The Swirl has really grown:

Swirl in a bag

Kind of funky looking, huh? Over the weekend, I bound off across the back neck and along the edges of the lapels, and started increasing for the sleeves. This resulted in a floppy, unruly pile of knitting. Now a drawstring bag holds the “body” of the Swirl – the circle forming the collar, lapels, sides, and lower back — while the nascent sleeves poke out the top. Much easier to deal with!

Look close and you’ll see tan and light blue bits of waste yarn. Those are provisionally cast-on stitches that I’m gradually incorporating into the knitting to shape the “bottom” of the sleeves. Later, to shape the “top” of the sleeves, I’ll put stitches on hold instead of binding off. Since I’m essentially short-rowing across both sleeve edges, grafting the edges together might prove a little fiddly… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also over the weekend, I started a simple triangular shawlette:

nice and simple

As I was contemplating my options and getting ready to cast on, I suddenly realized I’ve never knit a simple, two-wedge, top-down triangular shawlette. Big rectangular and circular shawls with fancy edging, yes. Top-down shawls with Faroese shaping or with multiple wedges, yes. But a simple shawlette? Nope, never, despite their popularity.

So that was it. I had to start a simple shawlette. And I’m glad to have it. Given its petite size, it’ll make much better airplane knitting than the Swirl. Still, I’m taking both projects to Stitches West. You never know which project you might want to work on at a given time, right?

But I can show you the progress I’ve made on my Swirl:

19 welts down, 46 to go... but who’s counting?

I’m nearly ready to bind off along the lapels and back neck. And I will actually bind off: it’ll give the Swirl some “structure” from which to hang. But later, when it comes to shaping the sleeves, I plan to deviate from the pattern as written. Rather than cast on, bind off, and sew a sleeve seam, I want to cast on provisionally and graft. That’ll create more fluid fabric along the underside of the sleeves. Besides, it’ll be fun, right?

I’ve also been swatching some yummy Plucky Feet:

Half Leaf pattern

It’s not blocked yet, but already it’s whispering “triangular shawl” to me. What do you think?

so much better!

It wasn’t my most patient or meticulous blocking job, but I think it turned out okay. Even the corners look decent:

not bad

Jane, as always, is ready to model:

drapes like a dream

Vital stats: approximately 21 x 60″ (53.5 x 152.5 cm), with just 4.2g of yarn left over.

Would I knit another Estonian shawl? Sure, but I’m in no rush. I liked trying out the traditional construction method, I had fun with the nupps, and I’d love to play with other Estonian lace patterns. But another months-long project, similar to this one? Nah, not right now, thanks; I have other things I’d like to explore first.

Binding off that piece on Friday let me spend a good chunk of my weekend sewing the shawl together. The idea is that each edging piece is sewn along one short end and one long edge of the shawl, then the two pieces are sewn together at opposite corners. The trick is easing the edging around the corners, and along the long edges of the shawl (where the row gauge of the shawl differs from the stitch gauge of the edging).

Luckily, getting an edging point to match up with the first corner only required a little bit of fudging:

matches fairly nicely

But would the edging be the right length? It didn’t seem so, because the skinny bit of edging easily stretched far longer than the shawl. Even when the first edging piece was nearly sewn on, it still looked too long:

doesn’t look like it’ll match!

Ah, but wait: see the clip-on markers? The green marker is 6 stitches from the end of the shawl; the orange marker is 15 stitches from the end of the edging. Matching those bits up – 2 edging stitches to 1 shawl stitch three times, and 3 edging stitches to 1 shawl stitch three times – eases the edging halfway around the corner. And prior to the markers, the edging is eased on at a rate of 4 edging stitches to every 3 shawl stitches.

In the end… yes! It fit, with just a stitch or two of fudging:

yea!

Hours later, with all the edging sewn on, I’m quite pleased with the results. Even without being blocked or having its ends woven in, the shawl looks far more finished, far prettier than with just a plain garter-stitch border:

wrinkled, but still pretty

Now to find the time to block it… whoo hoo! I can’t wait.

(Oops. I just noticed that Mary Scott Huff and Franklin Habit were speakers at Seattle Knitters Guild meetings last year. Now I’m intimidated. Talk about tough acts to follow! Okay, where’d I leave my big-girl panties?)

After the guild meeting, I’ll stick around the Seattle area long enough to teach at a couple superb shops. On May 5, it’s Slick Set-in Sleeves and Charts Made Simple at Acorn Street Shop. And on May 6, it’s Cast-on Cornucopia at A Good Yarn Shop. (Yup, that shop, Debbie Macomber’s dream shop.) Some of my favorite classes!

I’ll let you know when the shops open up registration for the classes. And in the meantime, you let me know if there’s a topic you’d like me to rattle on about, okay?

Nope. Quite the opposite: I was the lucky beneficiary of the “just one more row” instinct. One row turned into two, two rows turned into three… I couldn’t help myself; I just had to keep knitting.

And in just a few days I had a ridiculously long and skinny bit of fluff. Piled on the kitchen scale, it looks like this:

10g of fluff

Better yet, here’s the remaining yarn:

15g of yarn left!

Whew! That’s reassuring. Now I know I’ll have enough yarn to finish, without having to rip any of my swatches.

Here’s what I have yet to figure out: will it work? Will I be able to sew the edging pieces onto the body of the shawl, easing around the corners and matching the edging points to the corners, without going blind or crazy in the process? Will it block out nicely, or will some part insist on puckering or curling? Will the shawl be of reasonable size, or will it seem like an oversized scarf?

