Knititude

Galena Tank

The focal point of the Galena Tank is the unusual lace yoke, which is worked sideways, not in the round. I found the original stitch pattern of lace circles in Barbara Walker's Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns awhile ago, and after swatching, made some changes to the stitch pattern so that the circle outlines stand out more clearly. I also placed them on a background of garter stitch. 

I was thinking of combining this stitch pattern with a lace border in a garter-based shawl, but never got around to completing the design. Then I got the idea of working a single column of the lace circles, adding short rows to shape the column into a curve, and turning the resulting curved strip into a yoke. I decided to keep the rest of the top simple, and found a very special yarn, Quince & Co.'s Willet, that shows off the textured stitches of the yoke AND works into a light, smooth fabric for the body. It's made of a responsibly sourced cotton that is grown, spun and dyed in the USA. 

The other unusual feature of the yoke, besides the lace stitch, is the duplicate stitch method that I used to graft the ends. When using this method for a circular item such as a yoke (or a cowl), you cast on in a contrast color waste yarn, work a couple of rows, then join the main yarn and work to one row before the end. You then cut the main yarn leaving a long tail for grafting (very important!), join the contrast color yarn, work a couple of rows, and bind off. Next, you thread a tapestry needle with the long yarn tail and with the contrast color rows as a guide, use duplicate stitch to graft the ends of the yoke together. Sound complicated? This is a case where a picture (or better yet, a video) is indeed worth a thousand words. 

If you knit a lot of socks, you are probably pretty comfortable with using Kitchener stitch for simple stockinette, but the duplicate stitch method is a wonderful way to graft lace or other stitch patterns, because there are no complicated grafting charts to read! And since there are no live stitches hanging loose, there is no fear of dropping stitches, AND you can readjust the tension of your grafted stitches as much as you like, or pull the graft stitches out and redo them if you make a mistake. Once you are happy with the graft row, you carefully cut away the waste yarn stitches. 

After finishing Galena's yoke, stitches are picked up from the bottom edge and worked down for the body. There are some short rows to shape the top of the front and back to the curve of the yoke, but after that, the rest of the body is pretty simple. After you reach the bottom of the armholes, it's worked in the round; some waist shaping and a simple rolled hem, and you're done.

By the way, this tank was not named after the mineral, but after the town of Galena in Illinois (I hear it's quite nice!).

(All photos copyright Tom Moore Studios)

Sheridan Tank

The Sheridan Tank is another design from my new book, Knitted Tanks and Tunics. It's worked in Cascade Yarns Anchor Bay, a blend of 50% cotton and 50% superwash merino wool. It features an unusual cabled pattern on the front and back. The stitch pattern is called "Snails," and I found it in the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Vol. 2: Cables. If I hadn't decided to name all of the patterns in the book after towns, I would certainly have called this one "Escargot"...or maybe "Lumache" (Italian for "snails," and also for snail-shaped pasta).

The cabled panels on front and back flow into and around the deep scooped neck, which is shaped with short rows. The cable pattern itself is not complicated; it's a very common four-over-four stitch cable cross (it's the placement of the background knit and purl columns that gives its unusual appearance). But the short row neck shaping works around the cable crosses, and a chart is used to show both the short rows and the cable pattern, so Sheridan is definitely geared toward the intermediate knitter. In my opinion, a chart is actually a great way to see the placement of the short row wrap-and-turns, but it does take a little getting used to, if you've never used that type of chart before.

Sheridan has side waist shaping and was designed to flatter, whether worn alone or over another layer; the vertical lines of the cabled panel and the plain stockinette stitch sides have a slimming effect, while the rounded neckline looks good on many body types. Instructions are given for changing the body length; there is also a section in the book about adjusting the placement of waist shaping to fit your body (an important consideration to get the best fit). 

This was one of the first projects I completed for the book, and a few months after I had finished the sample, I found out that the yarn I had chosen was going to be discontinued before the book came out. So I quickly picked out another yarn and made ANOTHER sample. Luckily the Anchor Bay turned out to be a perfect choice; the cotton/wool blend is very pleasant to work with, comfortable to wear, holds its shape well, and also has great stitch definition. AND it comes in 32 colors!

