Hello Crafty People!
Fridays with Franklin will be moving to a new location at Makers’ Mercantile starting Friday, June 17, 2016.
Be sure to sign up for the Makers Mercantile Newsletter and like their FaceBook Page to stay up-to-date on the bi-weekly adventures of Fridays with Franklin!
We know you will love Franklin’s new home and wish you all happy crafting.
-The skacel Team
The Adventure of the Warp with Two Brains: Part Three
For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.
For the first part of this adventure, and to find out who the heck Mary and Sylvia are, click here .
Of the two scarves, Sylvia’s was the tougher nut to crack. Her taste is miles from mine. Though I love the way she puts herself together, the individual pieces themselves usually leave me, at best, puzzled.
“What is this?” I’ll say, picking up one of what appears to be (maybe?) a collection of vintage teething rings from her dresser.
She, fluffing her hair in the adjacent bathroom, peeks out and says, “Oh, yeah! Aren’t those great? I found them at a plumbing supply place that was going out of business.”
“Are they…for plumbing?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I’m going to pile them on like a bunch of bangle bracelets.”
So she does, and I silently swear she has really gone too far this time. Then I spend the rest of the evening listening to people scream compliments at her amazingly cool choice of bracelets.
It makes you feel stuffy and hidebound for not thinking to trim your spring hat with a U-bend and a couple of old faucets.
Something for Sylvia
My challenge was to weave something on the Trekking warp that would play well in the sartorial Halloween fun-house that is my friend Sylvia’s wardrobe.
Sylvia Fowler, of course, is the kookiest dresser of all the women in The Women,
but not because her clothes are wildly eccentric. They’re not. But they do take risks that set her apart as someone who likes to be noticed. Insists upon being noticed.
In a world full of tall hats, Sylvia’s are the tallest.
Also the fluffiest, the flounciest, the fruitiest.
When I imagined Sylvia’s scarf, I figured it had to somehow call attention to itself through texture. But how, exactly?
Testing the Ground
When I sampled for the color-and-weave portion of Sylvia (if you don’t know what color-and-weave is, do see the last installment) something happened that almost never happens.
I liked the first thing I tried.
My starting point, of course, was the “two red, two buff” warp that formed the basis of Mary’s houndstooth. I knew by changing the order of the colors in the weft, I could get a bunch of different fabrics.
Thinking to start simple, I wove a few inches with nothing but buff.
That was it. You know it when you see it, and I saw it. The little dotty stripes reminded me of one of my favorite Sylvia costumes–the pinstriped dress she wears to the fashion show.
This fabric, I realized, could serve as a simple foil for some really eye-catching textural effect–much as the relative restraint of Sylvia’s dress allows her to go completely cuckoo with that flouncy headgear and still appear elegant.
Flouncing
What kind of textural effect?
There was a technique I had been wanting to try out, which I’d seen written up in any number of books and Web sites, for a loop pile weave.
There are quite a few ways of getting loop pile. This method was supposed to be easy and relatively quick, but not suitable for fabrics liable to be tugged and pulled a great deal.
I sent Sylvia a text.
ME: DO YOU TUG AND PULL AT YOUR CLOTHES A LOT?
SYL: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
I decided that was a “no.”
Simple Loop Pile Weave
So here’s what you do.
Step 1. Throw a pick with your pile color (in my case, red). Keep it nice and loose, and do not beat it or change the shed.
Step 2. Get yourself a knitting needle, a wooden dowel, a long pencil–something of a cylindrical nature, in other words. The bigger around it is, the bigger your loops will be, and it needs to be a longer than your weaving is wide. I used an eight-inch US 11 (8 mm) addi® FlipStix™ double-pointed needle, which proved ideal.
Reach between the first two raised strands of the warp with your fingers and pull up a loop of your weft pick. Place this loop over the knitting needle (or whatever).
Repeat this step, making a loop for every pair of raised warp threads in the shed. It’ll look something like this.
Step 3. Without removing the knitting needle (or whatever), beat. You won’t be able to beat completely, of course; just do what you can.
Step 4. Gently remove the knitting needle (or whatever) and beat again, firmly.
Step 5. Change shed and throw a plain pick (in this scarf, that’s another pick of red). Beat firmly. Because this type of loop pile isn’t perfectly stable, this plain pick between all looped picks is vital. Without it, your fabric will just sort of fall apart.
Repeat from Step 1 if you want to make another row of loops.
Well…
Off I went, working two inches of color-and-weave (using the buff only, but carrying the unused red yarn up the right selvedge all the while).
Then, four picks in red: a looped pick, a plain pick, another looped pick, another plain pick.
That was my repeat, ending the scarf with two inches of color-and-weave.
The fabric certainly didn’t look like anything I’d made before.
It was so different, I didn’t know if I liked it or not. I honestly could not tell.
So I sent a picture of it to Sylvia in a text message.
ME: WOULD YOU WEAR THIS?
SYL: YES. LOVE IT. WHEN CAN I PICK UP.
ME: IT’S STILL ON THE LOOM.
SYL: GET YOUR [REDACTED] IN GEAR. I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO PAIR IT WITH. BY NEXT THURSDAY WOULD BE NICE. KISSES.
Or…is it?
Because in two weeks, we have to talk about the finishing.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
Zitron Trekking (75% New Wool, 25% Nylon; 3.5 oz/100g per 459 yds/420m). Colors: 210 (Buff) and 240 (Red).
Schacht Cricket Rigid Heddle Loom (15 inch) with optional 12-dent reed, by Schacht Spindle Company
11-inch Slim Closed-Bottom Boat Shuttle by Schacht Spindle Company
addi® FlipStix™ 8-inch double-pointed knitting needle, size US 11 (8mm)
The Women (1939). For information on sources, visit the official IMDB page.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His newest work, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has just been published by Soho Publishing.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
The Adventure of the Warp with Two Brains: Part Two
For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here
For the first part of this adventure, and to find out who the heck Mary and Sylvia are, click here.
