Knititude

One-row buttonhole photo tutorial

This photo tutorial is part of my Gibson Cardigan free pattern on knitty.com, but I thought I would also put it on my website, because I really like this technique. It creates a neat, sturdy buttonhole and is completed within one row, rather then working the bind-off part of the buttonhole on one row, and the cast-on part on the buttonhole on the next row (the two-row buttonhole). 

I used the same buttonhole technique for a new cardigan design, which will soon be available on WEBS*. So I also created a video tutorial for the one-row buttonhole-- check it out if you prefer video to photo tutorials.

NOTE: These instructions are for a three-stitch buttonhole. Mark the center stitch of the buttonhole with a removable marker, then proceed as directed below.

One-row buttonhole: *Knit to 1 st before marked st, bring yarn to front, and sl next st purlwise. Bring yarn to back and leave it there [photo 1]. (Sl next st purlwise from left-hand needle and pass first slipped st over it) three times [photo 2], then sl single slipped st remaining on right-hand needle back to left-hand needle. Turn work to WS and use yarn at back to CO 4 sts using Sturdy Cast-On [photos 3-5, also see Pattern Notes]. Turn work back to RS [photo 6], sl first st purlwise from left-hand needle to right-hand needle [photo 7], and pass last CO st over it to close buttonhole [photo 8], then sl st back to left-hand needle and knit it; rep from * for second buttonhole, knit to end of row.

1. Knit to 1 st before marked st, bring yarn to front, and slip next st purlwise. Bring yarn to back and leave it there.

2. 3 sts have been BO. Next step: Slip single slipped st remaining on right-hand needle back to left-hand needle, then turn work to WS.

3. With WS facing and yarn in front, insert right-hand needle tip from back to front between first two stitches on left-hand needle. Tip will then be used to draw loop of yarn from front to back to create new st.

4. 1 st has already been CO and placed on left-hand needle; to make next st, insert right-hand needle tip from back to front behind both legs of first st, in front of previous st.

5. Loop of yarn has been drawn through from front to back to create new st.

6. 4 sts have been CO and work turned back to RS.

7. First st from left-hand needle has been slipped purlwise to right-hand needle.

8. Last CO st has been passed over slipped st to close buttonhole. Next step: Place slipped st back on left-hand needle and knit it, then proceed with remainder of row.

*Speaking of WEBS, they have recently published two of my designs in their Designer Series; each can be purchased as an individual pattern or as part of a kit, with the yarn. The Lyndhurst sleeveless tank uses Valley Yarns Granville (90% cotton, 10% merino wool), and the Annatto cardigan uses Valley Superwash DK (100% extra-fine merino wool). 

An unusual yarn

It was a year or two ago that I started thinking about designing a cabled pullover, often called a fisherman or Aran sweater (or jumper if you're British). There's no mystery about where this idea came from-- they were all over the fashion pages from Fall 2014 ("run out RIGHT NOW and buy a fisherman sweater," from Glamour online) through Fall 2015 ("Fishing for Sweaters for Fall 2015," from T magazine). 

Although I love the oversized slouchy look of a big fisherman sweater on a model (or a man), I personally don't wear a lot of oversized clothing, and I don't usually wear wool; although I like to knit with it, I find it itchy to wear, and overly warm for most situations. So I didn't relish investing the time designing and knitting a cabled sweater if it wasn't something I was likely to wear. 

But then I got the idea of streamlining the fisherman sweater by using set-in instead of dropped sleeves, and using a yarn that was more warm-weather friendly, in a bulky weight so it would knit up more quickly; I pictured a cool summer or fall evening, outdoors on the beach or on a boat, and throwing a fisherman sweater on over a summer dress, or cropped pants (above photo from knitgrandeur.blogspot.com). In a worsted weight or thicker yarn, cotton by itself can be heavy and saggy when used in something as dense as a cabled sweater, but what about a cotton blend? 

I looked at many, many yarns: two of my favorites were Spud & Chloe Sweater (organic cotton and superwash wool) and Rowan All Seasons Cotton  (cotton and acrylic). But these were both a little thinner than I wanted. And then I found Katia Bulky Cotton.

The construction of this yarn is unusual: unlike most yarns, which are made of several thinner fibers twisted together, it is a mesh nylon tube with a cotton core (above photo: Spud & Chloe Sweater on the left, Katia Bulky Cotton on the right). It definitely has some pros and cons:

Pros:

• It has a pleasant soft, squishy feel and very good stitch definition.
• It's relatively light for a yarn of this thickness.
• It doesn't split easily.

