Category: craft

As can now be seen from the progress bars (currently at the bottom of the blog sidebar) I’ve made real progress on my Henry scarf. It’s now 95% done, thanks to a couple of long-ish train journeys over the weekend. I might get it finished at I Knit this week but if I don’t it certainly won’t need much more done to it. Bizarrely, I’m now starting to feel anxious about what I’m going to knit when it’s done. For all that I’ve been desperate to get it finished, I’m going to miss it when it’s gone!

Since I failed to buy my Mum a Christmas present while shopping at the weekend, it’s looking more likely that my next knitting project is going to be a present for her, despite the fact that there are now only 10 knitting days till Christmas. I think there should be laws against people having birthdays in December and January. Mum’s difficult enough to find presents for without having to find two within a fortnight.

So don’t be surprised if another progress bar appears with something for my Mum that will knit up quickly and easily and preferably with little or no seaming so that I can finish it in the car as Steven and I are driving home.

Something amazing happened today. I looked at the new issue of Knitty and didn’t want to make anything in it! This almost never happens. Usually, Knitty comes out and I immediately want to run out and buy lots of wool and knit and knit and knit but not today.

I have added the kilt hose to my Ravelry queue, just in case the pattern comes in handy at a later date but that’s it.

Or, at least, that’s it for the current issue. Just to prove that there’s usually a lot more that I want to make, I trawled through the back issues and added whole bunch of earlier patterns instead. Guess you can’t win ‘em all.

This thought came as a revelation to me so apologies if it’s already occurred to everyone else: “you can use stitch markers even when the pattern doesn’t say you have to!”

I’m used to using stitch markers to mark specific points on jumpers, e.g. where the seams will be joined later, but it only recently occurred to me that I can also use them to keep track of simple repeating stitch patterns mid-row.

I’ve been working on a pattern with an extremely simple stitch pattern. How hard could it be to keep track of knit 2, slip 2 or purl 2, slip 2, even for a row with more than 400 stitches? In my case, nearly impossible! (For someone who works almost exclusively with numbers, having to admit that I was having trouble counting to two was embarassing, to say the least.)

Stitch markers to the rescue! I’ve now got stitch markers every 40 stitches and just work out at the start of every row which stitch (of the four stitch pattern) I should be at when I get to a marker. If I’m not at the right stitch, I never have to work back more than 40 stitches, which is a huge improvement over having to rip back the entire row!

This technique will work for any repeated stitch pattern. Just make sure that your markers are placed at appropriate multiples of stitches. For example, for a pattern with a repeat of 5 stitches, place markers at any multiples of 5 (5, 10, 15, 20, etc.) and, in each row, you should always be at the same stitch in the pattern when you get to a marker. Obviously, if your pattern shifts slightly from row to row, you’ll be at a different point in the pattern on different rows, but you should always be at the same point for every marker in a single row.

A really simple method of keeping track of which row of a pattern repeat you’re working on (if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to use a row counter) is to write the row numbers, e.g. 1 to 24 down the side of a piece of paper. You can then attach a paperclip to the paper that can be moved down as you work through the rows and then back to the top for the start of the next repeat.

This is fine if you know what you should be doing on each of the rows, e.g. if all the even rows are to be worked in the same way and similarly for the odd rows. What I find this most useful for though is when a pattern consists of, say, four differently worked rows that are combined in a 24 row repeat. This may result in the original pattern being written something like:

Row 1 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 2 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 3 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 4 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Rows 5-12: Repeat Rows 1-4 twice more.
Row 13 [RS]: Work as for Row 3.
Row 14 [WS]: Work as for Row 2.
Row 15 [RS]: Work as for Row 1.
Row 16 [WS]: Work as for Row 4.
Rows 17-24: Repeat Rows 13-16 twice more.
Repeat Rows 1-24 six times more.

So, if I’m on row 20, I need to work out which of rows 13-16 that corresponds to, then I need to look back again to find out what that actually means I should be knitting. No, thank you!

However, by copying and pasting the details for rows 1-4 into a text editor and then working through the instructions, copying the details from the appropriate row, I ended up with something like:

Row 1 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 2 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 3 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 4 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 5 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 6 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 7 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 8 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 9 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 10 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 11 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 12 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 13 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 14 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 15 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 16 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 17[RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 18 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 19 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 20 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 21[RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 22 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 23 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 24 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Repeat Rows 1-24 six times more.

I then printed this off and attached my handy paperclip. Now, at a single glance, I can see exactly where I am in the repeat and what I should be knitting on that row.

Henry has passed the psychologically all-important half-way mark! And this is in terms of pattern repeats, number of rows and quantity of yarn used so there can be absolutely no doubt that I really am more than half done. For the first time, I actually believe that I might get this finished for Christmas (she says, jinxing it so that now it won’t get done).

Being me, I am now thinking things like “Why don’t I knit my Mum a shawl for Christmas?” and “Oh! I could make some festive beaded napkin rings for Christmas”. I wish Christmas would hurry up and be over so that I can stop be tempted by the idea of more Christmas projects, especially when I still haven’t actually finished this scarf yet.

and I’ve decided mine sucks. ‘Sucks’ is probably too strong a word since I do manage to knit and create knitted things and my tension is even and I can knit to gauge. However, I do all the things I shouldn’t and don’t do lots of things I should. I don’t tension my yarn (how it comes out even, I don’t know and am scared to investigate); I drop the right needle; I sit badly and end up with weird pains in hands and shoulders.

I keep thinking I should learn to knit ‘properly’ for an as yet undetermined definition of ‘properly’. (Apologies, I’m a mathematician by nature and I can’t help it slipping out sometimes.) I’ve heard lots of people say things like “I taught myself to knit Continental and I’ve never looked back”. My problem is “When do I do this?” Obviously, I can’t change my knitting technique half-way through a project. The chances of my tension/gauge with the new technique (as I’m learning it!) matching my old tension/gauge are pretty much non-existent. However, I’m very rarely between projects. I’ve usually started the next one (or two … or three) before the current one is finished.

Maybe next time I try a felting project, I’ll also try learning a new technique. That way it will all come right in the wash. (And I promise that this entire post was based on a genuine thought and not an attempt to make a bad pun.)