Getting my mind back after an anesthetic, even one of only 25 minutes duration was always going to be an interesting experience. One of my tests for regaining normal brain power is doing a crossword puzzle, and I have to confess that seven days after the fact, I’m still floundering in that respect. I successfully solved the Decoder Puzzle but am having a lot of trouble thinking up the required words for the Crossword Puzzle.
The eight letter US state had to be Arkansas in the end. Delaware just didn’t give me the right letters.
I remember my mother, Hendrika, complaining about a fuzzy brain after an operation in her eighties. It took her fully three weeks to remember, after knitting four or five false starts, how to knit socks. When she did finally remember the pattern, she never knitted anything else apart from 10 cm squares in the last three years of her life.
A few of Hendrika’s grandkids wearing her socks. She knitted about a thousand pairs in her later eighties, donating them to charitable groups after the family were supplied.
It has been suggested that as eldest daughter it would be fitting that I undertook that same project, but I’m afraid I might’ve built up a bit of steam and blown that suggestion out of the water. Seriously? I love knitting, but don’t have my mother’s fortitude to be knitting the same pattern over and over, and for years on end producing two or three pairs a week.
In fact, I like to invent patterns as I go. I started on a vest with the new yarn. Knitted a few experimental squares but decided in the end to go with diamonds. More on that project in a post.
And the beginning of a new project. This little knit is a trial piece … can I knit a square by starting with a 4 cm centre and pick up stitches at each corner every round?
It’s working so far, though not yet looking particulrly tidy at the corners. I like how the patterning seems to be twisting. I haven’t worked out yet why it’s doing that.
When I imagined it the sides growing from the centre were straight. It’s possible that something totally different will eventuate if/when I knit a square all in purl. Wild times ahead.
… about half done. A zig zag shawlette based on two variations of the cellular stitch. (367, p67) I’ve so far found five ways of doing the eyelet stitch and all have different-looking fabric.
In this knit the two I’ve used result in a strong rib-like pattern on the front, and two brioche-style textures on the back. The book, see below, calls it the cellular stitch.
3 mm knitting needles or knitting pins if that’s what you’re used to.
Same yarn as before, equivalent in thickness to 4 ply, a 40% bamboo-derived viscose and 60% cotton, which is very comfortable to knit despite the problems identified in Mark 1.
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I’m still using Mon Tricot’s very elderly knitting dictionary with 900 stitches and patterns. English translation and adaption by Margaret Hamilton-Hunt, Published in France, 1971.
This for sale in the Oxfam shop in Adelaide … price hasn’t gone up much, whereas the copy on Etsy was $142.60!!! Guess that one was never used for its proper purpose.
Mine has the front cover being used as a bookmark.
But the first eyelet stitch I learned was well before 1972, probably round about 1962, knitting a little jumper for one of my sisters then aged about four …. “Wrap one to make one, purl two together” … Number 331 in the book on page 61.
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When my work (lol, in the present day) is sloping toward the right, all the action is on the back of the work. At the beginning of the row, knit two together purlwise, knit three plain, then wrap yarn to make one, and purl two together until the last four stitches, knit three plain and slip the last one purl-wise.
On the front of the work, make a stitch by purling first stitch and before pulling stitch from left needle, throw yarn back and finish with a plain stitch. There is probably a name for this process but I’ve never known it.
Though I discovered this way of increasing myself, I have no doubt that many other knitters also use it and that it has a name and set of instructions on how to achieve it.
Knit the rest of the line in plain, barring the last stitch which should be slipped purlwise.
Work as many rows as you have decided for your zig.
More to come on this as I haven’t even got you begun yet. Don’t despair.
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To begin, cast on three stitches. Knit eight rows always slipping the last stitch purl-wise, and doubling the stitch at the beginning of each row. You should have eleven stitches.
Now we start the pattern. Turn the first stitch into two using the same technique you’ve already been using, knit three stitches, *yarn over to make a stitch, knit two together purl-wise* repeat until last four stitches. Knit three, slip one purl-wise.
On the front side of the work, turn the first stitch into two, knit to the second last stitch and slip the last one purl-wise.
Proceed until you have a width that you like. From this point decide if you want a straight scarf or a zig zag.
If straight, continue increasing first stitch at front of work, and start decreasing at back of work—decrease by knitting first two stitches together purlwise which is easiest—every purl line.
