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A cautionary tale

YC: This is Yarn Central calling Pattern Control. Yarn Central calling Pattern Control. Over.

PC: Pattern Central here. Is there a problem, Yarn Control?

YC: I'll say. Can I have your present pattern repeat status on the Print o' the Wave Stole? I repeat, your present pattern repeat status. Over.

PC: Latest information is fifteen repeats completed.

YC: Copy.

PC: I only took one copy for personal use.

YC: No, idiot, I copy your answer. Your lot is on repeat sixteen. Over.

PC: That's all right, isn't it?

YC: 'Fraid not, Pattern Central. We have a situation developing here. At present rate of progress, 45g for fifteen repeats yields a total repeat number of approximately thirty-three repeats with 1g contingency allowance. Over.

PC: But, but...

YC: Yes, Pattern Central. You're going to have to stand down your edging detail. Over.

PC: Oh, I say - that's too bally much. I've a lovely group of boys ready for the edging. They've been training for days. Can't anything be done?

YC: Well, the backroom boys are working on a scheme to reduce the pattern repeats to give you just enough for hems. Over.

PC: Hems? Hems! You expect me to put hems on a lovely thing like that?

YC: Well, call them borders, then. Over.

PC: I suppose we'll just have to put up with it. Though I think it's a bally shame. It's all the CO's fault. Why doesn't she plan things properly? It's the same every time. No thought for us lot. [PC is carried off, frothing at the mouth]

comments on edging

Thank you for the comments yesterday (including birthday wishes - and yes, I had a lovely birthday: first to Fortnum & Mason's to buy the Christmas pudding and for some tea, then to our favourite Chinese restaurant and then to the theatre for Tintin in Tibet, which was very good).

Dawn suggested an edging that I've never done exactly, but if I've understood right would be a chain selvedge. I agree with Jill that this would make an excellent edge to pick stitches up from. I don't think it would work on the Print o' the Waves Stole, however, for two reasons. First, by slipping every first stitch you effectively reduce the available holes to pick up from by half. This pattern rather weirdly tells you to pick up 240 stitches on each long side from, by my calculation, 408 row ends. I suppose you can go either way - reduce the row ends and put two stitches in some of them, or miss out some row ends. Maybe, though, slipping the first stitch would reduce elasticity?

The second reason is just appearance. The 'inner border' that Eunny Jang tells you to pick up and knit is just two or three rows wide and it's basically just a row of eyelets to mimic the yarn overs on Shetland shawls. I thought I might as well just to the yarn overs, but of course have to compensate with k2tog.

Hope I'm not being too boring - still feeling a bit under the weather.

Actually, I did start again because I thought the k2tog at the start of the row was wrong and now I'm doing k1, yo, k2tog and it looks better.

Oh frabjous day

It's my birthday! I have received a couple of nice knitting books (heavily trailed) and am giving myself the present of starting something else even though I haven't finished all the things I'm already working on.

It's the Print o' the Wave stole by Eunny Jang and I'm using Knitwitches silk laceweight/4 ply. It's lovely to knit with and now that I've done one pattern repeat it's starting to look good too.

I am making a couple of changes to the pattern. I'm not going to do a mirror image and graft up the centre. I'm quite happy for the waves to fall in different directions at each end. Second, I'll probably do fewer repeats because I don't think I've quite got the yardage. Third, I'm changing the inner border. The thought of knitting up 500 million stitches all the way round fills me with dread, so I'm adding a yarnover and k2to at each side of the stole. Then I can knit on the lace edging as intructed. Can anyone see danger ahead? I think the effect will be very similar visually (i.e. a line of yarnovers and a thicker line). If I'm worried about yarn quantities when I come to do the edge I will use a slightly smaller version of the wavy edging (there's one in the Knitted Edgings and Trims book pictured above and another one in a different stitch dictionary).

I haven't felt very well over the last few days - an office lurgy mainly consisting of a sore throat and feeling grotty - but feel quite a bit better today. Just as well! We're going to see the stage version of Tintin tonight, so I hope that's going to be a fun evening.

WIP parade

There seems to be a feeling on some blogs that only finished items are worthy, but if I stuck to that my posts would be even fewer and further between. After finishing my Smooshy socks, I really ought not to have started more socks, but I felt really odd without any on the needles. Then my problems began. I started off with my Oxford Kitchen Blue-faced Leicester sock yarn that I bought at the Stitch 'n' Bitch day. I won't say I'm disappointed with the yarn itself, but I couldn't make it work for me at this time. It's quite fine and not very tightly spun. I tried some lace patterns, but they just didn't work. I was using 2.25 mm needles, but really needed to go down to 2 mm and just wasn't in the mood for that. So then I got out some Jitterbug I'd had for a little while. This is quite different - nice fat, tightly spun yarn.