The only way to find out is to keep on going, starting with the second edging piece. With any luck, the “just one more row” drive will seize me again.

lots and lots and lots of stitches

Fortunately, the traditional cast-on is a knitted cast-on. It’s a fast cast-on, especially if you transfer new stitches from the right needle to the left as I (and, according to the books I’ve read, the Estonians) do: by pointing both needles upward as you insert the left needle into the new stitch. Keep the right needle in the stitch, and you’re already in position to create the next stitch. This means you don’t have to fumble around, reinserting the right needle… way cool when you’re casting on a gazillion stitches.

You’ll notice I cast on with two strands held together. That’s another bit of Estonian tradition: it makes the edges of their shawls a tad sturdier. I used the the outside and the inside ends of my one ball of Grignasco Prezioso. It’s not my favorite way of playing with two strands at once – sometimes, keeping the two ends of the same ball from getting tangled can be a little fiddly – but it was the only sane choice in this situation; no other option would guarantee that neither strand would run short.

Next up: knitting two plain rows before starting the lace pattern. That’ll also be a sanity saver. The idea of jumping right from the cast-on into the lace pattern gives me the heebie-jeebies. Knitting a couple rows will give me a base of regular-tension stitches into which to work the lace – so much better than trying to work double decreases into the cast-on stitches.

Knitting a couple plain rows will also give me a chance to readjust my markers. The photo shows how I used a bit of waste yarn to mark off every group of 50 stitches. Smart move: eleven groups, counted at least twice each, plus another 15 stitches, lets me know I have the target total of 565. What would’ve been a smarter move, though, would’ve been to place markers every 48 or 60 stitches – that is, every 4 or 5 repeats of my 12-stitch pattern, where they’d help me establish the lace pattern correctly. Oh, well. I’ll move the markers after the two plain rows.

So: using a fast cast-on, using two ends of the same ball, working plain rows before starting the lace, and using markers to keep tabs on the cast-on count and on the pattern repeats. That’s a slew of sanity savers. I think I’ll need ’em all… after all, this is just the first edging piece. Once it’s done, I get to do it all over again.

unblocked lace looks so sad, doesn’t it?

The question is, do I want to go the traditional route, knitting the edging in two pieces from the outside in before sewing it all together? Or do I want to go the modern route, picking up stitches and knitting the edging from the inside out?

Normally, I’m not a slave to tradition. (Somebody refresh my memory: Who said, “We do not honor tradition by slavishly repeating it”? Anna Zilboorg, I think.) Normally, I’m all in favor of seamless methods.

But this time I’m thinking of going the traditional route, just for the sake of trying it out. I don’t think the sewing up will be that onerous. Actually, I tried it out this afternoon, on a couple swatches. (Hooray for swatches!) Weave a tail through a selvedge loop on the swatch of the main pattern, then weave it through a bind-off loop on the edging swatch, repeat, repeat, repeat, and voilà! You get a lacy and reasonably attractive join.

looks okay to me

Alright, so it seems I’ve decided on the traditional route. Now it’s just a matter of gathering the strength to cast on and establish pattern over roughly 500 stitches… twice; once for each section of edging. Wish me luck!

Omas Strickgeheimnisse

Omas has been on my wish list for a long time. It’s in German, and I don’t read German – shoot, I can’t even pronounce the book’s title – but, as you can see above, Lacis distributes the book with an English translation of its key.

Good thing, too. IMHO, some of the symbols are downright weird – like, who thought of “O” for “knit”? If it were up to me, “O” would stand for “yarn over,” as it looks like the eyelet created by a yarn over. Sure, sure, the symbols in Omas are probably common in Germany – they seem to be the same as the ones in Maria Erlbacher’s books – and would be familiar to German knitters. But they strike me as weird.

Stranger still: most of the patterns are presented with two charts, one for knitting in the round and another for knitting flat:

one pattern, two charts – why?

For the wrong-side rows of the flat-knitting charts, the symbols match the stitches as worked, not as viewed on the right side of the fabric. Very few books published in the US do this (I can think of only one, and it shall remain nameless). Why is this strange? Because it messes up the visual correspondence between chart and knitted fabric. Expanses of reverse stockinette, for example, translate into something that looks like garter stitch in a chart. Not cool.

Fortunately, if a pattern is presented with just one chart, it’s an in-the-round chart. If I squint and tilt my head and try real hard, I can get past the weird symbols and see the resemblance between these in-the-round charts and the swatch photos. Still, when I want to use one of these charts, I figure I’ll redraw it first using my preferred symbols. It’ll be time well spent. I’ll become familiar with the pattern, and I’ll lessen the likelihood of goofing up as I knit. And, you know, I’ll avoid all that squinting.

And someday I am likely to use some of these stitch patterns, or at least elements of them. Wouldn’t a variation on this theme make for great socks?

picture it with M1 instead of yo

Lots of patterns make use of multiple adjacent yarn overs to create dramatic lace, or to create three-dimensional “poufs”:

big, dramatic holes

lots of 3d texture

What could you see using this for?

sinuous cables and lace

Knitters who are intimidated by the shorthand found in knitting charts need look no further. This sounds like dry material, but Briar’s zeal for her topic makes this title not only a useful reference but also a surprisingly readable book about the art of knitting.

And Clara Parkes says:

JC Briar shepherded us into the New Year with this small but indispensable ode to charts. Agreed, charts aren’t the sexiest subject in the knitting world. But if you’re afraid of them, which many knitters are, a whole world of creative freedom will be lost to you. Know how to read a chart, fix one that’s not right, and create one that works for you, and the world is your oyster.

This book is like everything JC does: concise, efficient, flawless, and infinitely helpful. If charts really aren’t going away—and they aren’t—then this book is the best $17.95 you’ll ever spend.

Can you tell I’m thrilled?