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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Recent reads

Posted on 08 August 2006 by Kris

Brief thoughts on my more recently completed books:

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle: I hadn’t read this one in a couple of years, but my opinion of it hasn’t changed very much in that time. On the surface it’s a lovely fairy tale about destiny and immortality and love. But there’s so much more to it than that. There’s a charming blend of anachronisms and traditional fairy tale settings, characters who are trying to discover themselves and truly understand their own depth, humorous references to the story’s own genre… the book is so much more than I can put into words, and I know I’m not doing it justice here. It’s just really beautifully done.

The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells: I don’t find the actual writing to be particularly remarkable, but the concepts are pretty well thought out; for example, Wells details the practical challenges of being invisible. I didn’t love it, but I’d say it’s worth reading, and it goes by fairly quickly (it’s very short, and the plot’s pretty straightforward).

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Color duplication

Posted on 07 August 2006 by Kris

I bought the following over the weekend:

Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Aslan. Isn’t it pretty?

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that I’d already stashed some Schaefer Anne in a fairly similar colorway:

And the colors look even more alike in person than they do in pictures. Oops.

Since I try not to have similar colorways in my sock stash, this means that, one way or another, I’d like to part with the Shepherd Sock. Returning this yarn isn’t the easiest option, as I bought it from my hometown’s LYS and my hometown is nearly 500 miles away from San Diego. That, and the store has a 60-day return policy and I don’t think I’ll be going back up north within that time frame.

Which means… I’m offering it for either sale or trade (trade preferred). If you’re interested, please email me and let me know!

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