felt itself from variations in temperature and humidity. Grab bag rovings and clean-the-carder rovings (or batts) are also likely to vary in spinnability. I spin them all. Why not? Life's too short to spin utter junk, of course. But if you're having fun and like the resulting yarn, you don't have to always spin a perfectly even yarn from perfect roving.

I know that many spinners have already figured out all of the above (or have their own philosophies tempered by experience), but I thought I'd blather about it anyway.

And yes, you should knit the Hyrna Herborgar shawl. It would be a good way to dive into the wonderful world of knitting from foreign-language sources. The shawl is not very big. The chart is easy to follow. And the result looks very impressive for the amount of effort it takes. You don't want all the other lemmings to laugh at you for your excellent self-control, do you? Follow the herd! Knitting the Hyrna Herborgar shawl is much better than diving off the nearest cliff.

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After I'd been knitting for a while, I decided that my diagonal garter stitch scarf was going to end up being too long. So, I'm on the second incarnation of it. Same yarn, same needles, same basic pattern.

It's wider now. I hope my calculations about final length will be about right.

I got tired of the backwards loop increase, and I got tired of having to pay attention at the beginning and end of every other row.

So, this version is the Really Mindless Diagonal Scarf variation. There's an increase row: k1, kfb, k to end (kfb is the "knit in front and back of stitch"increase). There's a decrease row: k1, k2tog, k to end. I cast on 3 stitches, as before. I then did increase rows until the scarf was wide enough, I'm now alternating increase and decrease rows until the scarf is long enough, and then I'll do decrease rows until it's done.

I find this more satisfying as a travel project now. I'll try to take a photo this weekend to share. However, it's going to look a lot like the first one except for a slight variation in width. I still like the way diagonal garter stitch looks with this particular variegated yarn.

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I am continuing to make progress on my Lacy Cables stole/shawl. I'm close to 1/3 done, I think. I'm on the second ball of yarn. It too needs another in-progress photo. I think it looks better and better the more I do of it. The underlying stitch patterning becomes more dominant as the shawl gets bigger. It's going to look great after blocking.

I am not making much progress on my poor sweater. I'm still working on the last sleeve. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do a raglan yoke with a plain crew neck after sleeves and body are united.

One of the lace mailing lists is starting a KAL this weekend, of the Herbert Niebling Frosted Ferns doily pattern, which I have mentioned in some earlier posts. That will be by next doily project. My stash of #30 cotton is getting low. Either I find something when I run errands today, or I use a deep red thread for the doily.

The pattern is about 115-120 rounds. There are 6 pattern repeats per round. I'm pretty sure that one 50g ball of #30 cotton will be sufficient. I don't think one 50g ball of #20 cotton would be sufficient. If I were to knit it as a shawl, I'd probably want 900-1000 yards of sport-weight yarn. I like this pattern better as a cloth than as clothing, so I'll knit it as a doily instead of a shawl. It should keep me entertained for the next month or two.

Our cooler weather has me wanting to cast on another project or two -- maybe another hat, or some mittens, or more socks. We shall see. In the meantime, I am working on the above, interspersed with spinning. My new braid books may inspire me to drag out the maru-dai and/or braiding disk to share with everyone.

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Note to self: take photos of all items mentioned above!

How hard can it be to take a photo of a ball of yarn, after all? It doesn't move, unlike cats and squirrels. So far, though, all attempts to get a clear, in-focus photo have failed. This blog is meant to be a learning experience. I will master the art of taking photos of inanimate objects one of these days.

If my driveway photos turn out well, I'll share those, too. The aspens have decided that fall is here and thus it's time to turn yellow and drop all their leaves. Carol Lee claims that the yellow aspen leaves of fall give the best yellows from aspens (for natural dyeing). I keep meaning to test that claim. Somehow I don't think this will be the year I do it, but you never know. In any case, my driveway vista is especially pretty this week.

Fun with String

2007-09-27T10:15:00.002-06:00

So. I was jonesing for a doily fix. I reached into my doily thread stash (very small, just one shopping bag) and pulled out some thread. LBH #40 tatting cotton? Where the heck did that come from? I have no memory of acquiring this.

But it looked interesting. 20 grams, about 250 yards, a cordonnet-style cotton, off-white.

Now that the thread was chosen, I needed to select a suitable pattern. It couldn't be too big, because I only had 20 grams.

