At last - my Hazel Carter Alcazar finished, blocked, dried, and unpinned - placed on a plain white sheet so you can see it better:



My Alcazar (post block) is about 41 inches (104.14 cm) square measured from picot point to picot point across the center. All in all, I found this pattern to be easier than Hazel Carter's Spider Queen:



Working Alcazar without the diagonal seams in the corners helped. The charts are a bit easier to follow than SQ's. Alcazar's charts are presented in both half-width (mirror repeat) and full width formats. SQ's are done in with significant mirror repeats. SQ is significantly larger, and in general Alcazar's consitutent lace patterning is less complicated than SQ's as the patterns are more repetitious and there are fewer of them. Still, I didn't have any problems with Queen either, and rate both as excellent projects for those who are comfortable working from charts.

I touched on my biggest lesson learned yesterday - fiber choice. My piece is supple and soft, and a wonderful arterial red, but being rayon was not optimal for this particular pattern. Look at this corner:



See that cupping just inside the edging? The pattern was good, but the piece did not block out flat. That's my fault. A lace weight wool would have stretched to accommodate working around the corner. I should have anticipated the no-stretch factor and changed the rate of attachment along the entire border, perhaps adding as much as one or two entire points per side. That would have given enough ease for the piece to block out flat. A minor disappointment to be sure, and an object lesson in fiber choice. So it goes...


Postscript

And proof that I'm not the geekiest stitcher out there. While this proof is not quite as elegant as June Oshiro's DNA cable scarf, in certain circles it would be intensely appreciated.

At long last, here it is. My Alcazar, knit in red faux-silk rayon - blocking out on my makeshift blocking board, all thanks to the Columbus Day holiday.



What I've got here is a kids' area rug, topped by some bath towels with a checkerboard flat sheet thrown on top. Over that goes the shawl, pinned out by the points. The checks are nice, even 2" (5cm) squares, and make keeping things even much easier.

I had wanted to do this bit of blocking the Curmudgeonly Way - using my blocking wires to stretch out the central square, then pinning the points out from there. What a brilliant idea! Unfortunately, the stretch coefficient of this rayon is not very high, and I ran into all sorts of problems at the corners trying to even things out. So I winged it, pinning out just the points. (Memo to self - if most lace is knit using soft, supple, and elastic fibers, there's probably a reason why people are doing it that way.)

In any case, here's the piece. Dripping a bit red, no surprise there as red runs and red rayon is infamous for running even more than other reds. But it's mostly rinsed out. I still like it, flawed fiber choice and all. Now to decide whether I keep my Alcazar; or give it as a gift, or donate it to an upcoming charity auction and make myself something else.

Pix tomorrow of it nice and flat and dry, without the eye-popping Peter Max background.

That's it! I grafted the final row of the edging to the first row to make an invisible seam. I'm done except for blocking. That will have to wait a bit as I am swamped right now, with no prospect for a large block of free time with a floor to hand in order to play with the thing before the latter part of July. Still, I'm done. Here's a shot of my Alcazar in all its rumpled, squished edge, pre-block glory that we can use for comparison to the (eventual) post-block photo I promise to plaster up here as soon as it is available.



Unblocked it measures about 40 inches across. If worked in the suggested needle size with the suggested yarn, this shawl is supposed to block out to be 56 or so inches across. I'll probably make it to 48 or so, tops because both my yarn and needle were smaller than those recommended.

Lessons learned:

1. Read the pattern and make sure you understand it before embarking on a project.
2. Faux silk (rayon) is a very unforgiving and unstretchy material from which to knit lace. Care must be taken with gauge because it's very easy to knit too tightly.
3. Did I mention the "read your pattern" thing?
   
4. There are some minor quibbles in the pivot charts. Occasional one or two stitch fudging is necessary to make the edging and corners come out right. While I'd rate the majority of this pattern as "quite straightforward and quick to knit if you're comfortable with charts" and "a challenge mostly because of size, not because of complexity" those little problems might be enough to set a beginner off his or her feed. But even a lace knitting beginner, armed with the knowledge of where those little nuisances might be and the courage to work through them, could complete this project.
   

Now what?

I have the opportunity for some serious knitting time over the next week. I had hoped that I'd still be working on this shawl, but wonder of wonders - I finished early. I might pick up the Rogue again, but it's not particularly convenient for my target window (why will become evident in ten days).