For a chance to win a free copy of Knitted Tanks and Tunics AND the yarn for either the Sheridan Tank (Cascade Yarns Anchor Bay) or the Greenville Tank (Cascade Yarns Avalon), head on over the the Cascade Yarns Facebook page on April 9th! 

Wellfleet Hat

The Wellfleet Hat pattern is now available, both on Ravelry and on Loveknitting! I also call it the Wellfleet Reversible Hat, because the "wrong" side (below) is almost as nice as the "right" side (above)-- in fact, some may prefer it. 

This design is one of a pair* that I decided to work up almost the moment I opened Norah Gaughan's new Knitted Cable Sourcebook. Norah is a master cable knitter and creator, and this book contains so many new, unusual and wonderful cables...luckily, I also decided that I wanted to design a couple of hats that work up quickly in bulky (3-3.75 stitches per inch) or super bulky (1.75-2.75 stitches per inch) yarn. This helped me limit my cable choices to a few of the more small and simple ones-- cables that would fit on a hat if worked in a heavy yarn.

The cable I chose for this hat is simple enough that I didn't even include a chart in the pattern! And I love charts for how they give a visual representation of knitted fabric, simplify directions for complex stitch patterns, and allow the knitter to see the progression of pattern rows...but in this case a chart just wasn't needed. The cable looks more complex than it really is, a function of the ingenious and elegant cable cross, which crosses one four-stitch group of K1, p2, k1 over another. 

And this cable cross is the reason that the "wrong" side (above) looks so good. 

I did add my own innovation in the form of the crown decreases (above), which are worked similar to a three-needle bind-off (without actually binding off any stitches), and preserve the cable architecture into the final rounds of the hat. 

The yarn I chose is a new line from Cascade Yarns, Baby Llama Chunky; it's available in undyed and dyed colors, and is very soft compared to most wools. It knits up at the same gauge as their Baby Alpaca Chunky (which came out awhile ago, is also very soft, AND happens to be on sale on one or two websites at the moment).

As for the name Wellfleet, the rippling cables and gray-lavender-blue of the yarn reminded me of a wintry sea, so I decided to give a shoutout to my home, Cape Cod. Wellfleet is one of the more remote towns on the Outer Cape-- lovely in summer, it's a very different (but still lovely) place in the winter (photo below copyright Dapixara.com). 

*Next week: the second of the pair, the Truro Hat

Color Trials, Part 2

Last week's post ended with many colors of yarn to play with. The above photo shows them in a different light than the photo I used at the end of my last post-- a good reminder that different light conditions can also affect how colors appear in photos and to the eye. The colors in the above photo are a little more saturated than they appear in real life.

I started experimenting with different color combinations, but rather than jumping right into knitting swatches, I first tried them out using Adobe Illustrator.

Illustrator has a library of color swatches, but it also has a spectrum that you can click on, and then you can take the resulting color and adjust the hue, saturation and lightness almost indefinitely, and save the resulting color as a new swatch to the color library. Although color charts or sketches can only approximate what a finished knitted colorwork swatch will look like, I figured that the closer I could get the Illustrator swatch colors to my yarn colors, the better idea I'd have of whether the various color combinations would work. (Hint: If using Illustrator for color charts, place the stitches for design and background in different layers so that you can easily change the color of all stitches in one chart component at once, without affecting other stitches.)

I now had seven custom colors added to my Illustrator color library (clockwise from top left in first photo): Robin's Egg Blue, Celery, Plum, Orchid, Magenta, Teal and Olive. As you can see from the above charts, these colors can be combined in many different ways (although all except two charts include the teal, since I wanted to use that for the body of my design). It is also immediately obvious from the charts that some color combinations provide much better contrast than others, notably the Plum/Celery (#4) and Magenta/Celery (#7). After playing around with these charts, I had a feeling that my favorite combo would be #2; I liked the muted contrast between Olive and Teal in the background, the subtle pop from the Orchid in the center, and finally, the Celery design seemed to stand out well enough against the Olive background. (And remember, the color combination to beat, or at least equal, was #1, which was what I had used for my similar book project.) 