A few minutes of inspecting the pattern stash (which takes up far more space than the thread stash), and I decided on this lovely doily in an old MEZ pamphlet. There are three related doilies in MEZ 7105: a square, a small circle, and a larger circle. I decide on the larger circle. It has 12 pattern repeats and is about 62 rounds. It's cute. I think it's quite possibly a Niebling pattern, because it has a few of his typical touches and it was in a MEZ pamphlet and the small square is in one of the Burda lace-knitting specials. In other words, a lot of speculation leads me to the conclusion, but it is not entirely unreasonable.

The above doily is the result. It's MEZ 7105-C. It was fun to knit. I write that a lot. However, not all doilies are fun to knit. Some are beautiful even though they are tedious at times. It's a bit of a bonus when the doily is fun to knit as well as giving lovely results.

This was the first time in a while that I'd used a fairly fine cordonnet thread. I hadn't remembered how much I enjoyed working with it. A typical cordonnet thread used for doily knitting (and other lace) is often referred to as a "tightly twisted 6-ply." It actually has a cabled construction. The thread is made of 3 plies of cotton. Each of the three plies is a 2-ply cotton, plied in the opposite direction from the final ply direction. The resulting thread is very crisp and provides good stitch definition. It is also a tactile pleasure to use.

Interestingly, I don't think I can tell the difference in the final, blocked doily. It looks great, of course. It's different from softly-twisted 2-ply cottons. However, I'm not sure it's all that much different from a tightly-twisted 3-ply cotton such as DMC Cebelia.

There was enough thread left over to do another doily. I chose Marianne Kinzel's Marigold pattern (from ANP 5). I only had enough thread for the smaller Marigold doily, 34 rounds and 6 pattern repeats. It's a cute little doily, though I could stand to block it better when I get a chance. I'll have to do the larger Marigold doily one of these days.

I enjoyed working with the LBH tatting thread. I might have to track down more. I sure wonder how it got into my stash. As far as I know, no local store carries it. Oh, well. I have to rely on mail order for most of my fiber perversions. The local places mostly cater to the conventional knitting crowd.

Hyrna Herborgar aka the Lemming shawl from the Icelandic shawl book

2007-09-26T13:37:00.000-06:00

This is a terrible photo of the lovely Hyrna Herborgar shawl from the Icelandic shawl book, Three-Cornered and Long Shawls, by Sigridur Halldórsdóttir (translation by Marilyn van Keppel). The Hyrna Herborgar shawl is one of the most popular shawls in the book. Lots and lots of people have made it -- here are a few more. (I could have kept going for quite a while...) I feel rather like a lemming, following the crowd, except that it really is a fun shawl and how could I resist?

I will upload a better photo if and when I manage to take one. The shawl turned out rather larger than I had expected, and thus it's hard to get the whole thing in one shot without too much distortion.

Here's a close-up of the center. It shows most of the relevant details. I've tried to take a photo of the yarn, but have so far failed quite miserably. It's brown. It's slightly fuzzy yet appealingly shiny. It's fairly fine. You can use your imagination from there.

This shawl was tremendously fun to knit. It doesn't take much yarn, though the amount given in the book seems a bit low. It's quick to knit. I finished it in only a few weeks of casual knitting, interspersed with several other projects. The lace patterning is easy yet interesting and effective. It's stockinette based, which requires purling back on the wrong-side rows. The lace ladders, diamonds, and fans are popular lace motifs that show up in a lot of other knitted lace designs.

The pattern chart is easy to follow if you've done much knitting from non-English-language lace-knitting charts. The pattern translation is competent and complete. Marilyn van Keppel gives you all the relevant information about each pattern and the general knitting notes.

As most who knit it find out, the Hyrna Herborgar shawl often requires more yarn than the pattern claims. I found this out the hard way, when my first attempt reached the halfway point in the yarn before the halfway point in the shawl. OK, on to Plan B with a different batch of yarn... My second and final version ended up using somewhere between 500 and 600 yards. Most people say that the shawl is fairly small, but mine ending up blocking a lot larger than I expected. I am small, but the point is still below my butt.

The best part about this shawl, for me, was using my own handspun for it. Every time I knit with my handspun, I fall in love with my handspun all over again. It's sappy, but I can't help it. The stuff I used was some kind of mystery wool roving bought from a friend, maybe 4 ounces of shiny brown wool. I had about 600-650 yards of two-ply. It wasn't the most perfect yarn in the world, but it was mine.

It's so satisfying to have a project come together like that. The yarn was perfect for the project, and the project was fun to knit.

This shawl is very doily-like in its sensibilities. If you like knitting doilies, you'd probably enjoy knitting this shawl. If you like knitting this shawl, you may very well enjoy knitting doilies. At the very least, you'd probably enjoy converting appropriate doily patterns into shawl patterns.

