Fuzzy Logic

Reversible Entrelac knitted swatch (unblocked) movie

2011-03-30T18:38:00.001-07:00

Reversible Entrelac knitted swatch (unblocked) movie a video by fuzzyjay on Flickr.

This is a ribbed entrelac fabric that is reversible. The fabric is the same on both sides, except that the fabric on one side is a mirror image of the other. Just knits and purls, but it does a good impression of a reversible cabled fabric.

reventrelac

2011-03-17T16:12:00.001-07:00

reventrelac, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

I'm experimenting with entrelac squares that are half-and-half knit and purl. This fabric would look the same on both sides, except it would be mirror-reversed. The pink arrows show the direction of knitting the squares. Black is reverse-stockinette, white is stockinette fabric.

When a stockinette fabric meets a reverse-stockinette fabric across the boundary of an entrelac square, the fabric is continuous, that is, there is no ridge. This gives some interesting effects in the fabric, making it hard for me to predict how a fabric will look once knitted out.

Knitting Stitch Definition

2011-01-19T23:27:00.001-08:00

The definition of a stitch, from The Science of Knitting (Wiley, 1914) by Ernest Tompkins:

A stitch is really the combination of loops from adjoining threads forming a fixed part of the fabric, and the duplication of which forms the whole fabric.

But a stitch is frequently considered to be the length of yarn from any point to an adjoining corresponding point, e.g. from the middle of a sinker loop [running thread, in hand-knitting] to the middle of the next sinker loop.

Carmela Biscuit knits the ribbed entrelac hat

2010-12-26T04:44:00.001-08:00

entrelac-hat, originally uploaded by Carmela Biscuit.

Oh, it's so exciting. Carmela Biscuit knitted this hat from my pattern. I love seeing variations on a theme. This color is beautiful.

"Wrong Side" of ribbed entrelac hat 10 squares

2010-10-19T00:49:00.001-07:00

"Wrong Side" of ribbed entrelac hat 10 squares, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

Thanks in part to a certain Russian chat website, this knitting picture has joined the "1,000 views" club on Flickr!

Larger "Dayflower" knitting stitch pattern chart

2010-09-14T23:52:00.001-07:00

larger-dayflower, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

The original 'Dayflower' knitting stitch pattern, from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, is very pretty, but published only as written instructions.

I figured out how to chart it, and from that chart I have now derived a slightly larger version of the stitch pattern. I'm knitting it up now (2010-09-14) to see how it will come out.

Mind Hacks: Against narrativity

2010-06-24T11:35:00.001-07:00

that special, fabulously misplaced confidence that people feel when, considering elements of their own experience that are existentially fundamental for them, they take it that they must also be fundamental for everyone else.

via mindhacks.com

Posted via email from fuzzyjay's posterous

Perfecting the perpendicular pickup -- just the video, ma'am

2010-03-30T17:05:00.001-07:00

via youtube.com

I uploaded my latest video to YouTube, and I requested that YouTube create a machine-transcribed caption file for it. Wow, pretty amusing. As in all machine transcriptions, it was pretty weird. Could have something to do with my mumbling, maybe.
Anyway, I downloaded edited that file and uploaded the real thing. I am all about the closed-captioning. I love me some deaf knitters, and knitters who don't speak English as a first language will probably have better luck understanding the captions than my slurry words.
Does anybody use an on-line service for this? I remember reading something about Google making it easier to caption their videos, but my Google-fu is not working for this.

Posted via web from fuzzyjay's posterous

Perfecting the Perpendicular Pickup

2010-03-30T01:50:00.001-07:00

In a previous post, I described how to join knitted pieces at right angles to each other, in such a way that the join is as neat as possible. The join used the sliding-loop technique devised by Rick Mondragon. In Mondragon's technique you are joining two pieces of knitting with parallel grain. With the perpendicular join, you join the side edge of the piece you are knitting to a row of free loops from another piece of knitting.

In this post, I would like to describe my method of picking up and knitting stitches from a selvedge. In entrelac knitting, half of the connections between squares are made this way.

