Friday Finds: Stitch Mapping

I'm not sure if I've ever expressed my dislike for knitting charts but I'll confess it now. Considering that I'm a pretty visual person, it's counter-intuitive that I would find charts so confusing but, I do. Cassandra has knit from charts and (I think) likes them well enough. All I see is a jumble of confusing symbols.

The other day, Cassandra discovered Stitch Maps.

A new kind of charting, Stitch Maps show you the chart in the "shape" that the final object will take. They describe it like this:

knitting charts drawn without grids so you can see how the fabric flows

Here's an example from their site:

Here's what Feather & Fan looks like knit up

Here's a classic chart for Feather & Fan

Here's a Stitch Map for Feather & Fan

So, it's different and, for whatever reason, it makes more sense to my eyes. Anyone can submit patterns to be "stitch mapped" (written patterns are made into these new charts). If you want access to the Stitch Map library, you must subscribe. There's a basic subscription for personal, non-commerical use and a "pro" subscription for knitwear designers.

Check it out! You may start seeing Stitch Maps associated with our patterns!

- Alex

C'est Si Bon! The Quest

On March 14, 2011, I was searching knitting patterns on Ravelry.com and stumbled upon a scarf that I immediately fell in love with. Now, I'm not prone to "love at first sight" when it comes to knitting but, for some reason, the look of this particular piece was captivating.

Unfortunately, all the viewable projects (about 7 at the time) were in French.

It even LOOKS French, doesn't it?

So, with the help of Google Translate (and a few years of high-school French), I emailed one of the French knitters to see if she could help me secure a copy of the pattern. Fortunately, she responded in excellent English which she, like most Europeans, claimed was "not good." She sent me the email address for the shop that created and printed the pattern. Achievement unlocked: Find the Source.

I promptly emailed the shop, again with the help of Google Translate, and received no response.Ever. Fail.

At that point, I went back to the photos of people's work-in-progress and finished projects to see if I could suss out the pattern myself. I mean...it's a scarf. It's not like it's rocket science but I was stumped about how the stitch pattern was created. I'd never seen anything quite like it before. Fail.

In order to not drive myself completely insane, I let it rest for a long while. I didn't taunt myself by looking at the scarf or obsess about the fact that I couldn't have it - although I really, really wanted to. Achievement unlocked: Patience.

A number of months later, I was browsing my Ravelry Favorites, saw the scarf, and the old love was renewed. I decided to take up the quest again.

My English-speaking friend's scarf.

By this time, the number of completed projects had more than doubled and - lo and behold - there was one in English. I emailed the English-speaking knitter and explained my plight. I told her that, if she could just provide me with the stitch pattern, I could fake it from there. Again, it's just a scarf - a great, big triangle. Unfortunately, she had just moved and couldn't find her notes so she attempted to remember it as best she could. She provided a couple of very valuable pieces of information that helped explain the elusive stitch pattern. Unfortunately, once I started knitting, it was obviously not quite right. First Actual Attempt: Fail

Now I was obsessed. I wracked my brain trying to think of ways I could get my hands on an actual copy of the pattern. I could deal with translation after the fact. I thought of friend-of-the-blog, @pinkundine, a crafty-blogger who lives in the UK. Maybe, just maybe, closer proximity to France could facilitate securing the pattern. So, off went a long, convoluted email about my quest and, while she couldn't find a way to purchase the pattern for me, she did LOADS of internet research in an attempt help. Honestly, she went above and beyond. Achievement Unlocked: Secured Awesome Crafting Friendship.

Finally, Cassandra said to me, "Doesn't your friend Mary speak French? Why don't you have her call the shop and see if she can convince them to ship internationally?"  *face palm* How could I have forgotten that one of my best friends in the world is a proficient French speaker (although she claims her French is "bad"). So, one morning after brunch I asked. She looked at me and said, "Why don't we just ask Carrie to pick up a copy for you at the shop? She'll be here in a couple of weeks and she can bring it with her."

Seriously....my head nearly exploded. It's one thing to forget that you have a friend who speaks a foreign language. It's entirely another to forget that you actually KNOW a person who lives in the city that you need something from. And, she was traveling to us within two weeks. Could it be more perfect?

Mary emailed Carrie. Carrie agreed to secure the pattern for me and bring it with her. This past Saturday, at exactly 7pm, I completed my quest. The pattern is mine. QUEST COMPLETE!

Now, I just have to get it translated*.