Cons:

• It feels a bit like knitting with stockings, which takes getting used to.
• It's very stretchy, which means that it can easily be knit too tightly; tensioning the yarn lightly is important.
• The mesh tube snags fairly easily; although snags are almost impossible to fix (think fixing a snagged stocking), I found them easy to hide by making sure they are incorporated into the stitches,  and they don't compromise the integrity of the yarn.
• Any unevenness of stitches appears to be amplified. In the photo below, the stockinette stitch section shows "rowing out," which I usually don't notice in my knitting: up to the bottom of the armhole, the fabric is pretty uniform, because it was worked in the round (every row knitted), but after the start of the armhole, the fabric looks uneven because the wrong side rows were purled. 

In addition, my gauge was very different than the ball band gauge: when I used US #9 (5.5 mm) needles as recommended, I got a worsted weight gauge of 4 1/2 stitches to the inch, instead of the 3 1/2 stitches stated on the ball band. After going up two needle sizes to US # 10 1/2 (6.5 mm), I ended up with a gauge of 3 3/4 stitches to the inch.

The conclusion? I still liked this yarn because of its feel and stitch definition, but I'll have to see how it wears (and whether snagging is a big problem) before making a final recommendation.

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So many short rows!

My latest design, the Zinnia Tank, utilizes short rows to shape the upper chest and back to the curved edge of the yoke. But I've used short rows in many designs and many places before, and not just in the place they are most commonly used (to shape the shoulders). My first design accepted for publication by Interweave Knits, the Lutea Lace-Shoulder Shell (summer 2007), used short rows to shape the front and back into triangles, so that the lace shoulder sections could be angled out, creating a narrow V-neck.

Almost all of my designs in which front and back are joined at the shoulders (including the Fern Fitted Shell and the Twisted Rib Cable Tank) utilize short row shoulder shaping; designs in which short rows are used in more creative ways include the Aran Wrap Cardigan (short rows shape the caps of the top-down set-in sleeves), the Treccione Pullover (short rows shape the yoke, 2nd photo), the Oscilla Wrap (short rows shape the wrap, pictured below), and the Leaf Yoke Top (1st photo, copyright Szyleczko). 

The Leaf Yoke Top is where I first used short rows to shape the front and back to the yoke. Usually a circular yoke is contiguous with the body of the sweater, but because the shoulders are shaped more like a narrow oval than a sphere, this does create slight distortion across the chest (most visible as a bit of slackness across the upper chest, seen subtly here and in more exaggerated form here). The stretch of the knitted fabric and relative looseness of many yoked sweaters makes this distortion irrelevant, but what is more noticeable is that the neckline and any yoke patterning usually form a wide, shallow arc (see here and here). This is the main reason I wanted to try something different with the Leaf Yoke Top and the Zinnia Top: I wanted a rounder neckline.

Although I'm happy with how the Leaf Yoke Top turned out, the neckline is still fairly shallow, and that is because I didn't use many short rows, so the triangles that meet the yoke on each side are only an inch or so high. For the Zinnia Tank, I used over twice as many short rows, and as a result the neckline is rounder and deeper. 

Short rows can be intimidating if you haven't tried them, but luckily there are numerous tutorials available online. Knitting Daily TV has a great video on four different ways to wrap short rows; if you prefer photos to video, here is a useful tutorial for the most common wrap and turn technique, from Knotions. One note: I find the wrap easier to pick up when the yarn is brought first to the front and then around the stitch to be wrapped, as shown by Eunny Jang in the video, but most tutorials have you wrap the stitch in the opposite direction.

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.

 

My friend Emily

For some reason I really enjoy figuring out how to work decreases and increases into stitch patterns:  witness all of my hats (Beaufort, Maple Seed, Rose of Sharon, Cinnabar, and Coin Cable) as well as the Chinese Lace Pullover and Wisteria child's dress (both based on the same stitch pattern), and the Dayflower Lace camisole.  Even so, I was getting sick of my latest hat by the time I had plotted out the crown increases maybe ten times and swatched them, oh, a half dozen times.  I'm going to look at the process I went through, in hopes of seeing how I might do it more efficiently in the future!

I began by looking at the stitch pattern (see first photo), which has two distinct motifs: a mini zigzag with eyelets (pattern #1 in all photos), and what I'll call a fountain lace panel (pattern #2).  Early on I decided I wanted the mini zigzag to begin as close to the crown as possible, and my first swatch reflected this, including beginning the purl stitch borders in the first few rounds.  Issues with the first swatch:  I felt that the patterns overall just didn't "read" very clearly, and I thought including the purl stitches early on was at least part of the problem.