Lots of weave structures could be used to produce two different scarves on one warp, but I wanted to play with an effect called color-and-weave.
Simply put, color-and-weave means a pattern that emerges because of a combination of light and dark threads alternating in a particular order in the warp and in the weft. Make sense? No? Don’t worry. We’ll go deeper into that in a bit.
Something for Mary
One of the most famous varieties of color-and-weave happens to be a fabric I’ve always wanted to make, and a fabric eminently suited (no pun intended) for our first recipient, Mary.
We noted last time that Mary’s style is simple and tailored, frequently influenced by menswear. A classic menswear fabric might make the perfect scarf for her; and in her first scene, one appears. Not on Mary, but on her daughter–the uncreatively named Little Mary.
Little Mary was played by Virginia Weidler, who had an absolutely inexplicable career as a child actress in the 1930s and 40s. She is the only person in the cast who turns in a more wooden performance than Norma Shearer, which perhaps makes her presence somewhat more explicable.
Little Mary’s riding coat is made of houndstooth…
…more specifically, of the small variation of houndstooth that is sometimes called puppytooth.
How to Make Houndstooth: Choosing Colors
When I first tip-toed into weaving, I got very fizzy and bubbly when I found out a legendary pattern like this was, in fact, simple enough to be readily made by a beginner. Here’s how it works.
First, we pick colors. I chose Zitron Trekking in color 240 (Red) and color 210 (Buff) for two reasons.
Reason One: I really wanted the pattern to pop, which meant I needed my colors to have high value contrast. One needed to be very dark in value, the other very light. To see if the difference was strong enough, I looked at the yarns using the black-and-white setting on my camera. For a bold look, they need to appear distinctly different. The greater the difference, the more legible the pattern.
Yup. That’ll work.
Reason Two: That luscious red reminded me of reds as they showed up in glorious Technicolor, and even though The Women is in black and white (except for the famous fashion show sequence), the entire plot is set in motion by a shade of nail polish called Jungle Red.
How to Make Houndstooth: The Warp
To get a balanced weave* with a fingering weight yarn like Trekking, I needed to outfit my Schacht Cricket rigid heddle loom with a 12-dent reed; it allows the strands of the warp to sit closer together than the 8-dent reed that comes with the loom when you buy it.
The warp plan itself? Ridiculously simple: two red strands, two buff strands. Repeat. That’s it.
Mind you, for two scarves on one warp, my warp had to be very long. And this time, I did my advance calculations like a good boy to figure out how long.
The length I needed just barely fit into the longest room available to me. Any longer, and I wouldn’t have been able to use the direct warping method – which would have been fine, but that’s another column.
I did a lot of walking that morning.
It’s probably a good thing I don’t have cats.
How to Make Houndstooth: The Weft
Once your warp is in place, you weave the colors in the same order they appear in the warp: two picks (passes) with the red, two picks with the buff. Repeat.
The structure of my fabric is plain weave–the warp goes over one thread, under the next–which on my Cricket loom means simply moving the heddle up and down, up and down.
It seems like there ought to be more to it, but there isn’t. *Over and back with the red, over and back with the buff. Repeat from *.
When changing colors at the right selvedge, I kept things neat by always picking up the new color under the old color–rather like carrying yarns up the side of a piece of striped knitting. In the photograph below of an early sample for the scarves (yes, I sampled!) the buff (which is in use) is catching the red (which is not).
A small detail, but in weaving as in all things, little details can make a big difference.
For this project, I graduated to a pair of Schacht 11-inch slim open-bottom boat shuttles, which worked beautifully with the Cricket. You could absolutely do this weaving with the same stick shuttles I used here, but boat shuttles are smoother and faster. Note that they carry the yarn on bobbins–so if you decide to use them you’ll also need a bobbin winder.
And look! Look!
You know those moments in your life when you’re excited to try something new, but you really worry it won’t work, and then it does work? And you can’t believe you did it? This was one of those moments.
How Long Is Long Enough?
Since I needed to get two scarves out of this warp, for the first time I couldn’t blithely weave to the end and then call it quits. I had to make sure Mary’s scarf was long enough, but not too long.
There are many methods for doing that, but the one I chose was simply to place a stitch marker (I like the safety pin or locking ring types–they’re readily available from good yarn shops) in the right-hand selvedge every six inches. At any time, to figure out how much you’ve woven you count your markers.
Coming Up…
In two weeks, we’ll look at the weaving of Sylvia’s scarf.
She doesn’t like waiting, but she’ll just have to deal with it.
*A balanced weave has the same number of threads per inch in the warp and in the weft.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
Zitron Trekking (75% New Wool, 25% Nylon; 3.5 oz/100g per 459 yds/420m). Colors: 210 (Buff) and 240 (Red).
Schacht Cricket Rigid Heddle Loom (15 inch) with optional 12-dent reed, by Schacht Spindle Company
11-inch Slim Open-Bottom Boat Shuttle by Schacht Spindle Company
The Women (1939). For information on sources, visit the official IMDB page. Yes, there was a remake in 2008, but please don’t ever bring that up in front of me again.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His next book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book will be published by Soho Publishing in June 2016.
He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
The Adventure of the Warp with Two Brains: Part One
For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.
Today, we start a new adventure!
In weaving!
If you hadn’t missed the staff meeting you would have known that.
We’re going to use a rigid heddle loom. If you’ve not yet encountered a rigid heddle loom, click back to The Adventure of the Scarf that Ate the World for a simple, brief description of how they work.
A biggish rigid heddle like my fifteen-inch Schacht Cricket doesn’t limit you to scarves; but I have scarves in mind because it’s spring, and for so many of us who do a lot of handwork, the return of spring means one thing: planning our winter holiday gift-giving. I’m thinking scarves. Lots of scarves. Scarves all around.
