Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Double Fuck Up

It's a fact of lace knitting: sometimes you fuck up. And when you do, you have to figure out how to correct your error — whether to pull it out and start over, or adjust and carry on.

But sometimes — rarely, I'll admit — the fuck up can make everything turn out as it should have been, but not as you had planned.

* * *




When you've been knitting as long as I have, you learn there are some things that you absolutely despise doing, so you figure out ways to not have to do it.

I hate sewing together sweaters — so I adapt patterns to knit in the round.

I hate picking up stitches — so I'll do neck and armhole shaping with short rows instead of binding off, which leaves the stitches live.

With the Princess Shawl, the instructions read as follows:

Knit the edging for 85 points. Leave the final stitches on a thread for picking up again later to work the top edging strip. Now, pick up 10 stitches per point (850 stitches) plus 15 extra evenly picked up along the edge = 865 stitches.


Now, one of the reasons I hate picking up stitches is that phrase "evenly" — I'm never entirely confident that I am picking up evenly. The very thought of picking up 865 stitches is so totally mind-bogglingly tedious — the type of thing where, if I had to do it that way, I'd never even start the project. That's even more so when, because of the gauge at which I'm knitting, I have to add 20% to the pattern — doing 13 repeats of the 78 stitch border pattern instead of 11 — which would entail picking up 1,021 stitches.

Sharon Miller points out, in her 2007 update to the pattern, that one can increase the pick-up rate per point, so one doesn't have to knit as many pattern repeats — that by picking up 14 stitches per point, one would only have to knit 62 pattern repeats to arrive at shouting distance of the 865 stitch target. Then again, I have to wonder why the fuck she would originally have instructed a pick-up rate of 10 per point over 85 points, with an extra 15 stitches spread out, when it's much simpler to just knit one more goddamned point, sticking to the 10 stitches per point, and leaving only 5 extra stitches to sprinkle through the pickup.

In any event, there was no fucking way I was going to pick up 865, or 1,021, stitches across 10 feet of lace edging. Instead, I used one of my other tricks: at the inside edge of each odd-numbered pattern row, I cast on an extra stitch, slipping it onto a coiless safety pin. Not only did I avoid picking up stitches after the fact, by using a new pin at the start of each pattern repeat, it also acted as a row counter, keeping track of exactly where I was in the 20 row pattern repeat, and automatically generated a 10 stitch per inch "pick up" rate.



To keep track of exactly how many repeats I had completed, I placed stitch markers on every tenth safety pin — one marker on the tenth pin, two on the twentieth pin, up to the 80th pin. I had figured that with 85 points, I could use a 12 stitch per point pickup rate, then add one to get to the required 1,021 stitches.

It was a long haul knitting the edging — almost two months, what with work, family and gardening interruptions, but, finally, I was at the 84th repeat. And, because knitting lace is an exercise in anality, where one needs to make sure that one's count is correct, I went back and re-counted how many pins worth of stitches I had.

WTF? When I went back and counted, I was fucking 15 repeats off. Sigh… I didn't remember doing it, but I apparently had marked every fifth, instead of every tenth, repeat, at the beginning of the project.

So I took a deep breath, girded my loins, and started knitting again, cursing my middle-aged forgetfulness. Except…

When I got to repeat 84 (again), I remembered I hadn't forgotten that I had marked every fifth, rather than every tenth repeat.

I remembered that I had forgotten that, concerned that I'd run out of coiless safety pins before I could get to the crafts store to buy more, I'd put two repeats — twenty stitches — on some of the early safety pins, and that I had been on repeat 84 when I counted the first time and I now was at repeat number 99 — not 84.

OK — time to recalculate again. I could stop at 99, which would mean 10 stitches per point with 30 extra stitches spread through the edge.

Or I could do the simplest, and most correct, calculation of all — knit another 3 repeats, for a total of 102, and use the pickup rate of 10 stitches per repeat, with only one extra to add in.

So that's how the double-fuck up ended up turning out to be exactly right.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Tension, tension

As I've attempted to lure others into "knitting small" (or, as the Polish Princess calls it, "jock knitting") -- knitting lace on 000 (1.5 mm) needles with thread -- many people assume that they "can't" do it because they "can't" handle needles that small, "can't" see stitches that small, or "can't" tension thread that fine.

Balderdash! It's just a matter of what one is accustomed to -- and it is amazing just how quickly 000 needles become "normal".