Picking up and knitting stitches from an existing piece of knitting involves two steps, inserting a needle and pulling through a loop. Where is a good place to insert the needle? Normally, you are told to insert the left needle one stitch in from the edge of the knitting. The reason for that is that the last column of stitches is ill-formed. At least, the edge half-column is. But reaching that far into the knitting creates a bulky join, and moves the ugly column to the wrong side of the knitting. That's OK when there is a public side and a private side, but what about entrelac scarves? Wouldn't it be nice to have a method of picking up stitches that doesn't leave your knitting with an ugly side?

There is. If you use the loops that are formed by the turning of the knitting as it goes back and forth, you get the neatest possible stitch pick up. However, finding that turning-loop is not easy.

If knitting existed in some Platonic realm, the edge of knitting would look like this, and one would simply slide the left needle along the selvedge and pick up loops to be worked as the first row of the new knitted piece.

Alas, there are physical forces at work in the real world that transform the ideal into the actual. Instead of easily-identified turning loops, one has a chain of knots joined by gappy loops:

Ah, but the turning loops are in there somewhere. You "merely" have to re-form that ugly half-stitch at the selvedge.

Here's a diagram that shows how the Platonic ideal of a selvedge stitch gets transformed into a knot-and-loopy mess:

So, all we have to do is use a needle to reverse the process. Here's a written description of the process... bu you can ignore all that except the diagram and skip to the video...

Look at the knitting. Starting from the top edge of the knitting, there is a series of loops and knots alternating all the way down to the beginning. Orient the knitting so that the right side is facing you, the selvedge edge is parallel to the floor, and the knitting is hanging down from it. The top (last-knitted) edge of the knitting is on your right. The bottom (first-knitted) edge of the knitting is on your left.
On the selvedge, the loops are being clutched by the knots. With your eyes, follow a loop's yarn down (towards the beginning edge of the knitting) through the knot to where it joins the back (purl side) of the knitting.
Insert the tip of the left needle upward (parallel to the selvedge, from your left to your right, pointing toward the top edge) through the length of yarn between the knot and the rest of the knitting. You'll know you have the correct bit of yarn if you can see the gappy loop decreasing in size as you insert the needle more into the bit of yarn, since you're robbing yarn from the gappy loop to make the little bit of yarn bigger. This piece is the purplish piece of yarn in the diagram below:
With the tip of the needle, scoop the rest of the gappy loop toward the back of the work, while letting the bit of yarn you just poked through fall off the needle, as follows. When you're starting the scoop, you're going to swing the point of the needle toward you and perpendicular to the plane of the knitting. To perform the scoop, you'll be swinging the tip of the needle through the plane of the fabric, pointing to the floor. At the end of the scoop, the needle is pointing away from you and perpendicular to the plane of the knitting.
At the end of the motion, move the needle back to the position of step 3. You should have a loop on the needle in the standard mount position. Knit the loop off the left needle.
Go back to step 2, using the next gappy loop down (toward the beginning of the knitting.)

It's video time:

Perfecting the Perpendicular Join

2010-03-20T16:25:00.001-07:00

The photos below show closeups of two entrelac joins done with the same needles and the same yarn by the same knitter (me).

The first photo shows one common way to join two pieces of knitting in entrelac. The beige piece was knitted first, and the green piece was joined, every two rows, by working a ssk, using the last stitch of a right-to-left green row and a free loop from held beige stitches. For a neater join, the first stitch of the return left-to-right row is slipped, with the yarn in back.

Notice that there is beige showing through the green stitches. This show-through, also called grinning, is pretty inevitable when you are forming a decrease (ssk) with two colors of yarn.

Notice also, the second column of green stitches (counting left-to-right) looks somewhat distorted. This is a consequence of the slipped stitches pulling at every other stitch in that column and making the left leg of that stitch smaller.

The next picture shows a neater join that I invented. Instead of working together the selvedge stitches of the green piece and held loops from the beige, I pulled a long green loop from each beige stitch and used the loop of yarn to work two rows of green, from left to right and then from right to left.

There is no show-through of the other color here. The first column of green stitches is slightly distorted. This is because the ratio of green rows to beige columns (stitches) is forced to be 2:1 instead of the more "natural" 3:2 or 4:3. This makes the green stitches look a little "squashed" since they "want" to be a little taller. It's not bad, though, and really, slipping stitches as in the first photo adds its own kind of distortion.