Scarves make fantastic gifts, so long as your friends have necks. A knitted scarf is a beautiful, bouncy, cuddly thing. It can also take a long time to finish, even if it’s perfectly plain. For a guy like me, who will never set a speed record, promising more than one person a knitted holiday scarf inevitably leads to an ugly moment in which I hurl delirious invective at the little chocolate elf who pops out of the Advent calendar on December 20.
That is no way to treat chocolate.
Warp Once, Weave Twice–Or More
When speed is of essence, weaving is almost always* going to beat the daylights out of knitting. If I’m to turn out multiple scarves, speed is key.
It’s true that before you can weave you first must warp–we talked about that here. But when you want to weave multiple similar somethings–dish towels, placemats, or (ding ding ding) scarves–more often than not you’ll warp only once.
All you do is wind on enough length to accommodate your multiples, or at least as many as your loom can handle. Then weave the first item, leave a bit of space, weave the second item, leave a bit of space…and onward in this manner until you come to the end of the warp.
Brilliant.
And while you might think multiple projects on one warp would mean a series of identical projects–nope. Depending upon what sort of warp and weft you choose, you’ll find a variety of options for making each different from the next.
This is extremely useful if you have friends with highly different tastes, and I do.
The Yarn
I’m going to need two scarves off this warp, and here’s the yarn I plan to use.
This is Zitron Trekking XXL, and I chose it for a few different reasons:
The Friends
Now, about the recipients. In the interest of protecting their privacy, I’ve been asked not to give you their actual names and likenesses. But like so (and I mean SO) many of my friends, they closely resemble in many ways characters from George Cukor’s immortal film The Women, released in 1939.
It has an enormous, glittering cast of 130–all women. Even the animals in the film are female. No men appear, though they’re almost the only thing talked about. Do not attempt to apply the Bechdel Test to this film; your lab will blow up.
The screenplay was written by two women (Anita Loos and Jane Murfin) after a play by another woman (Claire Boothe Luce), yet manages to be breathtakingly sexist.
That said, it is a hoot. A scream. A gooey masterful camp fruitcake of sobby soggy romantic drama, knock-down slapstick, acid wit, and style. I have watched it so many times that even when the sound is off, I know exactly what is being said. Don’t believe it? TRY ME.
We are primarily interested in the costumes, which were by the legendary Adrian–not a woman, but a genius at telegraphing a woman’s inner life through hats, gloves, and dresses. Also, making her look taller. (Norma Shearer was five foot one.)
Friend One: Mary
Now, in terms of style, Friend One is a perfect match to the heroine, Mrs. Stephen (Mary) Haynes.
Mary was played by Norma Shearer, who began in silent films and continued to reign in the sound era as the Queen of MGM, grabbing plummy, starring roles from Juliet Capulet to Marie Antoinette and never once letting a near-complete lack of acting talent stand in her way.**
Mary’s style reflects her personality. She’s honest (one of the few truly honest characters out of the 130), loyal, strong, and prefers the quiet, simple, horsey life in her Connecticut country house to the enervating social whirl of Park Avenue.
Unsurprisingly, her clothes tend to the tailored.
They’re not mousy or frumpy–she’s very chic, even in a cardigan–
but they have simple lines, quiet details, and classic fabrics. Even her dressing gown, though it has chiffon bell sleeves, has echoes of a men’s camp shirt.
Mary is disgustingly rich, yes; but her clothes tell you that if you take away the horses and the country estate and the Park Avenue apartment and the maid and the cook and the impulse trips to Bermuda she’s just the same as you or I, picking up light bulbs from Target.
Friend One–from now on, we’ll call her Mary–needs a scarf that goes with a wardrobe like that, and I think I know just the thing. A timeless fabric, no fussy trims, rugged enough for the country but amenable to the occasional city foray.
Friend Two: Sylvia
Friend Two is closer in style to Mary’s cousin, Mrs. Howard (Sylvia) Fowler, played by the legendary Rosalind Russell.
Happily, Friend Two’s resemblance to Sylvia ends with her sense of style, because Sylvia is horrible. HORRIBLE. Gossip is the air the Sylvia breathes. It’s also in pretty much every breath she exhales. She’s a liar, a coward, and a bully.
She’ll abandon a friend, even her own cousin, at the first sign of trouble–even if she did her best to fan the flames.
The only thing you can admire about Sylvia is that she knits.
Sylvia’s dress sense is as theatrical as you can get without buying your clothes from the Cirque du Soleil garage sale. I think Adrian meant to reveal her as a woman consumed with appearances and dying for attention.
Her wardrobe isn’t terribly avant garde, except perhaps for this three-eyed homage to Elsa Schiaparelli,
but it’s impossible to ignore. Most of the pieces she wears play with scale (making things bigger or taller) or texture (making things fuller or fluffier).
Friend Two also loves to wear things that push boundaries and get noticed. She joyfully uses her body as the framework for an art project that’s created new every morning. Her closetseses (that’s not a typo–she has too many to express with “closets”) are her paintbox, and she paints with a surrealist’s brush.
This is going to be the greater challenge, because my own taste is closer to Mary’s. My wardrobe looks like it was last rejuvenated in 1922. I like sock garters. I have been known to put on a necktie just for fun. I think creative black tie is fine…for other people.
But I want to try, and I’m going to do them both on one warp. A gift for a friend should make that friend’s heart beat faster, even if it has the same effect on your stomach.
If you’ll please stop by in two weeks, I’ll be excited to show you what happens next.
*Exceptions would be forms of weaving requiring intense, frequent manipulation of the warp or weft threads; but that’s another adventure for another day. Maybe.
**Shearer did marry the studio boss, Irving Thalberg. It might have helped her a tiny bit. Just throwin’ it out there. That does not make me a Sylvia! Shut up.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
Schacht Cricket Rigid Heddle Loom (15 inch) by Schacht Spindle Company
The Women (1939). For information on sources, visit the official IMDB page . Yes, there was a remake in 2008, but please don’t ever bring that up in front of me again.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His next book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book will be published by Soho Publishing in June 2016.