The trouble here was the colours. I love the colours themselves, but the dyeing seems quite random and on my first attempt I got a really horrible pool of black-blue. This was 66 stitches on 2.25 mm, following a chevron pattern. I thought going down might help, and it did a bit, then I tried the Tropicana pattern from Magknits and this did indeed mix up the colours. The way it works is that you do all the increases for the wave pattern on one row (then a plain row) and all the decreases on another row. Thus you are knitting rounds on different numbers of stitches. The only trouble is that the socks are like armour plating, so they're for the frog pond too.

I gave up on such fanciness and got out some good old self-striping sock yarn. This is Fabel by Garnstudio (bought at Ally Pally) and it does just what you'd expect.

My triangle shawl is back on track. I took out the arch pattern I was trying and am doing a band of one repeat of the ripple pattern, one repeat of leaf and one repeat of ripple again. Then I'll continue on with the flower pattern.

Another almost wip: lovely snuggly 30/70 angora/merino short-fingered gloves for Thomas (I'll save the photo for another day).

Adapting a lace pattern

I have finished my Smooshy socks. Here's a reminder of the pattern:

A few people who have seen them (including non-knitters) have commented on the pattern and I think it is very pretty. I was pleased that I was able to take a 12-stitch pattern and make it into a 15-stitch pattern (because I wanted to knit a 60-stitch sock with 15 stitches on each needle).

Here's a picture of the original pattern, 'Baby Fern' from More Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. I'm not including the instructions, of course.

You'll see that there are two parts to the pattern: the vertical column and the v-shaped lines of holes. Taking the columns first, it was easy to add another knit stitch, so that element in my socks is p k k p. Since every even-numbered row is knit all the way round, this gives a nice column of 2 stocking stitches with 1 moss stitch each side. I could have made this 4 stitches of moss stitch, or 4 stitches of stocking stitch (but that wouldn't have shown up), or even garter stitch or ribbing. Also, I could have made this element wider if need be.

Then the holey part. This panel starts with ktog then a certain number of knit stitches, then the yo k1 yo, then the mirrored number of knit stitches and ending with ssk. On each odd-numbered row (remember, the even rows are all knit) the yo's move apart. So on row one there is yo k1 yo, on row three it is yo k3 yo, and on row five it is yo k5 yo. That's as far as the original pattern goes and then it's back to yo k1 yo. It was easy to decide to include yo k7 yo as a new row seven. That meant increasing the 'certain number of knit stitches' that I mentioned above to 3 each side of the yo's on row one, thus adding two more stitches to the repeat.

Clear as mud? Well that's the way I worked it out, and I think many lace patterns have been adapted and developed this way over the years. Sometimes it happens by mistake, much as my cookies did, and sometimes because someone wants the convenience of one pattern per needle (after all, for 60 stitches I could have done 5 repeats of the original 12-stitch pattern rather than 4 repeats of 15, but it wouldn't have been so satisfactory).

I can't copy out the pattern from Charlene Schurch's book, but I believe I can put up a chart of my adaptation of it, so I'll do that as soon as poss.

theme and variations

I have a family recipe for delicious cakes called 'Nut Rockies'. They are rock buns with a twist and they're very good. I've made them quite a few times. Then I decided to make them a few weeks ago and didn't bother to put my glasses on. It's a hand-written recipe (in fact a 'receipt' because I received it from my mother) and let's just say I was surprised to take chewy cookies out of the oven instead of crisp little rock buns! Here's the cake recipe and then I'll tell you how to vary it to make cookies (they were delicious, too):

Nut Rockies

1/2 lb self-raising flour
pinch salt
3 oz butter
3 oz granulated sugar
2 oz currants
2 oz candied peel (best to buy pieces and chop your own)
2 oz chopped walnuts
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Grease a baking sheet. Preheat oven to gas mark 6.
Sieve flour and salt. Rub in butter. Stir in the other dry ingredients.
Beat egg and milk together. Add vanilla essence.
Stir into the dry ingredients.
Place small heaps of mixture (about a heaped dessertspoonful) well space on the baking sheet.
Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Now, to make Nut Flatties increase the sugar to 6 or 7 oz (I started with 8 oz because I misread the 3, then did it with 7 and I think it could go a bit lower) and increase the milk just a little so that it will mix together. You'll need to space the heaps out even further and will probably need two baking sheets.

The buns are light, crisp on the outside and cakey inside. The flatties (cookies) are sweeter, chewy and crispy. Either way the walnut and peel give a very good flavour.

Tomorrow, a theme and variation on a lace pattern I've just used in some socks.