The swatches that correspond to the charts are shown below. (I did my best to get the colors to show up accurately, but again they appear a bit more saturated than in real life.) No surprise that #4 and #7 have relatively high contrast, as well as #8 (which is the same as #7 but with Teal instead of Olive). I probably also should have been able to predict from the chart that #6 would have poor contrast within the design, although contrast between design and background is acceptable. What surprised me is that #2, my predicted favorite, looks rather dull and washed out, with less contrast between the Celery and Olive than I expected; I actually prefer #3.

Knitters with sharp eyes may note that in #3, the Olive stitches across the center were added in duplicate stitch; originally these were in Orchid, but I wasn't crazy about how that looked. Duplicate stitch is a good way to change a few stitches on a stranded swatch so the whole thing doesn't have to be re-knitted.

There does come a point in design development where the time and money invested yields diminishing returns, and I would say that I had reached that point. But since this will be a self-published design, I then asked myself: Several of these color combinations will work, but are any of them something that I would love to wear? And I'm afraid the answer was: Meh. 

What next? You guessed it-- more yarn.

 

Onda Scarf or Wrap

Pattern now available! Inspired by the gorgeous stitch pattern Norah Gaughan used in her Open Rib/Cable Pullover*, I decided to create a REVERSIBLE lace cable stitch pattern, something that could be used to fashion a scarf with no wrong side. After some trial and error, I came up with the Onda stitch pattern (Onda is Italian for wave).

You may be thinking that the work of designing was done at this point; after all, both the scarf and wrap are just X number of reps of the stitch pattern, right? No shaping, no seams, no edgings...well, the finished scarf and wrap may not have edgings, but that is only because I swatched several possibilities (Feather and Fan ruffles, ribbed ruffles, side and end ruffles) before deciding that in this case, simpler was better.

I also tried a number of yarns before deciding that the subtle variegations of Misti Alpaca Tonos Pima Silk were a perfect fit. Another plus was the cotton/silk fiber blend: my neck does not put up with even cashmere at close quarters for very long. However, when I decided to choose a different yarn for the wrap version, I went with Madelinetosh Tosh DK (superwash merino wool); the colors are stunning, and I figured that there would be less neck contact. Really, many many yarns would work for this project (you don't even need to use DK weight yarn!-- although I would swatch first with any yarn, just to have an idea of the size of the finished product), especially for those who tolerate animal fibers better than I do.

Either one of these projects is excellent TV or movie knitting (that is, it gets repetitive). So if you are looking for a challenging project that calls for lots of stitch markers, complicated shaping, wrong-side p3togs, short rows, or what have you, this ain't it. But if you are looking for a project which requires only intermittent close attention (the cable crosses can be a bit tricky), and yields a versatile, wearable, multi-season accessory, give Onda a try! Right now the wrap version is being test-knit, and I hope to have photos of the finished sample posted within a few weeks.

*Pattern first published in the Spring/Summer 2005 Vogue Knitting and now available online.

 

 

So many names...

Thank you all for some wonderful suggestions!  I saw so many new things in the lace motif after reading all of the comments:  umbrellas, cathedral windows, flying birds-- what fun!  The fact that I've decided to stick with the name "Carlotta" is more a reflection of how I've come to think of the pattern, and the memories I have of a day spent at Villa Carlotta, than a choice based on the merits of each suggested name.

So I've decided to give two free patterns away:  one to Jeanie, because I thought the name Azalee was especially beautiful, and one to Aimee, because after reading her comment, I could actually see the sandhill cranes in flight across the top of the beret (all on a collision course towards the center, but that's neither here nor there!).  I've finished the chart for the hat, but I'm thinking I will write out the directions as well-- I encourage the use of charts (and prefer them myself), but I realize that some knitters would rather follow written-out instructions.  So I would guess that the pattern will be finished within a week or two, and I will email it to the winners as soon as it's ready.

Etrusca errata

For patterns purchased before today:  On Row 8 of the Lace Chart, stitches #22 and #30 should be "P on RS, k on WS"; as this is a WS row, you will knit, not purl these stitches.

Another day in the sun for Seaside

I'm really quite fond of these gloves...but no, I don't normally wear them to the beach.  I dug up this photo from my archives of almost exactly two years ago, when I was planning to submit Seaside to Magknits for publication.