This shawl ended up needing more blocking than I usually give lace shawls. Pinning it out really opened up the lace and hugely increased the size of the shawl. It ended up being larger than even my largest doily-blocking board. I put a bunch of cardboard boxes and pieces next to each other to get the entire thing pinned out. I didn't even block it all that hard, not compared to most cotton doilies.

Size Variations

For many people, the Hyrna Herborgar shawl does end up being a bit too small. While I was knitting it, I noticed several places where the shawl size could be increased. You could also use these ideas as starting points for totally different shawls using different kinds of patterns.

The shawl has three levels of motifs. The inner level is a series of feather-like motifs, formed by columns of a lace ladder stitch. The middle level is a background pattern of lace diamonds. The outer level consists of fans made from motifs that resemble the feather motifs. The fans are separated by diamond motifs that decrease with every row.

The first place where you can increase the size of the shawl is in the feather motif area. The shawl uses a fairly simple increase pattern that can continue indefinitely. It transitions quite easily to the middle diamond motif section with no further work. I can imagine a shawl that is nothing but feather motifs, or perhaps feathers that end at different levels instead of all on the same row.

The second place where you can increase the size of the shawl is in the diamond section. Again, the increase pattern is very simple and straightforward. The main thing about this particular shawl is that you need to stop the increasing at a point where you have the right multiple of diamonds to accommodate the outer fans. In this shawl, you need five diamonds between each fan. (And, for those of you who have the pattern, notice the slight kludge that occurs at the center of the final two rows.)

The diamond pattern by itself would make a wonderful shawl, either as a simple triangle or a half-square triangle or as a square. There's at least one like that in the Icelandic book. It's the cover pattern, a half-square triangle with color stripes and an outward-knit border to finish. I'd probably add a sideways-knit lace edging to finish instead of or in addition to an outward knit border.

The final place where one can increase the size of the shawl is in the outer fan motifs. There are two ways one can do this. The first way is to simply add more fan motifs. Continue increasing the diamond-lace section until there are 5 more diamonds per side for every fan motif you want to add (plus one more motif for the fan itself). The second way is to make the fan motifs deeper. Instead of having 5 diamonds between each fan motif, you can have 7 or 9. You'll have to make sure you have enough diamonds, of course. At some point, you may have stitch count issues if you make the fans too deep. But I think 7 or 9 should work.

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Here is the semi-obligatory shot of the shawl being modeled on a semi-willing subject. I'll upload something better when I can find a more willing subject and get a nicer photo.


Would I make this shawl again?  Sure!  Would I make others from the Icelandic lace book?  Yes!  I don't actually know what my next project from this book would be, though.  There is the group doing the knit-along with the Thórdís shawl pattern from Piecework.  That shawl is also in Three-Cornered and Long Shawls.  I like other patterns from the book better.  Since I have several other shawls I'd like to do first, I won't worry about it.

One of these days I'll do a brief book review of Three Cornered and Long Shawls.  Summary:  if you like shawls and if you like ethnic knitting patterns, you'll like this book.

Meet the WIPS: The Shawl

2007-09-25T11:49:00.000-06:00

This is another of my in-progress projects. It's a shawl. To be specific, it's the Lacy Cables Shawl from the inside back cover of the Fall 2001 issue of Knitters magazine (Issue 64, Cable Ready theme). The designer is the talented Gayle Roehm. I've been eyeing it ever since the issue came out. I finally matched yarn to pattern, ambition to energy, and cast on.

I usually have a shawl or two on the needles. I'm not sure why. In their own way, they are as addictive as doilies. Some are lacy, some are plain. Many are designed as stash-busters to use up yarn that didn't work for some other project.

XRX has its little "this is easy" logo on the pattern. They are correct. There's just enough interest to keep me going, without me ever really having to stop and think. The shawl is a rectangle. The lace pattern is a series of fagoted columns with occasional cables that cause the lace columns to undulate. Garter stitch borders frame the lacy cables and keep the shawl from curling.

Although this may seem complex at first glance, there is a soothing regularity to the stitch pattern that makes it easy to memorize, easy to keep track of, and easy to break up into small chunks of knitting.

I am using handspun for the project. I'm not totally sure what it is. Mostly wool, for sure, but I don't know much more than that. The color and style look like an Ashland Bay offering. It came in a grab bag a long time ago. I spun it up on my drop spindle a few years ago, getting well over 1000 yards from the 5-6 ounce blob of roving.

