Knititude

Super Bowl Sunday:

A perfect opportunity to get a little knitting in, especially when you don't give a rat's ass who wins.  (Although the commercials are kind of fun.)  Thanks to the Steelers and the Seahawks I've made significant progress on Oliver, and here's the proof.  I like the front band much better with a row of twisted stitches setting it off.  The neckband will be folded in half and sewn in place, so I thought I'd try using cotton for the part that will form the lining, to protect my nephew's tender neck from the wool.  Anyway, that's why it's a slightly different color. 

On the back, I'm liking the way the vertical and horizontal patterns meld, but will reserve final judgment until I finish the second sleeve and the bottom band.

One disappointment:  I've had mixed success getting the travelling stitches even (and I love them so!), especially the ones that cross to the left;  I noticed that Eunny mentions this problem in a recent post.  I first tried following Barbara Walker's instructions for crossing the stitches while both remain on the needle, but I found that for left-leaning crosses, I had better luck when I took the first stitch off the needle, held it between my fingers, knitted the second at the very tips of the needle, then put the first stitch back and knit it.  Pulling the yarn tight and keeping the stitches at the very tips of the needles seem to be important in keeping those crossed stitches more uniform.  (And luckily for me, as Eunny noted, wet blocking helps.)

AM I INSANE??

I was sitting here, trying to write a simple drop shoulder sweater pattern for about 11 sizes (patternmakers deserve respect for the sheer drudgery of tasks like that, even if the pattern, like this one, is relatively simple) when I had a thought.  A HUGE thought.  We all know that blocking changes gauge, right?  Sometimes quite a bit!  And we don't block while we're knitting, do we?  Not in the middle of, say, a sleeve, anyway.  Right?  So WHY does almost EVERY printed pattern say things like "work until length measures 8 inches", "work until piece measures 15 inches", "work for 3 inches"?  Do you see what I'm getting at?  Those measurements mean NOTHING before blocking!  The length that's supposed to be 8 inches on the finished garment could be 9 inches after blocking.

Knitting patterns tell you how many stitches to cast on, both for pattern stitch purposes AND for size; they don't say, "Cast on 14 inches."  Similarly, knitting patterns should give length in ROWS, not inches (or centimeters), because that's the unit from a gauge swatch that remains constant, before AND after blocking.      

Edited to add:  I should elaborate on that last sentence.  I don't mean the numbers of rows per inch remains the same, because the whole point of this little tirade is that it often doesn't.  What I meant will hopefully be clarified by the following story: 

THE BLOCKING QUOTIENT

Say you make a 20-stitch wide, 24-row high swatch which after blocking is exactly 4 inches square (and yes, okay, you really should have made it a little bigger), but before blocking was 3.5 inches square (a not unreasonable change): well, you have the same number of rows and stitches, but your gauge has changed from 5.7 sts and 6.9 rows per inch to 5 sts and 6 rows per inch. 

Being a meticulous person, you choose your size based on your after-blocking gauge, and you knit a simple tunic that's 24 inches long and 35 inches around.

You're nervous because it's supposed to be 40 inches around, but the directions said to cast on 200 stitches and you did, so you're hoping for the best.  You block it, and--surprise!  It's now 40 inches around--huzzah!!--but at 27.4 inches long, instead of barely covering your butt, it's hanging at mid-thigh. 

"WTF!?" you say.  "I followed the instructions to the letter!"  YES, YOU DID!  The instructions were wrong, not you; instead of "Bind off at 24 inches," they should have said "Bind off at row 144" (which would have been at about 21 inches, as knitted). 

OR they could have said, "Divide your after-blocking gauge by your before-blocking gauge; this is your Blocking Quotient.  Multiply any lengths specified in the directions by your BQ to get the length you should knit."

(In the example above, the row BQ would be 6/6.9, or .87.)   

Unraveling from the cast-on edge

When I decided to remove the rib border of my partially-finished seaweed scarf, I thought it would be simple enough: just unravel from the cast-on edge to where I wanted the scarf to start, bind off, and continue knitting from the other end.  But when I started unraveling, I found that approximately one in three stitches, rather than freeing itself with a gentle tug, tightened instead, so that I had to loosen the yarn by hand, and then pull the tail end of the yarn through the loop of the stitch. 