To be truthful, I haven't quite licked the lace/non-wool knitting bug yet. There are lots of options. I've got some lace-weight linen in the stash. I've got a Rachel Schelling pattern collection here somewhere. I could play with them together. Or now that I've got the cotton to knit my North Truro Counterpane, I could restart that project. Other possibilities are the doilies on Yarn Over. I have as little use for doilies as I have for shawls. They look fun to knit, but I haven't the inclination to use them. I could use a table runner though. Hmmm.

Round-up - Needle sizes and Kitchener Stitch

Finally, for those that are asking - I will return to the needle summary as soon as I have time. Those data notes take a bit of research to write up, and time hasn't exactly been plentiful.

And on the Kitchener Stitch documentation project, I've been in touch with a couple of people active in historical British military kit research. They're branching out to their own networks, and have recommended some sources that might confirm (or debunk) the notion that Kitchener's revised clothing specifications included seamless toe socks. No one has offered up any other citations. So I'm still looking...

I'm in the home stretch on my Alcazar. I'm about three quarters of the way through edging the second side. That means I've worked one corner and am about to work the second. I have to say that how to work the corners wasn't intuitively obvious in my first read through of the pattern, and the original photo was of little help. It's almost impossible to see exactly what's going on with the edging in the photo because in the sample it was knit in a darker color which cannot be seen against the high contrast black background used to display the rest of the shawl.

The pattern itself wasn't too tough. It's a plain variant of a classic wave edging. It took me a couple of times through before I realized that Carter was describing wrapped short rows for her corner treatments. Now conceptual interference might have been in play thanks to the glass of wine I had just before embarking on the corner, but confusion remained even upon revisiting the instructions in the sober light of morning. I admit I got the gist of the thing from the chart and written accompaniment, and then (mostly) winged it. I'm not 100% pleased with Corner #1, but not so unpleased that I feel like tinking back and doing it again.




The first step is to pause roughly one repeat away from the corner. Count the number of live stitches remaining between your stopping point and the absolute corner. There should be 25. Work that final repeat. If there are too few or too many, adjust your rate of attachment by either working one or more attachment points as sl 1, K1, psso instead of sl 1, K2tog, psso; or as sl 1, K3 tog, psso. The former should be done if you've got fewer than 25 stitches remaining; the latter if you have more than 25.

With luck and planning you'll reach the absolute corner stitch on the last row of the pattern repeat - the last row in the first segment of Chart 4. You then work the plain return row, and embark upon the next segment of the edging chart. Work across all the stitches as directed. You'll end up with one more stitch than is accounted for in the chart. Wrap it short row style. Flip the work over and slip this just-wrapped stitch, then finish off the plain return row. On the next row work the stitches as directed. There will be two left over. Wrap the first one, ignore the one further away from the point of your left hand needle, flip the work, slip the just-wrapped stitch and complete out your plain row. Do the same thing on the remaining rows of the chart, only on each row the number of "sleeping" stitches dormant at the end of the needle will be incremented by one. Finish out this second segment of the chart. That last row will have only two live stitches on it, plus a whole load of sleeping stitches waiting for the next step.

And that next step is to begin the next chart segment. Again work the stitches as directed. This first row is two knits. The next stitch will be one that you had wrapped and set dormant before. Knit it along with the loop around its base, then flip the work over, slip this just-woken-up stitch and finish off the plain side row. Keep doing this - following the chart, waking up the stitch after the current row is completed, flipping the work over, slipping that first newly woken stitch and finishing out the plain side row.

With more luck, by the time you get to the last row of this chart segment you will have woken up all of the formerly dormant stitches, and you'll be ready to march along Side #2 working the main edging repeat.

I have to confess to one major error. Those plain side return rows? I worked them as purls, yielding a stockinette-based edging. It wasn't until I was all the way around the corner and well into Side #2 that I noticed that the directions said to knit them. A garter-based edging would be a tad less curl-prone. I sat there and thought about ripping back, but I decided to keep going as-is.

The flogging will commence in the morning...

In spite of the massive amounts of prose here over the last week or so, I have been knitting away at Alcazar. Here you see progress to date:


In spite of my blurry photo, you can see the fountain area at the bottom of the outer band, surmounted by the alternating pierced and flower-bearing arcade layer. The final edging is knit horizontally across the top. The edging itself is very simple - a wave edging that appears in many variants, both stockinette and garter based (it's stockinette here).

One caveat. If you have never started an edging that's attached across a needle full of live stitches, the instructions in Alcazar might leave you a bit baffled. Here's what happens.