- Alex

* If any of you know of any proficiently French-speaking knitters, PLEASE get them in touch with me. Thanks.

Mad Skillz, Baby!!

Nearly seven years ago, my first niece was born. At that point, I'd been knitting, sporadically, for a few years. I knew how to knit, purl, increase and decrease but I was, for all intents and purposes, a beginner. However, the promise of a new baby in the family inspired me to knit a baby blanket. I knew my sister-in-law would be thrilled with a handmade gift for her first child.

Cassandra gave me the pattern. It came from a magazine and had been a first place winner in a Knit and Crochet Crafts contest. The appeal of the pattern was that the finished product would look the same front and back and it only called for knit and purl stitches. The scary part was that it was a six row repeated pattern which, at the time, seemed very complicated. 

 I bought a gorgeous peach colored cotton and set to work. While on the third skein of yarn, I made a mistake in the pattern. Being a beginner, I had no confidence or skill for fixing problems in my knitting so I took the blanket to my local yarn shop and begged some help. Unfortunately, I soon found myself facing the same problem again. I'm sure I mis-counted my rows or something but I couldn't fix it. My niece was born with her baby blanket about one-third done.

The unfinished project went into limbo.

Less than two years later, my sister-in-law was pregnant with her second child. The forgotten project was trotted out and I took it to my new knitting group, the very first time I went to a meeting, to beg some more help. Someone ripped out a bunch of it and showed me where to start in the pattern again. I probably got another dozen rows done before I screwed it up again. Too embarrassed to admit that I couldn't correct my mistake, the blanket went back in the closet.

My niece at three. The blanket had been abandoned twice at this point.

Fast forward to this past weekend and my family reunion in upstate NY. I didn't have any summer knitting projects but wanted something to take on the plane. Knowing that I was going to see my sister-in-law and now-seven-year-old niece, I thought it would be funny to take the blanket to show them. Since I hadn't looked at it in five years, I also figured I might have gained enough skill to actually tackle the corrections on my own.

I broke out the old project and was thrilled to see that the color still appealed to me and the cotton felt okay against my hands in the summer heat. I was surprised to see that the work was on metal needles as I haven't used metal in years and generally dislike the way they knit. Then I unfolded the dreaded pattern that had given me such heartache. Two things struck me right away - I was using the original copy of the pattern (something I'd never do now for fear of spilling tea on it or losing instructions from wear on the folds) and the margins were marked with all these hieroglyphics that I'd used to keep track of where I was in the pattern. These were sure signs of what a novice I was when I'd worked this project in the past.

novice tracking method

folds = indecipherable instructions

Then I started trying to decipher my mistake. The Alex of today - a solidly intermediate knitter - is able to count stitches based on the pattern (purl bumps versus knit stitches are obvious to my eye now) and even look back a number of rows to find a problem. She can also rip out rows without having a complete heart attack.

It took me two tries to find and correct my mistake. At first, I simply counted my previous rows and determined where I needed to pick up the pattern. Turned out that wasn't right and the pattern was, essentially, reversed. So, I ripped back to a point that I knew to be the last pattern row (row number six) and then, before knitting the next row (pattern row number one), I looked at the work and visualized how the knitting would appear if I knitted that pattern row. It seemed to be right, so I forged ahead. And it was right. As were the subsequent rows.

Still a work in progress

Of course, I'm hyper-sensitive to making sure I'm working the right pattern row so I'm constantly checking to make sure I haven't veered off track. So far, so good.

The thing I find most interesting is how far I've come with my skills. Five years ago, I had no idea how to fix the problems with this project - looking at the pattern and work in progress was like trying to read Greek (which I don't do, obviously). Today, I understand the pattern and the completed work in an entirely different way. It also helps that I'm not afraid to deconstruct what's wrong and rebuild it.

Progress is an amazing thing. I have an entirely new perspective on my abilities as a result of this experience and I'm thrilled that I'm finally going to finish this damn blanket.

Footnote: I told the story to my sister-in-law who thought it was hilarious. I also showed my niece who a) LOVED the blanket and still wants it and b) wants to learn to knit now.  I taught her how to do a knit stitch and there are about twenty stitches in the blanket that were done by her hand. Yea!!

- Alex

Knitting 101

One of the most wonderful things about knitting is that, with a two basic stitches (knit and purl) and a couple of simple techniques, myriad patterns can be achieved. There's so little to actually learn and so many variations that it's kind of mind-boggling.