Why did no one warn me about this?  I didn't think I had read about this problem anywhere.  Just to be sure, I consulted my Stitch 'N Bitch, Stitch 'N Bitch Nation, Vogue Knitting, and Debbie Bliss' Knitting Workbook; I didn't find anything more specific than this line in S 'N B:  "Unraveling a cast-on edge is not as easy as unraveling regular knitting."   

Well, the issue was not the cast-on edge; as I laboriously unraveled my work, I realized that these problem stitches occurred at every transition between knit & purl stitches.  This seemed counter-intuitive:  how was the yarn getting twisted around itself, and why would this be a problem unraveling from the bottom, but not from the top? 

Hmmm.

So I made myself a sketch showing a few rows of 2X2 rib.  The transition between knit and purl stitches is circled, and you can see that each stitch in the top row (arrows), including stitches on each side of purl-knit transition, enters and exits the stitch directly below it without ever twisting around that stitch. 

Here is the exact same sketch, upside down.  Once again the purl-knit transition is circled; note that within the circled column of stitches, each one is twisted around the stitch directly below.  Aha!  Since each "stitch" in this direction is really the space between two stitches in the right-side-up direction, (which also explains why there is one less stitch than you would expect), moving the yarn from one side of the work to the other to go from knit to purl, and vice versa, caused the yarn to wind around itself. 

There is a point to all of this:  should you ever want to unravel something from the cast-on edge, avoid unraveling ribbing if at all possible!  (Stockinette and reverse stockinette will unravel just as easily up as down.)  For example, if you want to change the ribbing on a garment, and especially if the ribbing is, oh, say, 5 inches deep!, use this trick from Annie Modesitt above the ribbing, and then knit down, adding whatever new ribbing you like.  (If you need the yarn, you can always unravel the removed ribbing from the top and re-use it.)

Whew!  I think I feel a headache coming on.  Enough of this topic. 

On a totally unrelated subject, the yarn I used in this poor muzzled sweater held up so well that I've been trying to think of what else I should knit with it (apparently it was quite a bargain when I purchased it ten years ago, as I have plenty left).  I've been wanting to try a side-to-side sweater and have completed some pattern swatches; maybe I'll work up something for my smallest nephew, now 3 months old.  At that size, it should go quickly!

Binding off in rib or seed stitch

Just a simple trick which helps me bind off faster in pattern: 

When binding off knitwise, as in this photo, the stitch to be passed over the other stitch and off the right-hand needle is picked up in front of the work--easy.

  But when binding off purlwise, you have to pick up the same stitch from behind the needle, either blindly, or by rotating the work so you can see what you're doing--either of which slows the process, at least for me.

So here's my trick: Each time I transition from a purl to a knit stitch, I move the yarn from the front to the back of the work before binding off:  this allows me to bind off knitwise even if I have just purled.  In seed stitch, it goes like this:  k, p, move yarn to back, bind off 1st stitch knitwise, k, bind off, p, move yarn to back, bind off knitwise...see?  Even though you are binding off in seed stitch pattern, all stitches are bound off knitwise.  In 2 X 2 rib, 3 of 4 stitches can be bound off knitwise:  k, k, bind off, p, bind off purlwise, p, move yarn to back, bind off knitwise, k, bind off, k, bind off, etc.

Stop trichotillomania now!

Today I had to weave a bunch of ends into my finished "rabidly happy cat hat" (see my earlier post),  and I would certainly have been stricken with sudden-onset trichotillomania*, if I had not remembered this wonderfully easy way to thread a yarn needle: 

1)  Fold yarn over shank of needle and squeeze tightly (see top photo). 

2) Remove needle, leaving yarn pinched tightly between fingers.  (Please ignore embarrassingly dry skin on my fingers in photos--I tried to crop it out as much as possible.)

  3) Place eye of needle over pinched yarn and work yarn through eye just enough so you can pull it through.

4)  Voila!  Even thick yarn can be threaded without wetting or squinting.  Not sure where I learned this trick, but it works!

*Trichotillomania:  an uncontrollable urge to pull out one's hair.  I'm not sure it comes in sudden-onset form--that was just my feeble attempt at humor.  So if you really suffer from the disorder, my apologies; I realize it can be incredibly damaging and frustrating.