Still learning

Yesterday, in the Stitch-Maps.com news article announcing the availability of symbols for Estonian gathers, I mentioned that stitch maps are awesome for seeing which stitches to knit loosely on the previous row, to make the gathers easier to work.

I fear that I may not have made that point strongly enough.

In knitting the sample for Quatrefoil, I completely screwed up the first row with gathers. You see, Quatrefoil has “7-to-5 gathers,” places where you knit 7 stitches together, yarn over, knit those same 7 stitches together again, yarn over, and – yup, you guessed it – knit those 7 stitches together yet again, for a total of 5 new stitches. When you get right down to it, it’s kind of a nutty thing to do. I mean, seriously? Have you ever tried k7tog in fine laceweight yarn? Despite using pointy needles with long tapers, I could barely get both needle tips through all 7 stitches. After much struggling and gnashing of teeth, I completed a couple gathers… only to discover that I’d dropped a couple stitches in the process, and they were busy unraveling. sigh

But I learned from my mistakes. You know how nupps are enjoyable only if you work the 5 (or more) stitches of the increase loosely enough so that you can purl all of them together easily on the following row? Yeah, gathers are like that too. But here’s the thing: which stitches do you need to work loosely? It’s pretty clear when you follow the stitch map:

click to embiggen

Here you can see which stitches of rows 6 and 20 need to be worked loosely: the ones that had been worked as “ssk, k2, yo, ssk, k1, k2tog” on the previous row, five stitches away from the nupps.

Once I clued in, working the gathers became tolerable, even – dare I say? – pleasant. But that should be obvious. Had the gathers remained a teeth-gnashing experience, I would’ve never bothered finishing the sample.

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