He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
Adventure in an Old Book, Part Three
For the first part of this adventure, click here.
When I finished the collar I realized I was not quite finished with Elvina Corbould’s “Wheat-ear Pattern” from The Lady’s Knitting-Book, Second Series. You know how it goes. You think you’ve got hold of an idea, but really it has got hold of you.
Up In Your Face with Knitted Lace
I am absolutely fascinated by the basic structure of knitted lace fabric and can talk about it for hours, which is one reason people stay away from me at parties.
It’s so simple, yet so infinitely variable. Look closely. You have solid bits
and you have holes.
The holes are most often yarn overs, and a yarn over is more than a design element; it’s also an increase. Yarn over, and your stitch count grows by one.
Unless the eyelets in a lace pattern are being used to shape the knitting, each yarn over is balanced by a corresponding decrease somewhere in the neighborhood.
If this were not so, things could get out of hand very quickly.
As we saw in part one of this adventure, decreases placed well away from their yarn overs can make fun stuff happen within the motif. In the case of the Wheat-ear Pattern, that means rippled rows and scalloped edges.
It follows that if we move the decreases to other parts of the fabric, there will be corresponding changes. And from those changes we can learn more about how lace fabric works, and possibly even derive new lace motifs.
This excites me.
Dream of Wheat
Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to start with the original pattern
and leave the yarn overs exactly where they are, but remove all the decreases.
Then we’re going to put the decreases back again–but in different places. And we’ll see what, if anything, happens.
So that we can focus entirely on changes that come from the chart, we’ll be using the same yarn (Hikoo® Simplicity) and the same needles (addi® Click Interchangeables, size US 4/3.5 mm) as in the past two installments.
This is a wonderful way to learn how to design your own motifs. It also makes a terrific party game, if you’re at the sort of party where you’re home all by yourself because nobody wants to be in the room with you when you’re talking about knitted lace.
Variation One
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that the lace pattern for Frumentum had diverged from Corbould’s original.
I removed line 9 of the chart, which had no patterning, to maximize the amount of swerve going on in the fabric.
I also replaced Corbould’s left-leaning single decrease–
Slip 1 stitch as if to purl. Knit the following stitch. Pass the slipped stitch over it.
with a modern left-leaning decrease, the slip-slip-knit (ssk). Slip-slip-knit is our gift from the legendary Barbara Walker, who developed it as a more perfect mirror image of the right-leaning knit two together (k2tog) single decrease.
I most often use the variation of slip-slip-knit developed by two other knitting legends, mother-daughter yarn titans Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen:
Slip 1 stitch as if to knit. Slip the next stitch as if to purl. Return both stitches to the left needle and knit them together through the back.
These changes are small, and don’t result in a pattern much different from the original. If you weren’t looking for differences you probably wouldn’t notice any.
Variation Two
Now we’re going to shift the decreases in rounds 1–7 so that they’re closer to the yarn overs, but still not adjacent. And for the ducks of it, we’re going to replace the single decreases in the middle of rounds 9-15 with a single line of double decreases right down the center.
Here’s my favorite double decrease. It gives a symmetrical, upright cluster of three stitches rather than the right-leaning bundle you get with knit three together (k3tog). In fine or slippery yarns, it’s also easier to work without dropping stitches.
One at a time, slip 2 stitches from the left to the right needle as if to knit. Knit the next stitch. Slip the first 2 stitches (separately or together) over the knitted stitch.
The result is a fabric in which biased areas now alternate with unbiased–an interesting textural effect.
And the edge is still scalloped, but not quite so deeply.
Variation Three
Can we get rid of the scallop entirely? I think we can. All we need to do is eliminate all early and delayed decreases, like this.
Now every decrease occurs immediately before or after a corresponding yarn over. The result:
Huh. Well, it doesn’t knock my socks off; but it’s certainly different. It might be cool to fill in those blank stretches between the upright motifs with smaller, perhaps floral, motifs.
Variation Four
And if we want to try that, why not give ourselves as many stitches as possible between the upright motifs. How could we do that? Like this.
Now each pair of yarn overs is balanced with a double decrease between.
This gives us something very similar to the previous swatch, though the stitches up the center of each motif now stand up (being bundles of three). That might be a nice textural touch (especially in heavier yarns) or you might hate it.
The lovely thing about designing your own lace variations is that you decide what works or doesn’t.
Variation Five
Let’s get really wild. We’re going almost back to the original chart, but we’re going to make one sneaky change. See it?
Note the row numbers. Until now, the uncharted even rows have all been worked in plain old purl.
Now we’ve eliminated those plain rows completely. We’re going to work only the patterned rows–a technique known to knitters of Shetland lace as “close working.”
To do this, you must work every row in the chart beginning where you see the number–so odd rows are read and worked right to left, and even rows are read and worked left to right.
Also, to keep the fabric in stockinette, we need wrong-side purl versions of our left- and right-leaning decreases. Therefore…
For k2tog, use purl two together (p2tog).
For ssk, do this:
One at a time, slip 2 stitches as if to knit from the left needle to the right needle. Return these 2 stitches to the left needle and then, after making sure the working yarn is on the near side of your work, purl the two slipped stitches through the back.
It sounds a bit awkward, and it is at first; but with some practice it becomes quite simple.
We’ve seen that early and delayed decreases cause bias in the fabric. We’ve seen that the closer they are to one another, the more pronounced the bias. Now, working them on every row, we should being seeing that effect amped up to max volume.
Wowee!
I got so into knitting this version that it would have been well on its way to a finished scarf if I hadn’t forced myself to bind it off and block it so you could see it today.
I could, and probably will, go on…but our next adventure is already under way. In fact, it’s right here on the work table at my elbow, screaming for attention.
See you in two weeks.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
addi® Clicks interchangeable needles, size US 4/3.5mm.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His next book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book will be published by Soho Publishing in June 2016.