First, you finish out the final row of the outer band but do not break off the yarn. Set it aside. Then taking a DPN of the same diameter as your circ, you cast on the requisite number of stitches using waste string and some sort of provisional cast on (the choice is up to you, but I crocheted mine directly onto my DPN). Now you've got a DPN with a bunch of waste yarn stitches on it. Break off the waste yarn leaving a small tail so the rest of it stays out of your way.

Take the main piece, with the right side facing you (vast areas of this one are in stockinette, so identifying the right side is easy). Put some sort of needle tip cap, rubber band or other plug at the end of what would have been the right hand needle of your original circ. Trust me on this as leaving this end free is a recipe for disaster.

Holding the DPN VERY close to the shawl and using what would have been the left hand needle end of your circ, purl across the provisional cast-on stitches using the main yarn. Now work the first row of the edging chart using the DPN. At the end of it you'll be back at the side where the edging is being attached to the main body. The last stitch of the edging is worked together with the next two live stitches of the shawl body by slipping it, then knitting the two body stitches together and passing the slipped edging stitch over the just-completed K2tog.

You'll find that most patterns that work an edging on like this direct that every so often the rate of attachment be increased, to make up for the fact that knit rows and knit stitches are rarely the same height. In this particular pattern, the final row of the repeat is attached by slipping the last two edging stitches, knitting two body stitches together, then passing BOTH edging stitches over the just-made K2tog.

Keep working the edging back and forth following the chart. You'll find that once you've finished the first repeat you can ditch the DPN and use the two ends of your original circ if you prefer. In my case, my only 3.0mm DPN was a non-slippy aluminum one that was driving me crazy. As soon as I could I went back to using both ends of my nice, shiny, ultra-slick Inox circ.

Although this method is most commonly seen in attaching lace edgings to live edges, you can use it to knit any horizontally-worked strip to the live stitches of vertically knit edge. You'll need to play a bit with the rate of attachment to make sure your edging lies as you like - either ruffled (increase the number of edging rows per body stitches), flat, or a bit cupped (decreasing the number of edging rows to body stitches) - but not having a seam to work is always very much appreciated.

I took the time this morning to slip some stitches onto an extra needle so you can see more progress than the usual red lump photo would show.



The clear patch of diamonds is part of the center panel. Above it is a row of "fountains" - a texture pattern also appearing in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns (p. 272). After that comes some garter stitch, and then six or so rows of the arches I spoke about yesterday. It's hard to see them because the rows are bunched up against the needle.

But in taking this picture, there was a bit of heartbreak experienced:



See those blurry stitches still on the temporary needle?? They've laddered back between one and four rows - in the middle of one of the more complex sections of the pattern (the knitting equivalent of the bread always hitting the floor jam-side down.)? Obviously some reconstruction here is needed, as I have no intention of ripping back six 700-stitch rows on behalf of a measly five stitches. That possibility still exists if I can't rescue them, but I always try before I punt and rip.

Needless to say, this is the last time I try photographic grandstanding with a lace project in process.

Still humming along on Alcazar. I'm almost through Chart #2, the fountain section. Again, one very minor (and absolutely obvious) glitch on the half chart. In row 21 there's a blank box. That should be read as a knit stitch. The problem looks like it was caught and fixed by hand on the full-chart version.


I'm enjoying this one. It's going much faster than I expected. One thing that makes the Carter patterns fun is the patter that accompanies them. Yes, some people just want the pattern. I happen to enjoy the way she fills out her instructions with an accompanying folk tale, or takes valuable space to explain the symbolism of or thought process behind cher design element choices. For example, this pattern is inspired by the buildings and gardens of the Alcazar, a palace in Seville, Spain. Parts of the palace are Moorish in origin, parts were added by various later rulers, including Pedro the Cruel and most recently - Franco.

If you look at Carter's design and then at the palace pix above, you can see the tiled mosaic floors, fountains, cobblestone paths, and arched doors and pierced screens that inspired her. Very nifty.

Alcazar continues. As mentioned before, progress will be slower now that rounds are more than 500 stitches. As you can see though, I'm averaging four or so per evening:



This blurry photo was taken by stuffing my bag-like Alcazar over the corner of one of my sofa pillows. The area below the horizontal line of meshes is the side edge of the center square. The area above is the new part added on around that square's perimeter. You can see what I meant by picking up in the side meshes - each one of those big openings had one stitch picked up in it, with YOs in between pick-ups.