The yarn is variegated, mostly in shades of light browns and grays with a bit of yellow and cream every now and then. Most of the variegation is fairly subtle. I'm using it as a singles yarn rather than plying it.

I was a bit nervous about using singles, especially for an openwork pattern like this. I have heard the tales of biasing fabrics, breaking or drifting-apart yarn, and so on. However, so far, I am very pleased with how well the yarn is doing in this pattern. There are no problems with biasing. The yarn seems to be holding together well. I am deliberately working rather loosely, since I want a very open-looking shawl. It will be lightly blocked after I'm finished.

One concern I had with this particular yarn for this particular project is the vareigation. Would it obscure the lace? The cables? So far, the lace columns look just fine. The cables are somewhat obscured, both from the darker color and the variegation. It's OK enough. I like the undulation and am willing to put up with the cables to achieve it even if the cables aren't as well-defined as I'd like.

The first ball of yarn has been my prototype/swatch. Would I like the pattern? Would the knitting have a good rhythm to it so I wouldn't be too bored or driven nuts? Would the yarn work well with the cables and lace? Would I have enough to make a decent-sized shawl? So far, the answer to all of those questions is yes.

I have at least 3 or 4 shawls on my to-do list. A few are doily patterns that will work well as shawls if done in an appropriate yarn. Most are actual shawl patterns and/or ideas I'd like to play around with. I'll no doubt post about all this sometime in the future. You'll get to see and read about previous shawl projects, too.

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We had our first real frost last night, more or less on schedule. Fall is definitely here. I even needed to wear a scarf on a walk this morning. I used one of my moebius scarves. It's long enough and wide enough to go around my neck and then drape over my head and ears for extra warmth. One of the best things about cooler weather is the opportunity to wear my knitting.

Meet the WIPS: The Sweater

2007-09-24T19:15:00.000-06:00

This is a photo of my big project. It's a sweater. What you see here is most of a sleeve, a skein of yarn, and a wound ball of yarn.

It's been years since I've knit a sweater for myself. I've knit sweaters for others, but not myself. All my old hand-knit sweaters have gone to that great cedar chest in the sky. Even my store-bought sweaters are kind of ratty these days.

For the past year or two, I kept resolving to make myself a sweater. I kept getting distracted by doilies, shawls, and other non-sweater items.

But finally, about a month ago, I started.

Since it's been so long since I've done anything like this for myself, I'm keeping it simple. The sweater is going to be a plain Elizabeth Zimmermann percentage sweater. I had initially wanted to knit it top-down. However, I am paranoid about running out of yarn and decided that bottom-up would keep my options open if necessary.

(Hey, run out of yarn just once and you're paranoid for life.)

The yarn is handspun. It's actually the first batch of yarn I ever spun on a wheel. Before that, I only spun on a drop spindle. The roving was a fairly compacted, not very high quality Romney wool that I picked up somewhere or other. The wheel belonged to a friend who kindly loaned it to me over the winter so I could see if I wanted to buy myself a spinning wheel. So, all that long winter, I slowly spun up the big batch of roving on the borrowed wheel.

The yarn is inconsistent, fuzzy, inexpertly plied, and I love it anyway. It's a 2-ply, semi-longdraw kind of yarn, running approximately 100 yards per ounce, give or take a bit. I've known for a long time that it was going to be a sweater, and hopefully for me.

I've knit most of one sleeve and the body, and am more than halfway done with the second sleeve. I'll need to figure out exactly how long I want everything before I unite sleeves and body. And then I'll have to make a decision about what kind of yoke I want. Do I want a round yoke? Raglan? Saddle shoulder or hybrid? Crew neck or V-neck? Do I want to add color or stitch patterns to the yoke? (I keep reminding myself to Keep It Simple! Make a decision already!)

I call this the Ugly Gray Sweater because I simply want to get the freaking thing done. It's been so long since I've done a sweater for myself. I am so indecisive and easily distracted. I hope that it's more likely to get finished if I don't have very high expectations. If it fits and is warm, I will be happy with it.

I don't really think it's ugly, though it is rather plain. The cuffs and borders are seed stitch. The rest is plain old stockinette (so far). I am glad to see that my spinning was consistent from skein to skein. The transitions between skeins of yarn are imperceptible. Within each skein, there are variations in thickness. The fuzziness of the yarn hides a lot of imperfections.

The bottom of the sweater body is flipping up. Booger. It's my own damn fault. I knew that it could be an issue because I didn't change needle size or the number of stitches. I am hoping that blocking will take care of the problem. It has done so in the past for similar problems. If not, then I'll have to re-do the bottom. No big deal.