The second green stitch column looks a lot better, though. That's another benefit to this method.

Here's a rough diagram of the structure of the join:

Soon, I'll make a video on how to do this join & upload the video to Youtube or Vimeo.

Norwegian purl method video

2010-03-18T13:09:00.001-07:00

via vimeo.com

This video shows the wacky Norwegian Purl method. I like that for the video they used big yarn, big needles and good lighting. I'm going to try this and report back to you all.

Posted via web from Fuzzy Logic

The Knitting Laboratory: Barter for Garter

2010-03-18T12:47:00.001-07:00

The list of people for whom I will knit for free looks suspiciously like the list of people for whom I would donate a kidney.

via yarndiva.blogspot.com

Good post that answers the perennial question "Will you knit me something?"

Posted via web from fuzzyjay's posterous

Ways to join knitted pieces

2010-03-16T22:19:00.001-07:00

Joining a piece already knit to one you are knitting, in parallel or perpendicularly.

Edge of existing piece	Edge of piece being knit	Ways to make the join	Diagram
Side	Side	Sliding-loop (Rick Mondragon), sewn seam.
Side	Bottom	Picking up stitches from a selvedge.
Side	Top	Perpendicular grafting, sewn seam, chaining-up¹ .
Top	Side	Entrelac join (ssk or p2tog), sliding loop (me)² , sewn seam.
Top	Bottom	Knitting from held stitches, grafting.
Top	Top	Grafting, three-needle bind-off, sewn seam.
Bottom (some techniques require loops be freed from provisional cast-on)	Side	Entrelac join (ssk or p2tog), sliding-loop (me), sewn seam.
Bottom	Bottom	Knitting from freed cast-on loops, grafting, "aligned pickup from cast-on edge"³ .
Bottom	Top	Grafting, sewn seam.

notes

¹This is a new technique I developed, to be described in more detail later. Basically, on the existing piece, you ladder-down the edge stitch column, freeing a loop for every two rows of the existing piece. You then chain up these loops while working together with each loop a free stitch from the current piece.

²To be described later.

³See blog entry: "Picking up and knitting from a cast-on edge."

Lace knitting charts from 17 and 18 years ago

2010-03-14T13:17:00.001-07:00

Cover of Charted Knitting Designs

Anybody interested in test-knitting some lace designs I made? These are patterns I made up and charted about eighteen years ago, but never got around to copy-editing or test-knitting. They are similar to some of Barbara G. Walker's designs in Charted Knitting Designs. They are a tad more symmetrical, since I use twist stitches to balance out the decreases on the other side of the yarnovers.

The patterns are similar to the ones I designed and used in my wall-hanging called Lace Curlicues:

Go ahead and click on the "preview on posterous" icon below if you're interested:

Download now or preview on posterous

2010_03_14_12_59_29.pdf (3491 KB)

Posted via email from fuzzyjay's posterous

Charting 'Dayflower'

2010-03-08T13:23:00.001-08:00

Dayflower is a really pretty pattern in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, but it only has written directions. I was looking for a challenge for my charting skills and this one looked like a good one. It took me a while, but I figured it out. Here are some of the steps I used.

Charting 'Dayflower', originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

I photocopied the picture of the Dayflower pattern from Barbara G. Walker's Treasury, then drew circles over the yarn-overs, then blue lines to join the yarn-overs on the same row. Next, I used red lines to show stitch-columns and decreases, referring to the written pattern. Eventually, through several iterations, I transferred this to graph paper. The trick was to find where to distribute the "no stitch" squares in the graph of the pattern.

Straightening out the lines that represent rows, with no regard to spacing of stitches:

Eventually I got to this point where I could arrange the stitches on a chart. The trick there was to figure out, based on the photo and the previous attempt, how to move the rows back and forth for best alignment of the stitch columns.:

Once I had the stitch columns aligned properly vertically, I could do the more-detailed stitch diagram. This one shows the path of the yarn through all the stitches, but not the actual over-and-under crossings of the yarn as the stitches are made. It's a bit sketchy because I only did one half of a repeat, then used Photoshop to flip and copy the repeats, and my Photoshop skills are not the best:

As I've said before, I'd rather figure out 5 ways to diagram a knitting pattern than knit it. I'm all about understanding the architecture...