No problems with Chart 2 so far, and the pattern (once established) contains enough internal clues so that it's easy to proof as I go along. For example, there are central double decreases that always line up in a particular stitch column. If one is off alignment it's pretty clear that something odd happened between the current spot and the last one. As a result I haven't deployed my usual swarm of stitch markers to mark the repeats.

My opinion so far on difficulty is that I probably wouldn't recommend Alcazar as a first lace project to someone who has never knit from a chart before. BUT I think that anyone who CAN follow a chart and who has the patience to do so for 500 stitch rounds should have no problems at all - whether or not they've ever attempted a lace project before.

I've finished the center square of Alcazar, and have successfully picked up the requisite number of stitches around its perimeter. This was relatively painless as picking up sessions go because of the highly sane way in which the pick-ups were structured. If you go back to Friday's picture, you'll see that there are mesh-like spaces along all four edges. The directions say to achieve the correct number, all you have to do is pick up one stitch in the first mesh, do a YO, pick up a stitch in the next mesh, do a YO, and so on. And it worked! I managed to get the correct number on the first pass on each side.

So now my Alcazar is totally on one circ, and I'm in the midst of the several rounds of plain knitting that precede the next chart. Which explains this enigmatic sack-like object:



There's one bit of advice in the pattern that will be a bit of a pain. When working this piece in the round instead of doing the sides flat as trapezoids to be corner-seamed later, Carter suggests twisting the last and first stitch of each side together (doing a left twist or right twist, it shouldn't matter) on every odd numbered row, in order to give the corners a bit more stability. That's fine with me, except that I've got markers at each corner. I'll either have to take them off and replace them (a fumbling around style pain); or move them one stitch to either the left or the right so that they aren't mid-twist. If I do the latter, I'll have to remember that every subsequent chart of the piece is going to be off by one stitch (a different but entirely mental?pain).

Happy Birthday to Me

It's that time again. Last year the kids asked what I wanted for my birthday. I said "Good children." And the younger one piped up "Covered in chocolate!" Which led to the older one drafting up my all time fave birthday card:



To be truthful, at this point just I celebrate anniversaries of my 21st birthday. How many has it been? The stock answer is "Several."

As you can see from this photo, Alcazar is on a roll. I'm almost done with the center square. If you've ever knit a shawl of this type, you'll know that the center square usually goes quite quickly in comparison to the wave upon wave of outer design elements as they present themselves across an ever-increasing circumference.



Unblocked and unstretched, my center is about 17 inches (43.2cm) square. Although the stuff I'm using isn't very stretchy, I think it will block out to between 19 and 20 inches (48.2 to 50.8cm) square. A rough eyeballing of the pattern's finished item photo gives me the estimate that the width of the finished center is approximately a third of the width of the entire finished piece. That makes me more or less on target to make a shawl that's about 60 inches (152.4cm) across, tops. The pattern specifies a finished dimension of about 56 inches (142.3cm), so I'm in the ballpark, even though I'm using a very different yarn and a needle three sizes smaller than the one specified.

I did find one minor typo in the pivot format half-charts. On row 155, there's a stitch marked as a SSK the first time you encounter it in the row's repeat, S1-K2tog-PSSO through most of the rest of the row, and a K2tog the last time it appears on that row. It should be just S1-K2-tog-PSSO EVERY time it's hit on that row. The full format chart doesn't have this mistake. (I can't comment on the rest of the full format chart, as I haven't been following it.)?

Alcazar progress:



Hazel Carter's Alcazar is another of her multi-page lace patterns that looks incredibly complex, but with a bit of care and attention, is not that hard to follow. It's worked slightly differently than the Spider Queen, but follows the same sort of general logic. First a center panel is knit - in this case, from corner to corner on the diagonal; then stitches are picked up around the edges and the secondary layer is knit center-out. Finally an edging is knit onto the live stitches of the outer layer. One small difference - Spider Queen's outer layer was knit one side at a time, and the four resulting trapezoids were seamed together at the corners. Alcazar's pattern says that the sides may be knit separately like the Spider Queen's, or they may be worked all at once by knitting in the round, thereby eliminating the corner seams. I suppose I could have done SQ that way, too, but it was my first large bit of rectangular lace, and I was deeply into beginners' mode - following directions verbatim - because my understanding of the piece as a whole was so limited.