The knitting process is very enjoyable. I always love knitting with my handspun. I like the way the sweater fabric looks and feels. It makes good travel knitting when I'm not in the middle of shaping maneuvers. I'm pretty sure I'll have enough yarn to finish the sweater without having to improvise. My goal is to get it done before the cold weather really hits. It would help if I'd make a decision about what to do for the yoke. I'm stalling on that second sleeve as I dither.

After this gets done, I'll try to start another sweater for myself. I think I need more than one sweater in my wardrobe. The next one will probably be top-down. Unless my yarn paranoia overtakes me yet again.

Oh, and I did buy myself a wheel after the borrowed wheel went back home. I still use drop spindles, but it's nice to have a wheel for the big batches of roving and for the times when I want to sit and meditate while turning fluff into string.

Meet the WIPs: The Traveling Project (plus a scarf pattern)

2007-09-23T09:07:00.000-06:00

Not everything I do is a doily or even lace.

The photo on the left is my current traveling project. It's a scarf. It's perfect for boring meetings and waiting in traffic and long phone calls and so on.

I'm using some yarn from the stash. As you may be able to tell from the photo, it's a variegated yarn with short color repeats. I've tried using it in several other projects, but was never quite satisfied with how it was turning out. I think I like the way this looks so far.

The scarf is about two feet long now. After I use one skein of the yarn, I'll have a better idea about the final length. If I think it's going to be too long or too short, I'll unravel and start over, making it wider or narrower as needed. Hey, it's travel knitting -- so what if I get to knit part of it twice? It will be even better the next time.

After almost all the yarn is used up, the scarf will be done.

The pattern? It's a plain old diagonal garter stitch.

Diagonal Garter Stitch Scarf

Pick some suitable yarn. You'll want a few hundred yards, depending on your preferred scarf size (length and width) and on the yarn you're using. This particular scarf is going to be close to 400 yards long and made from a DK to worsted weight yarn, because that's what I've got. There's no need to use variegated yarn, of course.

Pick a needle size to match the yarn. It's a scarf; who cares about the gauge? You will want a suitable fabric, though, not too stiff and not too sleazy. (Sounds like what you'd look for in a date, right?)

Cast on 3 stitches.

First row: Increase at the beginning and end of the row, knitting all the stitches between.
Second row: Knit.

The increase can be any type, as long as you are consistent. I'm using a "make 1" increase done by the backwards loop method, one stitch in from the edge.

So, my pattern row goes something like: knit 1, make 1, knit to last stitch, make 1, knit 1.

In retrospect, I probably should have increased in the very first and very last stitches, by doing a (knit in front and back of stitch). My way looks nice, but requires a smidgen of thinking, not good if you're looking for pure mindless travel knitting. On the other hand, it's much easier to correct occasional stitch count problems when you're not working with the edge stitches.

Anyway.

Increase at the beginning and end of the pattern row until you think the scarf is wide enough. The width is the edge measurement of your knitting. End with a plain row. You may end up with 27 stitches; you may have 47. It doesn't matter as long as you like it.

Now, you're going to increase at the beginning of the pattern row and decrease at the end of it. The plain rows will remain the same: knit. In my scarf, I am doing a k2tog one stitch before the end.

First row: increase at beginning of row, knit across, decrease at end of row.
Second row: knit

You will soon notice that a long rectangle is starting to form, with the garter stitch forming diagonal ridges when compared to the rectangle. The corner of the rectangle formed where you changed from increasing to decreasing.

Every now and then, do a stitch count to make sure you're not losing or adding the occasional stitch. It's easy enough to do, alas. If you do have a problem, take care of it discreetly. No one will notice if your scarf has a slight problem with stitch counts every now and then.

When the scarf is long enough, or you're almost out of yarn or patience, it's time to finish off.

First row: decrease at beginning of row, knit across, decrease at end of row.
Second row: knit across.

When you're down to 3 stitches, cast off.

If you want to change the dimensions of the scarf a bit, block it. Get it wet and lay it out on a towel. You can pull it a bit longer and narrower, or shorter and wider. Not much, but a bit. Let the scarf dry in its new dimensions.

Variations and comments

There are similar patterns all over the net and in books.

Increase and decrease variations

One variation is the simple one I mentioned earlier: use a different increase or decrease than the one I chose.

You can use yarnovers for a lacy look. If you do that, you'll need to decrease two stitches at the decrease side of the scarf. k2tog, yo, k2tog is traditional, but you can choose something like yo, k3tog instead (or k3tog, yo).