I don’t like the yarn I’m using at the moment for a straight scarf. I like a more variegated colour-way. A straight scarf I’ll usually make longer than this zig zaggy one.
For the opposite of the zig—the zag— I need to knit to that place in my project before I can describe it.
A while ago I started an experimental knit that I intended to serve as a base for a crochet design of leaves and vines.
What happened to that?
This. The rolling up just never resolved itself. The more I knitted the tighter and higher it rolled.
OK, so experienced knitters will be saying I’ve done something wrong and I accept that.
Too tight? Nope, as loose as possible with yarn no thicker than a regular two ply, knitted on 4mm knitting pins.
Weird yarn? Maybe. 60% cotton, 40% viscose. No spring in it. At all.
Wrong stitches? Very possible. Stitches in the body of the work are fine. Loose and drapy as desired.
Increasing at the beginning of each row? The problem has to be there! Ffor the purl, rear of the work, row I increased by sticking pin into back of first loop, knitting that plain, then bringing knitting needle forward to knit a purl and continuing with a purl line.
Did the opposite at the front of the work, making a stitch at the beginning of the row by knitting a purl, yarn to the back then knitting a plain and coninuing in plain.
These made nice edges, one that I’d never seen before on the purl side of a work …
And yet, by the time I’d knitted twenty rows the first five had rolled up. After I unpicked those first five—with difficulty—the next five rolled up as I was doing it.
By sixty rows, the first fifteen had rolled up. No matter how I draped and folded the resulting cloth the bottom rolled up. By the time I’d knitted eighty rows I knew I had a twisted disaster and finished it off.
I may deconstruct it and use the yarn for another project, but this was already the second knit that that yarn featured in. Not sure how well it’ll stand up to the strain of pulling apart again.
Since the tiger-knit is done, I’ve begun a project that I’ve had in mind for a few months and has already had a few trial runs. I’m amazed how well the yarn has stood up to being ‘frogged’ (knitting term that means to pull undone) four times up to now.
And even this time I was doubtful at first whether I’d keep this version as that bottom corner just will not unroll. I’ve tried a few things already, including pulling the first three rows apart. This merely caused the rolling effect to rise.
But I discovered it is probably an effect of the work being on the needles–which causes a certain tension along the sides–and which disappears when, for example, I knit half a line and the work hangs differently.
And let me tell you that the above are not the true colors! Though even the true colors, being what we used to call Vogue shades, are not my favorites. The yarn was on special, probably because no one likes them. I’m planning on throwing a bit of quinaquadrone gold at the finished work which usually fixes sickly hues such as these.
Third, as I hope you’ll have noticed by now, is the lack of a regular pattern. I wanted to see if I could knit a lacy organic-looking ‘shawlette’ to support an bunch of vines that I will crochet and/or embroider on it after the knitting.
A shawlette is a medium-sized shawl, I’m assuming. I learned the term from JS. The deepest part will about 40 cms or 17 inches. The length … not sure yet … whatever it ends up being when I’ve reached the required depth.
On the right side of the work, I’m increasing at the beginning of every line, then knitting eyelets either by (1) yarn over, slip one knit one and psso … which gives me a left-leaning stitch, and (2) yarn over and knit two together OR knit two together and yarn over … which give me right-leaning stitches. the main thing to remember is to do a yarn-over either before or after a pair of stitches knitted together. NOTE to self do not follow a yarn over directly after a yarn over.
The wrong side of the work is always purled.
By making these tiny decisions on each ‘knit’ line (on the right side of the work) for each wriggling vine wending its way up the knit, I’ll be able to pick out the strongest longest foundation vines to embellish. The rest will help build a foresty texture when I have fixed the colors.
The tiger knit is incrementing at four lines per day about every second day. It’s turned out harder on my hands than I expected.
Finer knitting needles than I’m accustomed to, 8 ply yarn, and a tension that needs to be tight to prevent the stuffing later from showing through.
The stripes are quite intricate to knit. I’m having to check the pattern chart every couple of stitches and naturally the two colours get tangled no matter how I arrange them.
So this is my daytime knit.
Nights, while watching TV, or—I confess—any time I have ten or twenty minutes to spare, I’ve been working on my swirl shawl.
The yarn is Shadow 8 ply by Vera Moda, 60% cotton and 40% acrylic … one of those yarns you see marked down more than half its original price and you can’t resist buying. It’s very pleasant to knit.
A few more rows and I’ll need a longer flexible knitting needle.
Rita de Heer 