I am grateful that iLoveButter on Flickr has shared this photo under a Creative Commons license so I can show you the pattern used in a garment (before blocking, which will open up the lace):

Cabled entrelac Greek Key

2010-03-02T00:33:00.001-08:00

Cabled entrelac Greek Key, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

How to do a continuous, sinuous cable using entrelac squares. The cable travels across the diagonals of some of the squares.

Previous posts explain the meaning of the arrows and the numerals. The green lines represent the repeat of 18 entrelac squares (15 squares + 6 half-squares [triangles]).

Three repeats are shown. The left repeat has 16.5 squares (12 squares + 9 half-squares) and the right repeat has 19.5 squares (15 squares + 9 half-squares).

All three repeats add up to 3 × 18 squares or 54 squares (42 squares + 24 half-squares, which is why the numberals go up to 66).

Here are some pieces I've knit that include the continous-cable idea in entrelac. Click the picture to go to the Flickr page for the item:

Entrelac joins comparison swatch

2010-02-28T15:45:00.000-08:00

These photos show a swatch with two different entrelac joins.

On the left of the swatch (the right when flipped over) is the usual method of slipping the first stitch in every row of each entrelac square. Stitches for new squares are picked up from behind the slipped stitches. The squares are joined along their selvedges by working a stitch together with a live stitch from a previous square (on the left selvedge by ssk and on the right selvedge by p2tog).

On the right is the new method I've developed (not entirely original). For the squares on the right, the first stitch in each row is worked. Stitches for new squares in this method are picked up from the thread between the last stitch of a row and the first stitch of the next row (the turning thread). Squares are joined not by decreasing but by pulling loops from live stitches of a previous square and using that loop to knit two rows of the new square.

One advantage of the new method is apparent in the close-up pictures. There is no "grinning"-through (an industrial-knitting term) of the other color along the selvedges of the entrelac square.

Another thing to note about this swatch: The new joining method produces slightly bigger squares, since there is less overlap between adjacent squares. That is, the squares are no bigger, but the fabric produced is slightly bigger because of less overlap.

Below, I show the two sides of the swatch before blocking:

Notice how the new method produces entrelac fabric that has much higher relief. The fabric becomes much flatter with blocking.

I'm going to illustrate the two components of the new entrelac join (picking up from the turning thread, and the loop selvedge-join) in a later post.

Four entrelac hats

2010-02-26T17:03:00.001-08:00

Four hats, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

These are the last four hats that I designed and knit. They are meant to be worn with the brim folded up, either inside or outside, for more ear-warmness. To that end, the fabric is reversible. The red patch on the first hat looks better on the other side, since the red-green join is less speckled on that side.

YAREH! Yet another ribbed-entrelac hat

2010-02-18T22:33:00.000-08:00

Lori made herself a ribbed entrelac hat using the techniques I taught her. It's her own design, though it shares an affinity with the other hats I made with this technique. Like the others, it's seamless, reversible and knit in one piece. I guess seamless implies one-piece... well, maybe not, since Elizabeth Zimmerman's sweater designs are often seamless but not made in one piece. Here she is, modeling it at Knit Purl's Thursday night Sip 'n' Stitch:

I am such a proud "uncle"! Now Lori says she'll write up a pattern for this that I can edit. I hope we can then teach a class at a local yarn store.

Random time, plus another Ribbed-Entrelac Hat

2010-02-17T16:38:00.000-08:00

I finished the third entrelac hat made up of ribbed squares. I like this one a lot, and I'm happy with the way it came out, even though there are a number of small errors in the i-cord edging.

Even more exciting to me is that I have successfully taught this pattern and its associated techniques to a pal from Thursday night's knitting group at Knit Purl in Portland. We have met three times, and each time Lori has gone home and practiced the techniques of the entrelac join and returned to the next meeting with some great samples. The last time we met, she had an almost-finished hat and I showed her how to finish the hat with an i-cord border.