In this swatch, I decided to wait until much later to begin the purl stitch columns which divide the two motifs in the final stitch pattern.  I also tried using more paired yarnovers for the increases, because the fountain lace pattern uses paired yarnovers.  Certainly the two stitch patterns would be harder to distinguish if I hadn't circled them (and these swatches are unblocked); nevertheless I felt the mini zigzag was clearly established early on in this swatch, and the fountain lace panel has a nice symmetrical look to it.

Unfortunately, the increases came on much too fast in the above swatch, yielding a pretty ruffled look completely unsuitable for a hat crown!  In looking back, maybe I should have been able to foresee this; although I've found that lace patterns in particular can be very forgiving of irregular increases and decreases, there is surely a point where blocking will not smooth things out.

I tried a couple of swatches with single yarnover increases (not pictured), but the problem was making the beginnings of the fountain lace panel look symmetrical.  I then went back to including purl stitches early on (next swatch), which helped define the mini zigzag, but didn't do much for the fountain lace.

Aargh!!

At this point I had also decided that one of the nice things about the fountain lace pattern was that the openwork was set off by solid panels, so I was afraid that the crown area would look too open in comparison; in the next swatches I tried using different types of increases to make portions of the fabric look more solid.

I found that increasing by knitting a stitch in the row below (see section "2" in the photo at left) was unattractive in a fabric that would be as stretched as a hat crown; this was made more obvious now that I had the rate of increases more or less figured out, and the fabric was lying flat as a result.

Finally  I was starting to get somewhere.  In the last swatch, I really cut down on yarnovers, increasing instead by lifting the running thread between stitches and twisting it to make a new stitch (M1).  I really liked the contrast between solid areas and the mini zigzag, and the areas that would segue into fountain lace were looking mostly symmetrical; for the final version of crown increases, the only change I made from this swatch was in one of the very early rounds, to make the point of the outlined triangle more symmetrical.

And Emily?  Well, up to now I had used Emily Ocker's Cast On for one project, with some difficulty, and when I decided to use it for this hat, I had to refresh my memory (using this web tutorial) on how it was done.  And it is a little fiddly.  But after doing it 7 or 8 times in a row, I think we're best buddies-- and it does create a lovely beginning for a top-down hat.

My hints for a happy EO's Cast On:  1)  When creating the first loop (the one pulled thru the finger loop for each stitch), make it nice and loose so you can pull the 2nd loop through it-- it will naturally tighten afterward.  2) Use a crochet hook smaller than your knitting needles; having the stitches tight will make it much harder for the needles to slip out of them for the first round or two, when you only have 2 or 3 stitches on each needle.

A new yarn, a new technique

This 100% superfine alpaca yarn is a new experience for me; although the sheen and the color--a warm chestnut brown threaded subtly with red-- are lovely, I'm not loving its tendency to shed small hairs, nor the fact that I'm burning through the skeins at an accelerated pace, despite my not-especially-speedy technique.  The reason is that this yarn is bulkier than what I normally favor, so that each 50 gram skein contains just a little over 50 yards.

Questo 100% filato di alpaca e' una nuova esperienza per me.  (Ha!  I was looking up the word for "shine" and found the verb "brillare," so almost put "brillo" for the noun, but I then double-checked and found that actually means "tipsy."  I'm too lazy to go get my big dictionary so I'll change tacks....)  Ha un lucido sottile e un bell' colore--castagna con un po' di rosso-- pero', non mi piace la sua tendenza di lasciare cadere i capelli piccoli, neanche il fatto che sto usando i gomitoli molto velocimente.  Questo filato e' piu spesso di cio che uso normalmente, quindi un gomitolo di 50 gm contiene soltanto 50 metri.

All those ends to work in...mamma mia!  My savior?  The felted join!  I don't work with all- (or mostly) wool yarns very often, so I had never tried this before.  I wasn't actually sure it would work with alpaca yarn--but it did.  And since others have already posted instructions for this technique, I can refer anyone interested to one of these excellent tutorials.

Cosi' tante fini...mamma mia!  Il mio salvatore?  La congiunzione...feltrata?  Non ho provato mai questa tecnica meravigliosa prima di ieri.  