Another easy variation: Put the increases and decreases in a different spot in your scarf, at the edges or two stitches in from the end or whatever makes you happy.

Borders

This leads to a third idea: have a border of one stitch, and use something else in the middle.

In other words, have a 3 to 5 stitch border all around, done in garter stitch or seed stitch or something like that. After you do the border, do the increase, then switch to something totally different such as stockinette. Then do the other border with its decrease.

Selvedge stitches

I didn't discuss what to do with your edge stitch at all. Do whatever you want, as long as you're consistent. It's another area where playing around can have interesting effects. I knitted all of my edge stitches.

Width variations

Maybe you want to change the width every now and then. If so, it can be done by changing increases to decreases (or vice versa), or omitting the increase or decrease you'd normally do. I have no idea what this might look like, but it could be interesting. Stair-step scarf, anyone?

Stitch patterns and stripes

Of course one can do this scarf in some totally different stitch pattern such as seed stitch or ribbing or moss or a lace stitch or cables. Or different colored stripes. Or both.

For some of the stitch patterns, it looks good to have a rectangle. It makes the scarf seem more inscrutable. For other patterns, I personally think it looks better to have the scarf be a parallelogram.

Parallelogram scarf

The parallelogram variation is dead simple. You skip the portions of the pattern where you increase and decrease at both ends. Instead, you cast on enough stitches for the whole width of the scarf. Increase at one end while decreasing at the other. Cast off when finished.

Really mindless diagonal scarf

Another variation, which might lend itself better to pure mindless knitting, is to do something at the beginning of every single row. For this variation, you either increase or decrease at the beginning of the row (depending which side of the scarf you're on), and then knit all the way to the end.

There are times when no-brainer knitting is what I need. I like good travel knitting projects that fulfill this requirement. A perfect no-brainer project is something that needs about 2 seconds of attention every now and then, with little or no counting or attention needed at any other time. I'll no doubt introduce a few more of my stress-relief, stash-busting, no-brainer projects and patterns in the future.

The hat variation

I've seen versions of this used to make hats. You can use the rectangular method or the parallelogram variation. You can use any pattern stitch you'd like, though I've mostly seen garter, seed stitch, and a k2p2 rib used for it.

Cast on the stitches, wide enough to form the hat plus its brim. Knit a length until it's long enough to go around your head. Cast off. Sew the cast-on to the cast-off edge. You can, of course, use a provisional cast-on and graft the beginning to the end. If you do that, use the parallelogram variation. You can also use a three-needle bind-off if it's compatible with your stitch pattern.

After the beginning is sewn to the end, gather one of the edges to form the top of the hat. You can add a pompom or tassel if you think that sort of thing looks good. Then fold up the other edge as a brim. Hat is completed.

The other relatives

Many of you will have recognized the scarf's close relatives: the diagonal dishcloth pattern and the simple triangle scarf/shawl. The classic diagonal dishcloth is so well known that I'll probably never discuss it. Someday I will go into the simple triangle shawl, another of my no-brainer staples. There are patterns for both all over the net and in plenty of books and magazines in case you want a plain pattern with no digressions and/or you don't want to wait for my long, digression-filled version.

Adonis

2007-09-22T06:59:00.000-06:00

This is the Adonis doily. I did it before I did the one you see in my previous post. It is another pattern that is almost certainly a Herbert Niebling design.

The Adonis doily pattern is pretty much identical to the Adonieroschen patten from Gloria Penning's Old World Treasures booklet. The only difference is that Adonis calls for 6 pattern repeats, while Adonieroschen calls for 8. Since I have a short attention span, I prefer the 6 PR version. Some of the outer rounds have a lot of stitches per pattern repeat!

You can see a photo of the Adonieroschen version of the pattern at Michael Kaprelian's website. The direct link to the photo is:

http://www.angelfire.com/on2/fwlaceknitter/images/adon.jpg

The pattern is very straightforward to knit. The inner flower is slightly fiddly. The texture of the inner flower is made up of alternating twisted knits and purls (*k-tbl, p*). I continued that pattern on the intermediate rounds. I think it really defines those petals nicely.

One ball of DMC Cebelia #20 cotton thread was sufficient for two doilies in the 70-80-round range. I could probably manage one more small doily from the same ball of thread, maybe up to 40 rounds or so. But I'll probably throw the remnants into my stash instead. I use the remnants for small crocheted items such as snowflakes. Or I use them for weaving and braiding.