Next time I see her, I hope to be able to post pictures of her wearing her hat! Hers is a variation on the other hats I've done. So, there are 4 hats in existence now that use ribbed entrelac squares according to the general plan of the first one (using a long, circular needle):

Work five squares attached to each other counter-clockwise as follows:

Cast on enough stitches for a square using scrap yarn.
Work square 1. Leave the last, right-side row on the right needle. Do not turn the work.
Pick up and work the stitches for the first row of the next square along the left selvedge of the square just completed. Work the next square, ending with a right-side row. Leave the last row of stitches for the square just completed on the right needle.
Repeat step 2 for squares 3 and 4.
For square 5, pick up and work stitches along the side of 4. Then, remove the scrap yarn from the cast-on edge of square 1. This will give you loops to put on the left needle. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle (from the cast on edge of 1) and use that loop to work the next 2 rows of square 5. Repeat from * until all stitches from the cast-on edge are used up. Work one more row, ending with a wrong-side row. Do not turn the work.

Work a ring of 5 squares clockwise, attached to the first 5 as follows:

Pick up and work the first (wrong-side) row of the next square from the right selvedge of the previous square. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle (from the stitches of a square in the previous ring of squares) and use it to work the next two rows of the current square. Repeat from * until all stitches from the previous ring's square are used up, ending with a wrong-side row. Leave the last row of stitches for the square just completed on the right needle.
Repeat the previous step for squares 7-10, ending square 10 with one extra (right-side) row. Do not turn the work.

Work a ring of 5 squares counter-clockwise, attached to the previous 5 as follows:

Pick up and work the first (~~wrong~~ right-side) row of the next square from the left selvedge of ~~the~~ a previous square. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle (from the stitches of a square in the previous ring of squares) and use loop to work the next two rows of the current square. Repeat from * until all stitches from the previous ring's square are used up, ending with a ~~wrong~~ right-side row. Leave the last row of stitches for the square just completed on the right needle.
Repeat the previous step for the next 4 squares, ending the last square of the ring with one extra (wrong-side) row. Do not turn the work.

Repeat steps 2.1, 2.2, 3.1 and 3.2 as desired, to make the hat as long as you like. I did five and a half rings for the Ribbed Entrelac Hat II, and four and a half (not counting mistakes) for the REH I.
When the hat is long enough, finish with five entrelac triangles edged with i-cord as follows:

Cast on three stitches with backward loops.
Pick up and work the first row of the triangle from the free selvedge of the previous square. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle and use the loop to work two rows as follows:

Work to the last 4 stitches, then k2together, k2 (the last three stitches are i-cord).
Slip 3 wyif, work to end of row.

Repeat from * until there are three stitches left on the needle.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all five triangles are done. Graft the three stitches that remain to the three stitches that were cast on for the i-cord.

I realize that these directions are sketchy at best. The technique for picking up and working stitches from the selvedges of previous entrelac units I leave for a later post. I'm thinking I need to record a video to fully explain it. Lori has mastered the particular pick-up technique I use, so I have hope that I'll be able to teach it to others.

Here's a diagram of the first 4 rings of entrelac squares. The crown of the hat is in the middle of the diagram, and the squares are shown distorted, as they would look if the hat were squashed flat. I explain what the arrows, numerals, and dots mean in a previous post, Diagramming and Designing an Entrelac Piece:

2010-12-13 Edited to correct and clarify the connections between rings of squares.

Entrelac Star

2010-02-08T17:14:00.001-08:00

This would be nice as a decoration made of cotton and starched. The example is knit of worsted-weight acrylic. I don't really recommend acrylic for this. The tips of the star tend to twist, and it's easier to block cotton or wool.

Preliminaries

Materials and tools: a small quantity of yarn, with circular knitting needle and crochet hook to suit. A length of smooth, contrasting-color yarn. For the example, 8 inches (20 cm.) is about right.

Right Twist (RT): Knit 2 together, leaving stitches on left needle, then knit the first stitch again and drop the two stitches off the left needle.

You will be knitting five units. The second unit is picked up from the left edge of the first unit, the third from the fourth, and the fourth from the third. The fifth unit is picked up from the left edge of the fourth unit and its own left edge is joined to the cast-on edge of the first unit. The star is finished with a crochet border.