Lutea: XS and 2XL

Here are sketches of Lutea size XS and 2XL (the smallest and largest pattern sizes), drawn to scale on graph paper at 1 box to one inch, to fit bust sizes of 28-30" and 48-50", respectively.   According to the Standards & Guidelines for Knitting & Crochet, the Cross Back (shoulder to shoulder) measurements for these two sizes are 14" and 18".  As you can see, the lace shoulder sections also angle out slightly from the center, meaning that the width at the base of the lace sections must be slightly narrower than the width at the top.  We'll keep it simple and say that the shoulder sections for sizes XS and 2XL must be 13" and 17" wide at their bases, respectively.

This means that for size XS, for front or back, since the width at the bust is 16 inches, the armhole shaping must yield a decrease of 3 inches (16-13), or 1 1/2 inches on each side.  However, for size 2XL, since the width at the bust is 26 inches, the armhole shaping must yield a decrease of 9 inches (26-17), or 4 1/2 inches on each side.  Because angling the lace sections more would result in an overly sloped shoulder (since the sides of the lace section are perpendicular to the top of the shoulder), and angling them less would result in a too-narrow V-neck, AND making the shoulder section wider would make the top edge of the armhole form a shelf past the end of the shoulder--my only option was to make the armholes more deeply cut in the larger sizes.

By the way, thanks to Connie, who brought me an issue of the summer 2007 Interweave Knits, last week I was finally able to see Lutea in print!  It was my first in-person meeting of someone I met online, and it went so well that I'll have to try it again sometime.   

Decreasing within a stitch pattern

Here you can see how I decided to decrease the Dayflower Lace pattern; the partial flower in the last few rows of lace is divided by a YO at its lower edge, which I felt kept it from looking too blocky. If I decreased further, I could perhaps have made that last flower look more like a mini version of the others--but then the underbust circumference would have been too small.

An interesting problem with this sort of decreasing is that for each stitch decreased within the stitch pattern, you will have the same number of stitches decreased as there are repeats of the pattern; thus, for this top, every time I decrease one stitch within the Dayflower lace panel, I decrease 14 sts per round. The problem arises if/when you try to write a pattern for multiple sizes. I'll use a simple example, a sweater with a lace pattern lower border, in which I want to use decreases within the lace to get from hip to waist circumference. Generally, the amount decreased from hip to waist doesn't vary much from size to size.

But if I want to write the pattern for hip/bust sizes 34 (40, 46, 52), with a gauge of 5 sts per inch, and I have 8 (10, 12, 14) repeats of my lace stitch pattern respectively, then if I decrease 1 st per repeat, I now have decreased 8 (10, 12, 14) sts in one row--or roughly 1 1/2 (2, 2 1/2, 3) inches--a markedly different amount for each size. Not so different with one decrease, maybe, but if I want to decrease 6 inches to shape the waist, then I have to make 4 decreases for size 34, 3 for size 40, probably 3 for size 46 (5 inches--close enough), and 2 for size 52--meaning three different decrease methods. If I tried to decrease the same way for each size, I might end up with (for example) 4 1/2 (6, 7 1/2, 9) inches decreased--which in size 52 is probably too much for any except the best-endowed AND wasp-waisted.

Other options? Compensate by making the hips proportionally larger in the larger sizes, or perhaps leaving a few of the repeats unchanged in the center back/front, or at the sides, in the larger sizes. One solution might work well for a particular garment and stitch pattern, and not for another. But I think you can see why this type of decreasing is not that common, except perhaps in hat patterns.

Oh yes, these pictures also show attempts 1 & 2 at the underbust band, with eyelet holes for a twisted cord tie; I felt that the first one didn't have a clear enough delineation of the band/lace transition, and also that the bust increases (several rows above the eyelet holes) were too visible.

(Cross posted from Create Along.)

Decreasing Dayflower Lace

Okay, let's pretend that two weeks or so have passed since my last post. After a couple of weeks of non-frenzied knitting, the lower portion of my Dayflower Lace top has been completed, and I can't put off deciding how to decrease any longer. Typesetter and I had the same thought, namely that decreasing all at once would create a gathered look, which would have the effect of bunching up the lace, so instead I swatched a single lace repeat and tried various ways of decreasing each repeat from 17 to 11 stitches. (After completing a stockinette swatch to get gauge for the underbust band, I had decided that this would be how much I had to decrease to get the proper underbust circumference.) Pictured at top is just one of the rejects; at the top left of the lace section, the pattern does not maintain the clear faggoting outlines, which I realized were dominant features of the lace.

I swatched a decrease I thought would work, but after working a few rounds, I realized that the "flower" in the center had become boxy and vertical, rather than curving (second photo).