I like the patterns in Old World Treasures. Lille Meitler is the featured designer. Her designs are quite pleasant. The booklet includes about a half dozen patterns by an unknown designer. I think the unknown designer is Herbert Niebling. Except for Elfreida, which is pretty clearly by Meitler, the unattributed patterns feature many of his typical design flourishes.

A Doily Affair

2007-09-20T12:39:00.001-06:00

The camera went traveling with another family member yesterday, so no photos of the blocking process this time. The above photo is what my doily looks like after blocking. The color is off; the actual doily is ecru.

I'm pleased with it. I'm almost always pleased with my latest doily.

I didn't do the second round of crocheting. I like it just fine with one round. I didn't block it quite in the same way as the pattern showed, either. I didn't pull the little outer fans into the high, sharp triangles. I like the softer, more circular fans.

There are a couple of interesting things about this doily that I thought I'd mention.

The first thing is about the innermost motif, the flower. Notice the slight asymmetry in the petals? That's because the petals are outlined with crossed stitches. They cross in one direction only. So one side looks smoother and more natural than the other. It's possible that the pattern can be changed to make the two halves symmetric. However, it didn't really work with the way the pattern was charted.

The second thing is the background stitch in the middle part of the doily, surrounding the leaves. There are a lot of double decreases in this section. I did them the Japanese way, using the centered double decrease (slip 2 together as if to knit, knit 1, pass the 2 stitches over). I think the vertical lines are a little too prominent. I'm going to go back to using the traditional (slip 1, k2tog, psso) or k3tog double decrease for this particular pattern stitch.

I enjoyed this doily so much that I'm very likely to do more in the same style in the future.

What doily will be next? Dunno. A mailing list is gearing up for a KAL based on another Niebling pattern. It's called Frosted Ferns in this online text-only version of the pattern. I have it in a charted form in another source, where it's called Eiche (oak). It looks like little acorns amidst oak leaves, all on a hex-mesh lace background. So, that one might well be next if I don't get seduced by something else before then.

Casting On

2007-09-18T13:43:00.000-06:00

I keep telling everyone that my next doily is going to be the Maiglockenflor doily from Gloria Penning's Old World Treasures booklet.

I keep getting distracted by other patterns. In case you don't have Old World Treasures, the photo on the left is not Maiglockenflor.

It's a routine by now. Dithering is part of the process. I look through my patterns, trying to decide what to knit next. I come up with a couple of candidates and make working copies of the charts. I decide what I'm going to knit, and perhaps which one will be next after that.

And then, just before I begin, some other pattern catches my eye. How have I never noticed it before? It's so cute! And here's some thread in a suitable color, about the right amount for the doily.

Grab the needles. Cast on. And I'm off, on some totally unplanned adventure.

I had planned to pause here a moment for a dissertation on doily cast-ons. However, I'm probably the only person who is reading this blog at the moment. I'll wait until some future doily post. If you, my imaginary reader(s), are here now and really care, you can no doubt find some great stuff in the archives of any mailing list that deals with lace knitting.

Anyway. Back to my current adventure.

As you can tell from the photo at the top of this post, it's a smaller version of the doily on the cover of the blue Japanese doily book that Lacis just reprinted (Knitted Lace Designs of the Modern Mode, Bk 1, by Kazuko Ichida). The doily has no name as far as I can tell. I feel fairly comfortable in attributing this pattern to Herbert Niebling and/or his design house. It has a leaf motif that shows up in many of his patterns. The inner flower is also typical of his style, with crossed stitches outlining the petals.

The doily is circular, with 8 pattern repeats per round. It has 72 rounds plus a couple of rounds of crocheting to finish off. The knitting is very soothing and easy. The stitch count is not tediously excessive. It runs fairly close to the standard 4 stitches/round. The only tricky part is all the crossed stitches in the early rounds of the pattern. They were finished while the doily was still on the dpn's. The rest of the pattern uses only basic maneuvers -- knit, twisted knit, yarnover, right-leaning decrease, left-leaning decrease, and double decrease. The intermediate rounds are plain knitting, no twisted knits or double yarnovers or anything like that.

The charting style is Burda/Beyer, which I find very easy to knit from. The text is in German. It's the standard doily construction, no deep understanding necessary.

I had planned that this doily would last me for at least a week. I'm trying very hard to get a sweater knitted for myself before the weather turns too cold. This doily was supposed to be for odd intervals when I was in the mood.

This doily is so quick and fun that it has distracted me from my other projects. I've finished the knitting and will do the cast-off in the next session. It's taken me only a few days.

The cast-off consists of two rounds of crocheting. The first round is pretty standard -- group some stitches into a single crochet, and chain a loop between each group. The second round calls for putting a single crochet into two loops, and chaining some stitches between. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to do the second round of crocheting.