Ignore the brackets if you are knitting a star the same size as the example. The algebra contained within brackets is only useful if you want to make a smaller or larger star. The base number can be any odd number n >= 7. The example uses 11 for n.Cast on 12 [n+1] stitches.

Unit 1

Row 1: (Right side) *YO, RT, K2 [(n-7)/2], K2tog, rep from *.
Row 2: Lay a contrasting piece of yarn from back to front over working yarn, purl to end of row.
Rows 3, 5, ..., 21 [2n-1]: Repeat row 1.
Rows 4, 6, ..., 20 [2n-2]: Repeat row 2.

Leave the last row (21 [2n-1]) on the right needle.

Sanity check: there are 11 [n] lace eyelet holes going up the center of the unit. There are 10 [n-1] loops being held by the contrasting-color yarn.

Units 2-4

Pick up loops held by contrasting yarn onto left needle, from the previous unit's left edge, starting from the bottom left to the top left corner. Remove the contrasting yarn, and use it while turning the rows for this unit.

Row 1: (Right side) *YO, RT, K3 [(n-7)/2 + 1], rep from *.
Rows 2-21 [2n-1]: as for Unit 1.

Leave the last row (21 [2n-1]) on the right needle.

Unit 5

Unpick the cast-on and place the freed-up stitches on the left needle, so that the right side of the first unit is facing you (you start picking up loops from the lower-right corner of the unit toward the lower-left corner). There should be 11 [n] stitches on the left needle. Then with the left needle pick up stitches held by the contrasting yarn. There should now be 21 [2n-1] loops on the left needle.

Row 1: YO, RT, K3 [(n-7)/2 +1], YO, RT, K2, SSK, turn.
Row 2: Purl.
Row 3: YO, RT, K2 [(n-7)/2], K2tog, YO, RT, K2 [(n-7)/2], Sl2, K1, PSSO (central double-decrease).
Rows 4, 6, ... 20 [2n-2]: Repeat row 2.
Rows 5, 7... 21 [2n-1]: Repeat row 3.

Leave the last row (21 [2n-1]) on the right needle.

Finishing

Crochet *chain 1, single-crochet in a stitch or yarn-over loop, repeat from * in each stitch or loop around the star. When you get to the inner corners, gather three stitches/loops together into one sc. Finish with a slip stitch into the first single crochet. Block flat.

PDF link

Download this pattern as a PDF formatted for printing.

"Walkerized" decreases

2010-02-08T15:43:00.001-08:00

Barbara Walker started the whole thing when she changed slip-one-knit-one-pass-slip-stitch-over (sl1-k1-psso) to slip-slip-knit (ssk). Did you know that most decreases can be modified in a similar way?

For example, the most common way to do a double decrease when you want the decrease to slant gently to the right is “ssk, return the stitch thus formed to the left-hand needle, then pass the next unworked stitch over the stitch just worked, then pass the just-worked stitch again to the right-hand needle.” A Walker-style modification of that decrease would be as follows. “Slip two stitches separately as if to knit.[1] Insert the left-hand needle into both stitches together from the right and transfer them back to the left hand needle.[2] Then knit three together.” You may find that, once learned, this is a faster way to do the stitch.

Suppose you want a double decrease gently slanting to the left? The traditional way: “slip one stitch as if to knit. Knit two together. Pass the slipped stitch over the k2-tog.” The Walkerized decrease is very similar to ssk: “Slip one knitwise. Slip two as if to k2-tog. Insert left hand needle into the front of the three slipped stitches and knit them all together.”

Instead of having three motions, one to slip an old stitch, one to pull a new stitch through, and one to pass a slipped stitch over, you now have two: slip stitches, and pull the yarn through.

Notice a pattern? The basic idea is to perform all of the slipping of stitches first, lining them up, then pull the new stitch through. Try this for a central double decrease: “Slip two as if to k2-tog, slip one knitwise, then insert l. h. needle into all 3 stitches and knit them together.”

[1]this straightens out the two stitches so that they don’t knit crossed.

[2]this motion is the mirror-image of “slipping two stitches as if to k2-tog,” which is used when you want to make a central two stitch decrease.