He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
Adventure in an Old Book, Part Two
For the first part of this adventure, click here.
This was my idea: to make Elvina Corbould’s “Wheat-ear Pattern,” published in 1878 in The Lady’s Knitting-Book, Second Series, into a knitted collar. Many of you had the same idea. When Part One of this excursion hit the streets, in came a trickle of messages all saying, “Land sakes, what a lovely collar that would make!”
I felt encouraged, as we could not possibly all be wrong.
I imagined something like this,
and selected two colors of Hikoo Simplicity inspired by watery locales.
Singularly appropriate for a wavy, ripply fabric. The bulk of the knitting would be vivid blue, shot with occasional rounds of dark grey to show off the undulations.
As I (literally) took off on a teaching trip, I cast on with the first ball of Fijian Waters. A few inches and 37,000 feet later,
I was bored to tears.
It wasn’t bad. Just dull. Predictable. Similar to a dozen lacy collars I’d seen before. A few rounds in a different color wasn’t going to change that.
This is adventure? Stripes? Meh. Back to the drawing board.
What about working the collar in bold blocks of color, rather like squares on a chess board–but bigger?
That could work.
The I-Word
Bold, solid blocks of different colors in a single piece of knitting are most often created with a technique known as intarsia.
If you just shivered, I understand. Intarsia awakens strong feelings in the bosom of the knitter. In the latter part of the twentieth century it was employed, notoriously, to create some of the most misbegotten sweaters the world has ever known.
But we must remember that this is not intarsia’s fault. Like any other technique, it can be used for good or ill. The choice is yours.
I haven’t the time or space for a comprehensive discussion, but here is a nutshell account.
In an intarsia fabric, every discrete area of color requires its own supply of yarn. This drawing shows us a hypothetical piece in green and orange.
We are looking at the right side. We begin by knitting across from right to left with the orange yarn. When we reach the point at which a change to green is called for, we twist the old (orange) and new (green) yarns together once to interlock the sections.
This interlocking is repeated every time one color gives way to the next, on both sides of the work. Skip the interlocking and you will end up with a fluttering miasma of unattached scraps of fabric, which makes for a very odd, drafty sweater.
Only one color is ever active at any given time. Unused colors just hang out, waiting for their turn. This is why elaborate intarsia works-in-progress often grow to resemble mating season in a dark stash closet.
There is more to intarsia than this but, frankly, not a whole lot more.
Intarsia creates a single-layered fabric with no floats (strands of unused color), ideal for lace. It was clearly the way to go for the collar, but there was an issue. I wanted to work in the round. Intarsia has traditionally been worked flat–even when used to make argyle socks, often considered the apotheosis of the method.
Here is why.
This drawing is an aerial view of an attempt at circular intarsia, just starting out.
We begin at START HERE and merrily knit our way around, interlocking at the color changes as we go. All is well.
But then we come to Round Two,
and immediately hit a brick wall. We are back at START HERE and need the green yarn. Instead of being where it ought, however, the green is now sitting at the far end of the orange section, utterly ignoring our fevered entreaties to Come Here at Once. If you have cats or teenagers, you know this feeling.
I could have surmounted the problem by working the collar as a flat strip and sewing it closed with a seam. This is, in fact, how argyle socks are traditionally finished. I immediately rejected this idea on the grounds that I did not feel like doing that.
There is a convoluted, long-standing method for working circular intarsia that I also rejected; because I tried it once and hated it so, so much that after six rounds I grew convinced of the pointlessness of human existence and ate an entire chocolate cheesecake in the bathtub while listening to a worn out mix tape of The Smiths given to me by the college boyfriend who broke my heart.
Paging Dr. Anne
This might have meant a radical reconfiguration of the design were it not for a fairly recent innovation in intarsia, conceived by intarsia master Anne Berk.
Anne feels about intarsia the way I feel about shadow knitting–that it’s a good egg, really, and just needs some love and understanding. She tackled the thorny issue of working this stuff in the round without recourse to cheesecake, and compiled the results in this book, Annetarsia Knits: A New Link to Intarsia.
Her solution is so simple, yet so marvelously effective, that when I read it I grew absolutely furious that I hadn’t thought it up myself. That’s probably for the best, as nobody would want to buy a book called Franklintarsia.
In particular Anne’s way of dealing with the beginning of the rounds, which present special problems, is so perfect it makes me giddy. I couldn’t remember exactly what she does and didn’t have my book handy when the collar began, so I bunted.
My result is below. Anne’s is above. Hers wins, obviously. What with it being perfect and all.
And so the collar was worked in fits and starts on four airplanes and a ship, yet popped off the needle almost before I knew what was happening. So pleasant.
I was half tempted to leave it unblocked, to preserve the rippling…
…but gave it a good soak to settle it down, and laid it out to dry. I pulled the points out to make sure they were all even…
…but didn’t need to pin them.
I am quite pleased.
The Recipe: Frumentum
This collar began with the Wheat-ear pattern, so I’m calling it “Frumentum,” the Latin for “grain.” If you’d like to make one, here’s what to do.
Materials
Two balls each of two colors Hikoo Simplicity. I used Seattle Sky (C1) and Fijian Waters (C2).
A circular needle size US 4/3.5mm, or the size you need to achieve a gauge you like. Maximum cable length will be 24 inches, but shorter will likely be more comfortable. I used my beloved Addi Short Lace Clicks with a 16-inch cable.
A copy of Annetarsia Knits, or instruction in the method through one of Anne’s classes. I can’t present it to you here, alas, but both Anne and her book are readily available everywhere these days.
1 stitch marker
Instructions
Wind all four skeins of Simplicity into balls; you’ll have them all in play at one time once the intarsia begins.
With C1, cast on 136 sts using the method of your choice. Join to work in the round, taking care not to twist. Place marker to indicate beginning of round.
*Knit 1 round, purl 1 round
Repeat from * 1x.