This doily will be a good test of my ability to maintain a blog. I want to take before, during, and after photos of the blocking. Will it happen? We shall see!

Even though I'm distracted, I am making progress on my other projects. I do my self-assigned quota on the sweater, then go do some more doily knitting. I'm also keeping up with my self-assigned quota on my shawl between bouts of doily progress.

I am no longer claiming that Maiglockenflor will be my next doily project. Someday I'll fall madly in lust with it while preparing to cast on a different project. Then it will be on the needles and started before I know it. But for now, I do not think that it will be the next project. I'm not even going to jinx myself by making any plans at all.

I do like my other projects. The shawl is fun. The sweater will be useful. The scarf is pretty. I'll introduce them more fully in later posts.

Second Thoughts

2007-09-18T09:37:00.000-06:00

OK, I guess I will give something of an introduction.

Why blog?

It finally seemed like the right time to do it. I have more free time than I've had in years, and my internet connection is finally a bit faster than slow-dialup. If the connection goes down or my free time vanishes, I expect that the blog will go dormant for a while.

I wanted a place to share photos and to talk about projects I'm working on. It's too boring to do that on most lists.

I wanted a place where I could re-post old patterns, essays, and project notes. Some of what I'll be sharing is many years old.

I wanted a place where I could write about any of my interests, not just the ones that conform to the standards of a mailing list. Some lists are more flexible than others, but there are still limits.

I want to improve my writing ability and I want to learn how to manage a blog, html and all.

Why call this The Doily Underground?

The Doily Underground is my term for the informal network of people who love to knit doilies. We keep the old patterns alive this way, by knitting them and discussing them and buying any new doily publications that show up.

I love knitting doilies. They are very addictive. I'm not sure why. There's a rhythm to doily knitting that I find very soothing and compelling. When I am under stress, I like to do something that involves concentration but no thinking. Following a complex doily chart provides exactly that combination.

I usually have a doily on the needles. Some are large, some are small. Some are done in fine thread as doilies, while others are done with yarn to use as shawls.

There are other people who knit doilies, many of whom are far more ambitious and accomplished than I am. I will add some links to this blog one of these days. Good eye candy is only a click away. Or it will be.

The best doily patterns were first published decades ago. The Golden Age of doily designing seems to have been the early to mid twentieth century, from about 1920 to 1960-ish. The best-known designers all seem to have trained in central Europe, in areas that are part of Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Switzerland. (I am still trying to learn about the history of lace knitting, so don't assume I'm totally correct here!) The patterns have been published and republished in many countries and in many languages. They are still being republished today.

Most patterns are charted. This is good. I can pick up a book written in, say, Japanese and still knit the doily patterns it contains. However, there is no one standard charting style. Dealing with different chart styles in different languages is part of the joy for me.

This blog will feature a lot of doilies and a lot of posts about doilies.

What is a doily? A decorative cloth, I suppose. They tend towards being lacy. They can be any size. Some are knit flat. Some are short-rowed. The ones I like best are knit circularly (though they may have a flat-knit section or two).

What else will be in the blog?

Whatever else I want to include, of course! In addition to knitting doilies, I knit a lot of other things. They'll be in here. I also spin, dye, and do other textile crafts. They'll be in here, too.

I'm not sure how much of my life outside of fiber-fun will be in here. We shall see. I think it's semi-obligatory to include cat photos, recipes, interesting nature photographs, and the like. I'd include gardening except that it is not very compatible with the climate I currently live in.

What am I working on now?

That will be in the next post(s).

However, I usually have a doily on the needles. If I've just finished one, I'll be in the dithering phase for the next. This morning, I'm nearing the end of my current doily. It was meant to last a bit longer, but I couldn't stay away from it. It's too cute and fun.

In addition to a doily, I usually have a small project or two around that can be used as travel knitting. For now, it's a scarf. More on that later. I'm also in the middle of a lace shawl and a sweater. A few other things are in the planning or dreaming stages.

I have a couple of small projects on my drop spindles and a larger project on my wheel.

Everything else is either dormant or I don't feel like mentioning it yet.

The First Post

2007-09-17T19:58:00.000-06:00

Is this where I'm supposed to give a brief introduction and my objectives for this blog?

The heck with that.

Here's a doily photo instead.

This is the Coronet doily. The pattern is in Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting, published by Dover and available from many fine vendors. It's the cover photo on my edition.

The pattern is given in both written and charted form. It is error free. I've knit it several times.

Doily knitting is very addictive.