Eventually I decided that the best looking solution was to end the lace pattern on a row near the very top of one of the two "flowers,"  or on Row 6 or 14 of the lace pattern. On the last photo, I've drawn a line across the lace to show approximately where these pattern rows fall. More photos of the final version of the lace decrease in my next post!

And now, a couple of other matters. First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions and encouraging comments. I noticed several comments along the vein of "...all of us who have designed have been rejected " (Marnie), "keep working on those designs" (Emily) and "Never give up!" (Edna). It's worth stating that persistence and a high tolerance for rejection are very valuable qualities for a telemarketer...I mean for a knitwear pattern designer! I myself cultivated those traits during a year or two spent writing mediocre short stories and trying (unsuccessfully) to get them published; I've had much better success with knitwear patterns. Still, there can be a sense that you are only as good as your last acceptance, so here are a few helpful things to keep in mind when facing rejection on a regular basis:
1) Even if your design is good and your pattern well written, the magazine (or book or yarn company) may already have three hats (or two top-down raglan pullovers, or six pairs of lace socks) in the running.
2) Your design may be original and beautiful, but may just not fit with the general aesthetic of that particular magazine, etc. etc.
3)  If one entity rejects a design you can always submit it elsewhere, or self-publish it on your blog or website.

On the subject of sketches for submissions, Monica asked in an email, "Did you take a sketch or illustration class? Is there a source for fashion illustration templates?" I did take figure drawing--in high school. And as for templates, I've actually flipped through catalogs or magazines until I found a model dressed in something skimpy or form-fitting (Victoria's Secret works!) so I could see the outlines of the body, then traced it, to get a natural-looking pose for a sketch. If you don't feel your sketches are very good, it's better to keep them minimalistic--faces and hairstyles and hands are usually not required! Clean, simple lines can then be a design style, not a lack of drawing ability.

(Cross posted from Create Along.)

Why does Beaufort swirl?

Well, Jeri, that is a very good question, and one which I had asked myself--and why doesn't Maple Seed swirl in the opposite direction, since it uses left-slanting decreases (SSKs) instead of right-slanting decreases (k2tog)?

The stitch pattern for Beaufort originally caught my attention because it was so similar to one segment of Chinese Lace, and I had even MORE questions about the latter.  Why do the first two segments, rows 1-4 and 5-8 on the chart, slant to the left, even though the YOs slant to the right, and the decreases slant both left and right?  Why are the third and sixth segments, rows 9-12 and 21-24, essentially vertical, in spite of slanting YOs and decreases slanting both left and right?  And why do the remaining segments, rows 13-16 and 17-20, slant to the right, even though the YOs slant to the left?  Is it the proximity of YOs and decreases? 

Well, I must admit that the main conclusion I had drawn from Chinese Lace was that the direction of decreases and the position of YOs does not always determine the slant of a stitch pattern--or lack thereof.  And this was confirmed by my experience with Beaufort and Maple Seed.

But to return to Jeri's question, there are two different kinds of swirls going on in these hats:  one is the spiral at the crown, and the other is the diagonal that the stitch pattern creates, which would exist even if the knit fabric was flat. 

First, why does the stitch pattern spiral at the crown?  I had noticed the same phenomenon in Grumperina's Odessa hat pattern.  I know that I did nothing in the way of decreases to create the spiral at Beaufort's crown; in fact, I reworked those decreases a number of times, not only to create the most consistently decreasing shapes within the knit columns, but also to keep the natural spiral as smooth as possible.

We've already noted that Beaufort's stitch pattern moves at an angle from the bottom edge--which is a circle, since it's a hat.  If you picture a hat as a series of concentric circles, and the line crossing the circles at left shows the angle of B's stitch pattern, you can see that as the circles get smaller, and the line continues to cross each one at the SAME angle as the first, it begins to curve in a spiral.

As for what causes that angle, if you look closely at the photo of Beaufort, you can see that the decreases for each 4-row pattern repeat form the shape of a triangle, (I'll call these the "decrease triangles", colored gray in the above diagram), while the corresponding YOs form--roughly-- an upside-down triangle that fits next to the first (white in the diagram; the purled areas are represented by the squiggly lines).  Thus begins the Beaufort swirl, but what causes it to continue is that the left lower corner of each subsequent decrease triangle sits on the apex of the decrease triangle below, forming a diagonal line.

Clear?  Unclear?  Agree?  Disagree?  The floor is open for discussion.