Work the first intarsia passage as follows:
With C1, work 2 repeats of Round 1 of the revised Wheat-ear chart (see below) across the first 34 sts. Join the first ball of C2 and work 2 repeats of Round 1 on the next 34 sts. Follow this with a 2 more repeats in C1, joining the second ball of that color; and then begin 2 more repeats of C2, ditto. You should now be at the beginning of the round, with all four balls of yarn attached to the work.
Work the entire Wheat-ear Pattern chart through Round 16, interlocking sections and rounds using Anne Berk’s circular intarsia method. When the chart is complete, break the working yarns, leaving 8-inch tails.
Work a second full repeat of the chart, alternating the colors of the sections (grey atop blue, and vice versa). When complete, break working yarns.
Work a third repeat of the chart through Round 8 only, once again alternating the colors of the sections.
Work the upper selvedge entirely in C1 as follows, breaking the other working yarns as you reach them:
*Knit 1 round, purl 1 round
Repeat from * 1x.
Bind off in purl.
Break working yarn and weave in ends. Soak and gently block on flat surface, shaping top and bottom points into even scallops. Allow to dry completely before wearing.
For the Next Adventure…
No, wait. Wait. I don’t think I’m quite finished with this yet. See you in two weeks.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
addi® Click Interchangeable needles, size US 4/3.5mm.
Annetarsia Knits: A New Link to Intarsia by Anne Berk (Double Vision Press, 2014).
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His next book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book will be published by Soho Publishing in June 2016.
He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
Adventure in an Old Book, Part One
When I have the luxury of knitting without a deadline, one of my favorite things to do is knit swatches.
I admit that I have odd ideas about what constitutes a good time. Most knitters I have met say they would prefer to give a cat a bikini wax rather than knit a swatch. I, however, have learned most of what I know about yarn by turning out hundreds and hundreds of itty bitty scraps of fabric.
Sometimes I knit swatches for mundane reasons: to check gauge, test drape, or plan a design. Other times, as in this adventure, I knit them just to see what happens. I get a kick out of that. And in the long run, it’s productive. Just as most of my best ideas for cartoons bubble up after hours of aimless doodling, so my best knitting designs follow miles and miles of stitching with no special goal in mind.
I have a particular goofy passion for working from nineteenth century patterns. I won’t go into all the reasons why here; but chief among them is the mystery. It’s not uncommon for pattern books from the 1840s through the 1890s to offer you either only a rudimentary or misleading illustration of what you’re making, or–most often–no illustration at all. You get a rather bald title–“For a Gent’s Patterned Glove, with Fingers” and that’s it.
To work from these is to participate in the original mystery knit-alongs.
I’d been wanting to play with The Lady’s Knitting-Book (1878) for some time. The author, credited on the title page only as E.M.C., has been revealed as Elvina M. Corbould. She was quite prolific. For this adventure, we’ll dip into the second series of The Lady’s Knitting-Book, which ran to at least four volumes; she also produced (or at least put her initials upon) multiple works on crochet, netting, and needlework.
One of the things I like about Elvina’s knitting books is that she is liberal in her dispensation of stitch motifs. I wasn’t in the mood to knit a Whole Thing, just little bits. If one of those little bits were to give me a bigger idea, I could see about turning it into a project.
I ran down the alphabetical table of contents
and chose three, based entirely on how interesting their names were.
First up was “Talisman Pattern,” because how on earth can you not be curious about something that calls itself that?
It revealed itself to be a variation of basket weave. Hmm. Well, okay.
A perfectly nice variation, but not something I felt like doing more of. Not now, anyway.
But here is the chart, in case you would like to try it. (Note: Corbould includes a garter stitch border for all her motifs; I put them on my swatches, but have omitted them in this article.)
Next I took a crack at “Lorne Pattern.”
This was intriguing because it was short–just three rows–and appeared to be lacy, as the instruction to “wool forward” (meaning yarn over, an instruction still to be found in some British publications) was frequent.
The result was extremely interesting: a fully reversible fabric displaying the characteristics of lace and those of ribbing.
Definitely worth another look. Here, if you would like to try it yourself, is the chart.
And then “Wheat-ear Pattern,” the most elaborate (or at least the longest) of the three.
Now this was interesting.
I like lace generally, but I particularly enjoy lace motifs that mess around with early and delayed decreases. What does that mean? It means that the openings in the lace–created with yarn overs–are separated by one or more stitches from the decreases that compensate for them. As here:
Used repeatedly and systematically, these do fun things to the grain of the fabric. It can cause the rows to ripple in curves, as here:
It can also, when taken to an extreme, cause a scalloped selvage:
This was a motif to explore further. After a few repeats I found I wanted to knit a bunch more, which is always a good sign.
Of the three I tried, this was the only one of Elvina’s patterns to include errors. I’ve corrected them for the chart.
Now, what to do with it? I have an idea. See you in two weeks.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
Hikoo® Simplicity (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon, 117 yards per 50 gram hank). Colors: 013 Violette (Talisman), 026 Pale Yellow (Lorne), 036 Silver Hair (Wheat Ear).
Pages from The Lady’s Knitting-Book, Second Series by Elvina M. Corbould. Available in digital form here from the University of Southampton, as part of the Richard Rutt Collection.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His next book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book will be published by Soho Publishing in June 2016.
He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
Hello Franklin Followers!
Franklin will be taking short hiatus from the blog. Everyone deserves a breather 🙂
The next adventure will be posted on Friday March 11th!
Mark your calendars! You won’t want to miss it.
Happy Knitting! We hope you are all having a fantastic 2016.
-Brooke @ skacel
Adventure on the Floor, Part Three
For an introduction to this ongoing series, click here.
For the first part of this adventure, click here.
When last we met, I was considering giving up all fiber arts forever after four bloody rounds with a vintage pattern from this booklet…
…which purports to instruct one in the method for making rugs and mats from crochet-covered clothesline.
It did not, as you know, go well.