Ever wonder how I decided where to place the beads?  (They are not spaced regularly, after all, but are supposed to look randomly scattered like droplets of water.)  No?  Well, I'll tell you anyway.  After trying to place a few of them as I progressed, and ripping back more than once because I didn't like the spacing, I considered charting them all before knitting, but decided it would be very difficult to tell from the chart exactly where they would fall on the hand.

So I knit the first glove, and then sewed the beads on.  When I was happy with their placement, I charted them, created a mirror image of the chart, and then knit them in on the second glove.

   

Selva Skirt Backstory Part I

In one of the comments on my last post, Janet asked if I could direct her to some posts about the Selva Skirt.  There is a category for it (look on the lower right hand part of the page), but there aren't many posts to be found, simply because the Selva Skirt pattern was created for publication in a magazine, and hence was unbloggable before publication.

Well, it's after publication now, and since at least one person is interested in how Selva came about, I thought I would provide a few details.  I often look through stitch dictionaries for inspiration, and in this case, the skirt was absolutely inspired by the stitch pattern, Hearts of Oak from Barbara Walker's Fourth Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  I thought the texture of this stitch pattern was fascinating, and after swatching, I thought its density would be perfect for a fitted knit skirt that would hide a few posterior, shall we say, imperfections.  (Plus I hate wearing G-strings-- not required for Selva, ladies!)  Also, as I recall (the themes that Interweave provided to designers for the Winter 2007 issue are no longer online), one of the suggested themes for that issue was tailored, fitted garments, which seemed perfect for Selva.  Above is the wrong side of the swatch I sent off to Interweave Knits with my pattern submission, back in February '07; the photo is crap because it was an afterthought, taken with my cellphone camera in my car just before I put the submission materials in the mail.

While swatching, I also found that the Hearts of Oak chart has a number of errors.  The most important part of the chart, the pattern repeat, is correct, but the outer edges of the chart are not.  Always be aware that errors may be (and probably are) present in published charts and patterns!

In the case of this stitch pattern, I debated which side to use for the right side; both sides are really cool.  One reason I decided to go with the "right" side was the waistband.  As I was swatching, I had started to think about how I would do the waistband decreases, and had concluded two things:  first, that working the decreases into the stitch pattern would require a better mind than mine, and second, switching to a less dense stitch pattern, like stockinette or ribbing or, well, just about anything, would mean losing that nice tight fabric just when it would be great to have a bit of a girdle effect, across the tummy and hips.  So after examining both sides of the swatch, I decided that the V-shaped knit sections on the right side were just begging to be extended into long ribbons to form the waistband, and with some experimenting, I came up with what you see at the top of the above swatch:  the ribbons include decreases and increases, and thus retain at least some of the density of the Hearts of Oak pattern.

Next:  The evolution of Selva's design after she was accepted by Interweave Knits for their Winter 2008 issue.

Chinese Lace

Now, it so happens that I am half Chinese, but that's not why I like this lace pattern--and although it's nice that anything so lovely has the word "Chinese" in the name, I'm not sure this means that the pattern actually originated in China.  (It was contributed to BW's 2nd Treasury by one Marjorie B. Bialkowski, Richmond, VA, so perhaps she could tell us its provenance.  I'm curious about the many contributors to BW's Treasuries, by the way.  Are they knitters, designers, historians?  Marjorie is only one of many:  a few others are Leona Hughes, Sarasota, FL; Pauline Balbes, Hollywood, CA; Dorothy Reade, Eugene, OR; and the prolific  Hildegarde M. Elsner, Aldan, PA, who must be either a remarkable innovator, or a compulsive pattern collector.)

But I digress.  Here is the entire page from BW, including her (or rather, M.B. Bialkowski's) directions for Chinese Lace.  It is a 24-row repeat and quite enjoyable to work--but it's kind of hard to get a sense of where the pattern is going from the written directions.   

So I charted the pattern.  I really like working from charts; not only do you get a better sense of how the pattern is constructed and how it progresses, but it then becomes simple to work in the round if you wish.  One thing you don't get from either set of directions (but which is visible in the photo) is how the decreases and increases pull the lace so that it curves gently from side to side.  (Note:  When I converted the charts into jpg format, some of the YO symbols came out looking rather bizarre; the horseshoe-shaped thingies as well as the circles mean:  YO!)