The two stitches just mirror one another. As you're going down a row, if you "knit" a stitch, you place a bump of yarn on the side facing away from you. If you "purl" the same stitch, the bump goes in the front, on the side you can see. These little bumps and indentations, done in a particular order, will create a pattern.

Garter Stitch is made by knitting every row:

Stockinette Stitch is made by knitting one row and purling the next, alternating throughout the fabric:

Seed Stitch is made by alternating your stitches - knit one, purl one - across a row and then doing the opposite on the next row - purl one, knit one - then repeating these two rows throughout the fabric.

Moss Stitch is made by alternating your stitches - knit one, purl one - across a row, repeating this for the second row then reversing the stitch pattern - purl one, knit one - across rows 3 and 4. Then repeating these four rows throughout the fabric.

It's deceptively simple.

Every knitter has their favorite patterns, and I'm no exception. For me, moss and seed stitch are very appealing. I recently started doing eyelets which requires making "holes" in your pattern by knitting two stitches together. Also, one of my crafty resolutions for this year was to do my first cable project - like the cables you see on sweaters. This is a very interesting technique that requires taking stitches off your needles and picking them up again later to place them "over" the other stitches.

When I attended the Crafting for Democracy at the Madison Capitol building, I made friends with a lovely woman named Colleen. She was knitting a pattern I'd never seen before and that I instantly fell in love with. For some reason, this pattern really sang to me.

"Colleen's Pattern" is a four row sequence. Row one - knit all the way across the row. Row two - knit one, slip one (slip the stitch, without knitting or purling it, to your right-hand needle) all the way across the row. Row three - knit all the way across the row. Row four - slip one, knit one all the way across the row. Then, of course, you repeat this four-row sequence throughout the fabric.

And this is what you get:

"right" side

"wrong" side

The best part of this pattern, in my opinion, is that both sides are pretty - even though the one side is supposed to be the "wrong" side.

Right now, I'm just making a scarf but I'll probably make something more impressive with this pattern at some point. It's just so gorgeous. If I do, you can bet you'll be seeing pictures of it here.

- Alex

Curses! Foiled Again!

Mittens are my evil nemesis.

I'm sure that, to most of you, having mittens as an evil nemesis probably seems pretty lame. Kind of like having a baby kitten as an evil nemesis - how can something so fluffy and warm be evil? But they are evil. Evil and soul-sucking.

You may remember, from a previous Ooo! Shiny! post, that I knitted a dragon scarf and dragon hat for my friend's daughter. The scarf came from a pattern but the hat was created totally from scratch by me - no pattern whatsoever. I was pretty damn proud of myself for that. Now, the hat's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It could have been longer to cover her ears better and the overall design could have been more elegant. But, it's for a five year old and it matches the scarf so, really, I'm not losing sleep over it.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea for her to have mittens to complete the set.With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I realize I should have quit while I was ahead. "How hard could mittens be?", I naively asked? Pretty damn hard is the answer.

Never trust a mitten. Even a nice one.*

I went to my favorite source for free patterns - Ravelry - and started looking for the easiest instructions available. I specifically wanted to use either circular or double-pointed needles because I didn't want to have to piece the thing together. After slogging through a ga-jillion options, I settled on a pattern that looked relatively easy - and it was! I knitted up the cuff and thumb gusset (the bit where the thumb attaches to the mitten) with no problem. Then, about 1/2 way up the body of the mitten, it occurred to me that it looked kind of big. So I slipped my hand into it. And it fit.

After tearing the mitten apart, I started again - adjusting the pattern by about 1/4 in an attempt to make it smaller. So far so good. The cuff knitted up quickly. The gusset looked okay. And I managed to "guess" my way through the pattern adjustments to end up with a pretty decent looking, 5-year-old-sized mitten. Then I made the thumb.

Evil, evil, evil!!!

The thumb ended up with two giant gaps in the "v" where the thumb attaches to the body of the mitten. ARGH! The only solution I had at that point was to "sew" the gaps closed with yarn. Needless to say, it looks pretty crappy and is not worthy of being a gift.

[Note for those who knit: My mistake was as follows: I had to cast on two additional stitches to start the thumb. I did a M1 for both, which left me with big holes. Instead I should have K1FB on two stitches which would have given me two additional stitches but not left holes.]

So...yeah... I'm pretty much convinced that mittens have an nefarious plot to drive me mad and ensure that I never knit them again. I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to be brought into existence but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of hand coverings, really?

- Alex

* For the free pattern of the basket weave mittens shown above click here.