The technique, previously outlined in detail, is simple and easily mastered. The shaping of the oval, however, could most kindly be described as an exercise in surrealism.
After giving the pattern every opportunity to prove itself, I tossed it aside. That it landed in the fireplace on top of a burning log is no coincidence.
All I needed to do was crochet an oval. I suspected that possibly–just possibly–I was not the first person in history to have this in mind.
Let’s Make An Oval
Indeed. I’d only typed “C-R-O-C-H-E-T-O-V” when Google vomited a cascade of related articles, most offering close variations on the same formula.
In a nutshell:
That’s it.
Would it work for the rug?
It Worked for the Rug
Yep. I see no point in keeping you in suspense. You’ve suffered enough.
Experienced crochet types can probably sit down and wing it. Newbies might like to follow this rambling recipe.
You’ll need:
42 yards (38.5m) of clothesline (more, if you want a larger rug)
two skeins Hikoo Simpliworsted (more, if you want a larger rug)
locking-ring stitch markers (minimum of 4)
1 crochet hook, size 3.5mm
Do this:
Build the Foundation
Remove them after you’re sure you have the proper number in your chain.
NOTA BENE: From this point, absolutely all stitches will be worked over clothesline as described in Part One. You will be looking at the wrong side (bottom) of the rug as you work.
Work Round 1
Get Ready for Rounds 2 and Higher
As discussed in our last installment, from this point you’ll work stitches over the clothesline and into the hole under both threads of the stitch in the round below.
To increase, work 2 single crochet into the hole in question.
When beginning Round 2, place a marker around the neck of the first stitch immediately after you work it. This marker will indicate the beginning of your rounds, so I like to make sure it differs in appearance from the other three markers. On my rug, the beginning-of-round marker was green; the others were orange.
You’ll have four markers in place, and your increases will occur between these markers on every round.
Work Round 2
Single crochet 1 into every stitch up to and including next marker. This is your first straight side.
You’ll be at the first place where you increased six in the previous round.
(Increase 1, single crochet 1) up to next marker. You’ll have an increase of six stitches between the two markers at this end of your rug.
Beginning with the next marked stitch, single crochet 1 in every stitch up to and including next marker.
(Increase 1, single crochet 1) up to next marker–which you’ll find is the beginning-of-round marker. This end of your rug will have increased by six stitches.
You’re off to a fine start. The rest will be more of the same.
All Subsequent Rounds
Along your straight edges, 1 single crochet into every stitch. Your straight edges will not increase.
Between the markers at each rounded end, work 6 evenly-spaced single increases in every round. The distance between the increases will grow by 1 in every round.
For example:
Round Three: (Increase 1, single crochet 1) between the markers.
Round Four: (Increase 1, single crochet 2) between the markers.
Round Five: (Increase 1, single crochet 3) between the markers.
And so forth, until your rug has as many rounds as you require, or until you run out of either yarn or clothesline.
Finishing
Fasten off your yarn, and cut the loose ends of your clothesline near the crochet.
It seems like there should be more to it, but there isn’t.
The Finished Rug
I declare, I am quite pleased with it. Cheerful, but stout and heavy enough to be useful–like the braided rag rugs that inspired me to give this technique a try.
The semi-solid Simpliworsted (this is colorway 665) shows off beautifully, making occasional shadowy rings of slightly lighter and darker blue.
The only thing I’m not thrilled with is the size. I used the entire length of my clothesline. Even so, the dimensions are a slightly stingy 23 inches (58.5cm) long by 10.5 inches (26.5cm) wide. To serve as a doormat, it could use another two inches of width–which would mean adding only another three rounds.
I’d need to join in more clothesline, and that’s not difficult. Just place the new length on the work where needed, with about inch of excess hanging on the wrong side. Work on. When you’re finished, trim the excess at the beginning and end.
The only other thing to keep in mind is that the larger your rug gets, the heavier it gets. This rapidly becomes a piece that’ll hurt your wrists and back if you try to lug it around like a doily. After about ten rounds, support it on a table.
Final Thoughts for Further Rugging
When I picked up the vintage booklet, this idea of crocheting a rug over clothesline was, to me, entirely unfamiliar. As this adventure began to unfurl, I was immensely pleased to hear from several “Fridays with Franklin” readers who knew it well, and kindly wrote to me about their own experiences.
The practice was apparently quite common in the days when most households hung laundry to dry, and most clotheslines were pure cotton that frayed, discolored, and weakened fairly quickly. When it could no longer support socks and underwear, was it thrown out? No! It became a rug. Wonderfully thrifty and sensible.
As our throwaway culture gradually, painfully begins to rediscover the necessity of making things last, I hope we’ll see more and more techniques like this creep back into the spotlight. I know I’ll be doing this again.
Just not with Kenny’s pattern. Kenny can go to hell.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
Hikoo Simpliworsted: 55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yd per 100g skein. Colors: 611 (gray/light blue) and 665 (blue).
AddiColours Crochet Hook (from set of nine color-coded, comfort grip hooks), size 3.5 mm.
Wellington Light Load Economy Clothesline: Nylon core, braided cotton exterior; 42 yards.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008) and proprietor of The Panopticon (the-panopticon.blogspot.com), one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
Adventure on the Floor, Part Two
For an introduction to this ongoing series, click here.
For the first part of this adventure, click here.
Nervously, hopefully, I set out to crochet my oval rug from yarn and clothesline.
The instructions as presented in the vintage booklet were less than straightforward. Oval Rug No. 305 ostensibly begins on page three; but immediately refers you to the instructions for Oval Rug No. 300, which begins on page five. You flip to page five and locate Oval Rug No. 300. There you find the first round (only the first round) and a terse note directing you to page eleven for the rest.
The type is vanishingly tiny–far smaller, even, than many of the nineteenth century needlework books I’ve consulted. Rounds two through nineteen occupy one choked paragraph, crammed cheek-by-jowl like prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
I was already exhausted and I hadn’t started yet.
