Category Archives: Knitting

Rambling about techniques

Posted on 31 August 2006 by Kris

The last thing I need is more potential posts to mull over, but that’s never stopped me before!

For example: decreases while knitting back backwards. Now, would anyone benefit from a post (or two or three) with pictures of the processes? I’d kind of like to write a series on that, but if I’m the only one insane enough to knit in such a way, I’m not sure if my efforts would be wasted. Especially since I don’t know how easy backwards decreases are if you have little dexterity in your non-dominant hand.

I’ve also got a couple of mirrored knitting posts on the brain. For example, I’ve been planning a mirrored knitting back backwards tutorial. I’ve already got some pictures of the process, originally taken because once upon a time, I was going to write a “compare and contrast” post on mirrored kntiting vs. knitting back backwards.

Maybe I’ll actually get around to writing these. Or maybe I’ll just forget about them like so many other past potential posts. Who knows?

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Off the needles and on the feet

Posted on 23 August 2006 by Kris

You know how it seems like there’s always just one inch left for hours and hours, and then suddenly you’ve knit way past the point you intended? That totally happened with my latest pair of socks (just ask Jessica and Jen). But, I unraveled the excess rows and then did just the right amount of 1×1 ribbing to get the following:

Getting a halfway decent picture of your feet and ankles is hard… you have no idea how long this photo shoot took me.

Anyway, project stats:

Pattern: None. Well, not exactly, anyway… see notes.
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Swirl DK in Aqua
Needles: US0 Inox DPNs

These socks were partially inspired by Bobby Ziegler‘s Thuja. And by “partially inspired,” I mean that I saw how well the stitch pattern worked for socks; that’s the only thing my socks have in common with the Thuja pattern.

The gauge is different, for one thing. And then there’s the matter of construction. I worked these socks toe up – always a handy method if you’re afraid of running out of yarn. The following techniques were used:

  • Yarnover short row toe. I originally learned this method using instructions Jessica provided (in an early draft of her Falling Leaves pattern), and I much prefer it to the wrap and turn short row method.
  • Reverse-engineered Dutch heel. I mostly used Denise Powell’s instructions as a reference.
  • A sewn tubular bind off (also known as k1p1 bindoff, or grafted bind off, or Kitchener bindoff). There’s a couple of different variants to this bindoff; I prefer the one I’ve just linked to, but then again, I happen to like kitchener stitch.

I’m really happy with these. Yes, they’re fairly plain and basic, but they fit me nicely and I’m pleased with all the little details.

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Slants and short rows

Posted on 21 August 2006 by Kris

My modified Tina shawl is constructed as follows:

The arrows illustrate the direction the knitting is worked in.

As you can see, the direction of the edging is perpendicular to the direction of charts 2 and 3. This fact becomes very important if you’re making a triangular shawl and you want all the top edges to line up. Because if you knit the edging repeat straight on to the main body of the shawl, without any modifications, the top of the edging will slant downward. Like so:

See what I mean? It might end up looking okay, but it’s not really the effect I’m going for.

I also can’t just follow the pattern’s instructions for corner edging. I know this because I tried. The instructions require that you attach an entire 16-row edging repeat to 4 corner stitches. I didn’t photograph my attempt to make this work, but trust me, it failed. It produced too much extra fabric, which just bunched up in a really unattractive way. I could have blocked it to flatten it out, but even then, the top of the edging wouldn’t have lined up the way I wanted it to.

So I broke out the pencil and knitter’s graph paper and re-worked the ends of the edging to include short rows. Swatching my new charts gave me these:

Neither is absolutely perfect, but they’re very close to what I’m looking for. With a couple of minor modifications, I should be good to go.

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Close to the edge

Posted on 14 August 2006 by Kris

I’ve been flying through Tina. It’s such a fun project to knit that I don’t really want to put it down! But, like every good knitblogger, I do have to set the shawl down every once in awhile to post a picture of it:

All I have left is the edging.

It turns out that the edging is actually garter stitch lace and not stockinette lace, which means I have to rethink it a bit. I’m fairly sure that I’m still going keep working backwards on the wrong-side rows, despite the fact that I don’t purl back backwards quite as quickly as I knit; if it saves me the trouble of turning the piece every 20 or so stitches, then it’s worth the effort, in my opinion. But, I’ll have to keep in mind that the charting is literal.

I find the literal charting a bit annoying, because it deviates from the convention of presenting all charted rows from the right side. Due to this convention, I’m used to reading, say, the k2tog symbol as “k2tog on right side, p2tog on wrong side” instead of “k2tog on both right and wrong sides.” The fact that I have to read this edging chart differently from how I’m used to drives me a bit batty.

Oh well. I can always rechart it if it starts to bug me too much.

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Back in black

Posted on 12 August 2006 by Kris

I started this project late last month, but I didn’t post about then because this was all I had to photograph:

And there’s really nothing particularly interesting about a stockinette rectangle. But, pick up some stitches along the edges, knit a few inches, and that same rectangle starts to look a little more like this:

I’m fairly sure I’m going to leave the sleeves that short, mostly because I think it’ll make a nice late summer/fall top.

Both sleeves are still on scrap yarn because I’m not entirely sure how I’ll finish them yet. Should I go for a few rows of ribbing before binding off? Or bind off normally and add a crochet edging? Or something else entirely?

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