If you can sew on a button, you can knit on 000 needles -- which are larger than a sewing needle -- using the very same thread with which you would sew on that button (at least if you sew with cotton thread). If, like me, you have middle-aged eyes, use whatever level of reading glasses you would need to sew on a button and you'll be just fine.

I will admit that knitting with 6/0 (.75 mm) needles is more difficult, as by that point the needles are flexible and wire like; you'll need thread finer than sewing thread and it is hard to see what you are doing, but a magnifying light takes care of that problem; and you do need to adapt decrease techniques such that one is only handling one stitch at a time (relying on slipping stitches over from either the left or right depending on the desired decrease) -- really, going to this size is more a matter of "yes I fucking can do this", and a display of virtuosity than pure enjoyment. But I have done it with Kinzel's Daffodil; and I will do it again with Niebling's Lyra.

But, back to the main topic (and I do have a tendency to make a lot of side excursions, as one can glean from all the parentheticals and emdashes and elipses -- it's just how my mind works) of keeping tension.

It's just like using a sewing machine (and I'm back at sewing metaphors which is odd as I really, really, really dislike sewing -- well, except playing with my Singer treadle machine is kinda fun).

If you're getting incorrect tension on your sewing machine, the first thing to check is did you miss one of the thread-through spots? Or, conversely, did you pass the thread over a machine part where it shouldn't be?

Tensioning yarn when knitting is just the same: how much tension you have depends on how many places the yarn has to pass through/over -- the more friction spots, the more tension. Smaller yarn needs more tension applied to it than a thick yarn, so smaller yarn needs to wind through more places.

I knit Continental style. If I'm knitting something with a sport weight yarn, the yarn goes over my little finger, under the ring and middle finger, then over the index finger.

When knitting with cotton sewing thread, I wrap the thread around my little finger once or twice, then wrap the thread around my ring finger, before going under the middle finger and over my index finger. It can get problematic, though, as sometimes my fingers will get all tangled up in the thread just when I need to quickly drop my knitting and prevent some household disaster or another from happening (and there almost always is the potential for some household disaster or another).

The gossamer cashmere/silk yarn I'm using for the Princess Shawl requires even more tensioning and has a tendency to wrap around itself, so I'm using yet another trick: weighing the yarn down with coiless safety pins (you can find them in the jewelry making section of a good crafts store).

Make sure there's a gap between where you are sitting, and where you've put your yarn. Then just hang two, three or however many safety pins it takes on the yarn, and allow them to hang in the gap between you and the yarn. The advantage to this method is that, as well as providing consistent tension on the yarn (and not ending up with your fingers entangled by yarn running over-under-around-and-through them), it also keeps the yarn from twisting back on itself and knotting. A real win-win.

Of course if one has cats like the ever-helpful and charming Caligula (seen here "guarding" the tools of my craft), one will need to watch out for a fascination with the swinging safety pins. So far, though, that hasn't been a major problem.

[UPDATE] Even better: I've found that my lace needle gauge makes a wonderful weight -- it's just right for the cashmere/silk; I don't have to wind the yarn around my fingers at all!

Monday, July 12, 2010

Setting Goals

I'm currently knitting on Heirloom Knits'Princess Shawl. I started in early June, and am nearing the end of Stage One: I'm at 78 of 85 repeats of the lace border that surrounds it all.

When people see my lace knitting, the biggest question seems to be "how long does it take to knit something like that?"

A fucking long time, that's how long. For the mountable round lace pieces of 100 or more rounds and depending on the complexity of the pattern, the knitting process can take 150 to 500 hours. During the winter months I can pull one off in one to two months. During gardening season, or if I'm putting in a lot of extra hours at work for one or another reason, those hours are spread over a longer period and progress is slowed.

Many people cannot imagine spending more than a few weeks on any knitting project. My view is what's the hurry -- you get out of a project what you put into it. What does it matter if I knit one piece, or four, in the same four month period?

One trick to this, though, is to consistently accomplish something. Barring illness or emergencies, I make sure to knit at least a little every day -- and set mini-goals for myself. On the Princess edging, my goal has been 3 pattern repeats a day. Sometimes I've only made 1; other days I've done 4 or 5 (those are really dull days at work). And some days -- like today -- there are so many distractions I have a hard time finishing off one.

I've learned over the years that if you put something aside for more than a couple of days, it becomes too easy to never pick it up again, or at least not until after a long delay.

So I plug along, consisting knitting at least a little, until the project is through.

For the Princess, it likely will take about a year to get it done. But hey -- what else would I have been doing?