In a situation like this I find it useful in the long run to stop and copy out the instructions so I can read them.
Often this has another, added benefit: I begin to understand the nature of what’s to be done, and how, in advance of the actual work. Instead, as I scribbled line after line with the aid of a magnifying glass one thought began reverberate in my head.
Something seemed off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. There were straight sections and increase sections. Clearly the increase sections were the two ends of the oval, the straight sections the flat sides. Fine. But as I copied more and more, I felt increasingly befuddled by the nature and location of the increases. There was no orderly progression from one round to the next.
I reminded myself that I am new to crochet, and that the person who wrote the pattern very likely knew a lot of things I didn’t. Maybe the thickness of the rope had something to do with it?
Just do what it tells you, I thought.
The Toolkit
Here are the fundamental skills required to crochet the rug. There are but three.
One. You must know how to single crochet over the clothesline, as described in the last installment.
Two. You must know how to join the current round to the previous round. It’s quite simple.
Three. You must know how to increase–and that’s nothing more than working multiple stitches into the same hole.
That’s it. How hard can this possibly be?
Let Me Tell You
“How hard can this possibly be?” must have been the motto of the psychotic, cocaine-addled sadist who wrote the pattern for Oval Rug No. 300.
The designer–let’s call him Kenny, because in my childhood I was mercilessly bullied by a drooling oaf named Kenny–sat down, scrawled “Oval Rug No. 300” at the top of the page with his own excrement, and thus began a pattern so awful, so perfectly awful, so mesmerizingly, heartbreakingly awful, that it is the veritable Mona Lisa of the International Museum of Awful Patterns.
Please keep in mind that we are making a basic geometric figure–an oval. The usual fashion for growing a basic geometric figure in crochet or knitting is to increase (or decrease) at regular intervals according to a simple formula.
Kenny doesn’t like that sort of thing. Kenny likes to hold his victims in a perpetual state of hyper-vigilant suspense.
Kenny will allow you one (1) stitch marker, to indicate the beginning the round.
You start with 67 stitches. They multiply rapidly. By the end of round three, you have 186. Do you have 186? You’d better have 186, or your rug won’t work. Kenny suggests that you count all stitches at the end of every round. But stitch counts are provided only at random, so after finishing most rounds you’ll need to do the math yourself to find out how many you should have.
And please concentrate, because if you get distracted while counting you have to go back to stitch one. Maybe you should count every round twice, just to be sure.
Kenny hopes you love to count stitches, because you’ll also need to count your way from increase to increase all the way around. If the increases were distributed regularly, you might place additional stitch markers to indicate where they fall. But no. Kenny prefers to scatter his increases as he scatters the heads of decapitated squirrels in the woods behind his house. He follows a pattern only he can comprehend.
So as you work each round, take care to count every single stitch, absolutely all the time.
It’s 77 stitches to the next increase. Off you go.
One, two, three, four, five…was that the doorbell? Did I have five stitches or six? Better pull back and start again. Haha, no problem. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy, oh I love this part of that song, la la, wait…how many did I do? Shucks. Better count again. One, two, three…
And just for that extra quelque chose, now and again Kenny moves the first stitch of the round backward or forward for no good reason. Whee!
Four Rounds with Kenny
I am new to crochet, but no stranger to complex patterns. I love complexity. I prefer it to simple repetition. Complex patterns keep my brain engaged enough to fend off boredom on long-haul projects.
On the other hand, simple repetition has certain fine qualities. Repetitive fabrics like garter stitch or double crochet are great for knitting in company, or while reading or watching movies. Your fingers are at work, but your mind is free to play.
What Kenny achieved with Oval Rug. No. 305 is the Platonic ideal of a terrible pattern, because it is simultaneously fiendishly complex and mind-numbingly dull.
It is no more than round after round of single crochet, punctuated by increases that are also single crochet. Nothing exciting ever happens, so this should be a rug you can work on while binge-watching a season of The Real Housewives of Schenectady and sipping a Moscow Mule with your coterie of fellow fans.
But the need to count every stitch means you can never, ever take your mind off the work. You cannot watch television. You cannot listen to music. You cannot answer the door, the phone, or the child in need of immediate medical attention. You cannot bring it to knit night or the guild meeting, you cannot keep it in the car to work on at odd moments. You cannot take a sip of tea or a bathroom break in between increases.
Oval Rug No. 305 requires you to retire to a windowless, soundproof vault with only the terrifying void of your own mortality for companionship.
I kept losing my place, and pulling back, and trying again, and losing my place, and trying again. To say progress was slow is a gross understatement. The work itself was painstaking, and opportunities to do it were few–I couldn’t pick it up unless I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed for at least an hour.
This was the result of, no joke, about twenty hours of work.
I was on round four of nineteen rapidly increasing rounds. I can knit a moderately complicated lace shawlette in twenty hours.
Do you call that a “jiffy,” Kenny?
Because I don’t think it is.
I was desperate for novelty. In a moment of madness, I pulled out all that work and started over with a different color of Simpliworsted (665), hoping in a hopeless sort of way that now, with multiple false starts behind me, I could make it work.
Maybe I was suffering from an excess of perfectionism. Maybe I needed to relax about making every round come out just right. So I did relax. I still counted, but not as obsessively. When I was off by one stitch, I threw in a compensating stitch somewhere nearby and moved forward.
Another six hours later, here’s what I got:
A buckled mess. Unacceptable.
I was about ready to quit and admit defeat, but then
Oh, gosh. Look at the time. Gotta go. See you in two weeks.
Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue
AddiColours Crochet Hook (from set of nine color-coded, comfort grip hooks), size 3.5 mm.
Wellington Light Load Economy Clothesline: Nylon core, braided cotton exterior; 42 yards.
About Franklin Habit
Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008) and proprietor of The Panopticon (the-panopticon.blogspot.com), one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.
Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Knitty.com, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.
He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, two looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.
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