Tag Archives: The Design Notebook

Journey into 3-D: Notebook – The Jewel Scarf

Knoontime Knitting

I learned a valuable lesson when working in 3-D:  never take the knitting needle out of live stitches by accident, especially when working a lace pattern.

I bought some lovely yarn on one of my trips and, since we just moved, I can’t find the ball band to tell you about it.  But suffice it to say that it worked up into a lovely narrow scarf for use with a work outfit or something.  Just as I was trying to figure out how to cast off, I pulled out what I thought was the non-working needle and voila.

It was the working needle.

For those of you who don’t know what I mean, in knitting, you have live stitches on a needle.  If you have experience, you can generally put them back on a needle.  It takes practice.  I can do it, if I’m careful, with stockinette stitch – so-called “plain” knitting.  I can do it with rib stitches and garter stitches too.  But lace?  Not so much.

Sadly, I fiddled and faddled and put the project away sometime last year or early this year.

In moving, I found it again and decided to bite the bullet and start over.  Yesterday, I sat down with my trusty ball winder and took the scarf apart.  I’m going to make it over again with a pattern from Barbara Walker’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, called “Rick Rib.”  It’s a combination of rib stitch and lace.  It’s very simple to work, just two lines, and can be made on any even number of stitches.  I’ve cast on twenty and started.  Here’s how it looks so far (there’s not much yet, but from tiny acorns…)

Here is the project with the yarn next to it.  The jumbled bits are because I did about six rows and realized I’d made several errors and had the wrong stitch count.  Some knitting days are like that.  I started over this morning and it’s going more smoothly.

I love the way the knitted cast on looks like a series of sideways knit stitches.  I’ll post more pictures once I have the pattern established so you can get a look at it.

Humpday Update – Bryce Canyon Shawl and Prayer Shawl

Knoontime Knitting

I finished the Bryce Canyon Shawl today. The last step was to add a 6 row garter stitch border to match the edges of the shawl and the bottom of the triangle. Then I used a knit one, purl one bind-off to make sure it would be elastic enough. The edge took a while to finish but I’m pleased with the results. I’ll share the bind-off here since I’ve used it a couple other times and really like it.

1. Cut the yarn 3 times the width of the edge and thread a yarn needle. Insert the yarn needle purlwise into the first stitch. Pull the yarn through. With the yarn needle behind the next stitch, insert it knitwise into the purl stitch and pull the yarn through.

2. *Slip the first knit stitch knitwise and insert the yarn needle into the second stitch on the needle purlwise. Pull the yarn through.

3. Slip the first stitch purlwise. Go behind the next stitch and insert the needle knitwise into the next stitch. Pull the yarn through. Repeat from the * in step 2 until all the stitches are bound off.

The next step is to block the shawl. It is stretched out of the way because of the lace. It needs to be stretched to allow the lace to lay flat. I’ll post pictures of that, but here are the images of the finished shawl (below).

In addition, I finished the prayer shawl for a friend of a friend who has colon cancer. It’s a triangle shawl like the Bryce Canyon Shawl, but with an allover lace pattern that’s K1, *YO, K2T. The edges are a 3-stitch garter stitch border with a YO, which is where the shape comes from. I used a picot bind-off which is quite pretty, along with 3 tassels.

This is an overall view of the shawl that shows the 3 lace diamonds and the lace outline, which is a vertical lace trellis stitch from Barbara Walker.

This is the bottom, center, medallion, also from Barbara Walker.

This is the medallion on the left.  When worn, this appears over the left shoulder and down the arm.

This is the right medallion and, like the left, appears on the arm.

This shows the bound-off edge with the garter stitch edge and the sewing needle bind-off.
This is the first comprehensive picture of the Prayer Shawl.  I used Lion Brand Homespun, in Harvest colorway.  The shawl is too large to show flat (it’s on a Full bed), so I folded the edges.  I used tassels on each of the 3 corners.

I stepped back to show the shawl again.  I love the way the yarn stripes.

This is a detail of the picot bind-off, on the inside left; ont he inside right you can see the garter edge with yarn-over increase.  The bind-off takes a while, but as you can see the results are worth it.

The preparation of the Prayer Shawl will simply be to wash and dry it.  It doesn’t require blocking, since the yarn doesn’t pull out of shape.

The Design Notebook

Knoontime Knitting

I showed the Bryce Canyon Shawl to some folks recently and again heard the comments “Wow, that is a lot of work!” and “I’m not patient enough for that.” I find these comments interesting because they are so misguided. I am not, by nature, a patient person. I don’t sit down to knit and think, “Oh, yay, now I have time to focus on my knitting and only my knitting.” I come to knitting from a very Zen place, where I allow stitches to accumulate organically. One stitch leads to another stitch and so on. By not thinking about it, it ceases to be work. This also allows me to not worry about being patient. By just focusing on making the stitches, I don’t have to be patient. I’m already doing what I set out to do. The finished product is a byproduct of the process. The process is the goal. What would you try if you didn’t have to come up with the finished product, but the doing of it would be the success?