Entrelac diagrams

2010-02-08T15:27:00.001-08:00

For the last year, I've been experimenting with entrelac knitting. I find diagrams to be a good way to think about and explore entrelac knitting.

In this post, I'll show how to read my diagrams, assuming you already know how to do entrelac. I'll start with the simplest diagram and build from there.

Here's the minimal diagram to describe a piece of knitting:

The line inside the rectangle represents the grain of knitting. It's sometimes hard to tell the beginning edge from the ending edge of a piece of knitting—especially if the piece was cast off with a sewn cast-off—but with a flat piece, you can always tell which edges are selvedges.

These two diagram elements, rectangle and line, are enough to show the gist of an example of entrelac knitting:

The basic technique of entrelac is to join pieces of knitting end-to-side and side-to-end.

Looking at knitting, especially if it's stockinette, garter, or reverse stockinette, it's not always easy to see the direction of knitting. With entrelac, you're joining many little pieces of knitting as you go, so it's important to keep track of the direction of knitting. I use an arrow to show the direction:

Another thing to keep track of is which side the knitting starts and ends on. I use dots to show this. The diagram below shows a piece of stockinette knitting that starts and ends on a right-side row (when it's knit in the conventional direction):

The one below starts on a wrong-side row and ends on a right-side row:

Now I'll show an entrelac diagram with dots and arrows:

This is the minimal diagram to show how an entrelac piece is knitted. I suppose the dots can be inferred from the arrows, but they make following the diagram a little easier.

To make it clearer, for each square I'll often add a number in place of the dot that indicates how the first row begins, like so:

From the diagram above, you can infer how to work each square:

Start on a wrong-side and end on a wrong-side row: 1, 2, 7, 12, 13.
Start on a wrong-side and end on a right-side row: 3, 8.
Start on a right-side and end on a right-side row: 4, 5, 9, 10.
Start on a right-side and end on a wrong-side row: 6, 11.

Now, all this assumes that you know how to join entrelac squares. In a subsequent post, I'll write about different ways to join entrelac pieces.

Medusa Hat

2010-02-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

On the needles now, I am forty-one squares into a hat that looks a lot like a bunch of coiled snakes. I'm not sure what it will look like when it's blocked and put on an actual head (probably mine), but right now... I better look at it through a mirror, like Perseus.

Charting Marianne Kinzel's "Ladybird" pattern

2010-01-28T18:51:00.000-08:00

The "Ladybird Stitch" from Marianne Kinzel's lace knitting books has long interested me. Scroll down to Figure 6 in this embedded excerpt from The First Book of Modern Lace Knitting to see a picture of the fabric:

I have found it useful in graphing my own patterns to sometimes represent groups of stitches that usually are shown as several symbols as one symbol. This has helped me, for example, to understand better the stitch structure of the “Ladybird” pattern. If you replace the “yo, k1-b, yo” group with a single symbol, it makes for a more compact chart that more clearly shows the proportions of the knitted piece. Here’s a graph of the ladybird mesh to show what I mean (edge stitches aren’t graphed correctly):

A full repeat of the ladybird pattern (shown on the graph inside the heavy lines) when knitted really is approximately square. And using the “yo, k1-b, yo” symbol means that the placement of the yarnover symbols in the chart more accurately represents what is going on in the knitted piece. The “yo, k1-b, yo” group is approximately equal in size to the single yarnovers since the latter are strained horizontally by the sudden decrease in stitches on the rows in which they appear.

Here’s the same pattern when graphed as Kinzel does it in her Modern Lace Knitting books:

Done this way, there’s no way to tell from the graph that the yarn overs form 45˚ diagonals in the knitted piece, or that the proportions of the pattern when knitted are square, roughly the same as garter stitch (one stitch = two rows), though much less dense a fabric! The graph may be a little easier to read, but that is a matter of taste, I think. And on patterns like this one, where the stitch count changes from row to row, one square in the graph can’t equal one stitch. Mrs. Kinzel uses blank squares to address the imbalance.

More of my idiosyncratic charting style here:

Image by fuzzyjay via Flickr

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Charting Marianne Kinzel's "Ladybird" pattern