Also unlike the all-pivot format Spider Queen, some (but not all) of Alcazar's charts are provided in full format in addition to her standard pivot format. The pivot format is sort of a shorthand notation very useful for symmetrical designs and multiple repeats. This idea isn't unique to Hazel Carter. Embroidery modelbooks dating back to the dawn of publishing showed graphed repeats that could be mirrored along two axes to produce infinite strips of patterning. It's a very useful trick that hasn't caught on as widely as it might for knitting charts.

The picture below shows a single pattern row (of my own invention, not taken from Alcazar). You can see it has edge stitches plus several iterations of the main pattern. I could have graphed it up to show one full iteration of that center pattern, plus the edge stitches. That's pretty condensed compared to the original. But it takes even less space to show it in pivot format - the tiny row below the long one.



To follow the shorter row you'd start at the lower right, and work across to the leftmost stitch. That's the first pivot point. I like to mark my pivot columns with a highlighter so that they're easy to spot. When I get to that first pivot point, I pretend that stitch is a mirror, and begin to follow the chart back in the direction from which I just came. Work to pivot stitch. Work pivot stitch once. I keep knitting in the same direction, without flipping my actual piece over or making a short row, BUT I begin to follow the chart back in the direction from which I came.

Now, those among you who noticed that there were decreases in the first trip will wonder what to do about them on the "return." Mirror them. If they was a SSK on the march from right to left, THE SAME BOX will be worked as a K2tog on the march from left to right, and vice versa. This sounds like quite a bit of mental gymnastics, but it's no more difficult to do than it is doing the conceptual flip to interpret the even numbered rows of a chart when knitting in the flat.

Another challenge - on my minichart below, on the first pass from right to left I sailed over a highlighted stitch. That's a secondary pivot point. After I make my turn at the chart's leftmost edge, I work back to the second pivot stitch, work it, then begin following the chart from right to left again - starting at the secondary pivot point.

I continue zinging back and forth between my two pivot points like an ant trapped in a demonic game of Pong until I have only the final few edge stitches remaining. At that point I "go through" the secondary pivot point and finish out my row.

Now. Why would anyone want to do this?

1. Many people find it much easier to keep track of their place on a smaller chart.
2. Charts for large lace projects can be unwieldy, this cuts down the bulk somewhat.
3. Pivot charts highlight the logic of a piece, and make memorizing a complex row easier.

Your mileage may vary - you may find this all terribly confusing, and wonder why anyone would subject his or herself to such conceptual convolutions, but I like having yet another tool in my toolkit, ready to pull out when the need for it presents itself. If you're lace-minded, you never know when you'll need to graph a 300-stitch row, and here's a way to do it if you don't have access to a drafting program and a D-size plotter.

Yes, I know I have to finish my Dragon Skin Rogue. If nothing else, the cow eyes staring at me each night it remains undone are enough of a goad (and today's her birthday, too.) But I've got to find a nice, quiet slash of time to re-mount all those wounded stitches, and then figure out where I am on each side of the cardigan front so I can bring them back into sync. It's not something that I can do in stolen ten minutes here and there as other things twirl around me.

But I CAN follow a chart in bits of looted time. Even complex charts. So to keep my hands busy while I'm waiting to unravel the mess that's become of Rogue, I've started something else. My little, inconsequential time waster?

Hazel Carter's Alcazar.

I bought the pattern a while ago, at the same time as Spider Queen, so I could decide which one to do first. I'm using the red rayon faux-silk I got at Webs:



While it has sheen, it's hand is more like unwashed linen. A bit stiffer and less springy than silk. No where near as drapey as wool, but less spongy and heavy than cotton. There's also a bit of an imitation raw Thai silk thick/thin thing going on, too. Enough to give the piece a less formal look than would a smooth finish thread.

I'll do up a bit more and see how I like it. Possibly binding off what I've completed so far as a swatch so I can do some wash testing. I can say so far that I'm using a smaller needle than the pattern calls for. The rayon has no halo, and is very compact, so it looked too sparse on a US #8. I'm down to a US #4, and it looks good. It will probably end up being smaller than specified, but I really don't mind.

So far the knitting's easy. Carter's charts are exceptionally well done and (provided you're chart-minded) not difficult to follow. I prefer her pivot charts to full graphs. I take a highlighter and hit the pivot column, stick the thing on a magnet board, and I'm off and running.

New pix tomorrow of both the larval Alcazar and of the pivot concept, when Blog City has finished their hardware and systems upgrade.