The past two days' posts aside, I have been making progress on both my lacy scarf and my fulled pillow.  Knitting on the pillow is almost done.  I've got maybe one more evening of garter stitch left.  This weekend I intend on fulling it when I do laundry.  I'm rushing a bit on it because I want to be sure to be able to full it completely before I have to leave this washing machine behind (it was a negotiated sacrifice in my house sale).  I'm afraid the older hand-me-down machine at the new house might not be up to the challenge.

On the lacy scarf, I've finished re-graphing the patterns I intend on trying out.   I'm working on modifying them a bit so that they play off each other better.  I'm also narrowing the edging by either messing with or eliminating the double column of faggotting shown in the pattern original. 

For those new to the term, faggotting is a true lace knitting stitch, in which increases and decreases occur on every row (as opposed to a lacy knitting stitch, in which rows containing increases and decreases alternate with plain knitted or purled rows).  One common form of this effect when worked in the flat takes only two stitches and two rows for the entire repeat.  Row 1 would be  an endless repeat of the (YO, SSK) unit.  The accompanying Row 2 would be an endless repeat of (YO P2tog).

So?  Why is it called "faggotting" anyway?  [Warning.  This is a Kim-theory, so go chip yourself an enormous grain of salt before reading on.]

It's not immediately evident why the name stuck to this particular knitting texture stitch.  In historical usage, faggots are bundles of sticks - especially twiggy sticks used as kindling or cheap firewood.  Nothing much looks bundled if you examine just knitted pieces.  But if you look at those pieces in in the context of other needlework contemporary to the Great Whitework Cotton Knitting Craze of the mid to late 1800s the reasoning is pretty clear. 

 Withdrawn thread embroidery was one of those contemporary needlework styles.  Commonly used for hemming or decorative insertions, it can range from the pretty simple to the amazingly complex.  The sampler below shows several withdrawn thread patterns spanning several different substyles (the lacy white-on-white bits).  Disclaimer and attribution:  this sampler isn't my own work, it's a piece in the collection of the National Academy of Needle Arts that I found doing a Google image search.  I didn't find a more exact attribution on their website for it.  Great work though!

The top three little bands on the sampler are the most widely known and used forms of the technique.  The others, while nifty aren't as often seen.  The two most common names for this substyle that includes the top three are "Italian Hemstitching" and "Faggotting."  The multicolor bands are double running stitch (aka Holbein Stitch or Spanish Stitch).  

You can see in the openwork bands that the horizontal threads of the linen ground were snipped at the left and right, then teased out.  The cut ends were secured with stitches, usually before any cutting took place.  The remaining vertical threads were bundled tightly with tiny hemming stitches that tie the  fabric threads together like little bunches of sticks.  In the more complex forms on this sampler, these bundles were further embellished with threads woven in among them, or were subdivided and/or twisted by additional stitching.

The second strip of the sampler with it's running VVVVVs is the most interesting one for knitters.  Compare the zig-zag pattern of one often-seen type of knitted faggotting:

The zig-zags produced by faggotting in knitting mimic the groups of verticals created in withdrawn thread hemstitching.  That's where the bundle idea came in, and from where I believe the knitting stitch borrowed its name.   This snippet is excerpted from Lewis' Knitting Lace, p. 146 (Yow!  I just saw the used book price. I need to update my insurance to cover my library!)

Here's an article that rises above the usual run of cutesy "ain't your gramma's knittin'" drivel:

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=627352003

It's wildly immodest to quote oneself, but it's an "I told you so" moment.  I posted this to the KnitList back around '95:  "Knitting is at its fundamentals, a binary code featuring top-down design, standardized submodules, and recursive logic that relies on ratios, mathematical principles, and an intuitive grasp of three-dimensional geometry." 

So all knitters should hold their heads high.  Even the most math-anxious among us are using neurons that have atrophied among the population as a whole.

O.k.  I don't do 'cute,' and as a rule I refrain from domestic blather.  But this weekend past was Mothers' Day and I believe that gives me license. 

My Kindergartner gave me a hand-drawn Mom Book as a present.  In it I discovered this page:

What I really liked was the self-portrait in the rainbow sweater (extra big, just so you know the relative importance of the individuals involved); and the knitting needles held like picadors' lances by the drab mom (implied threat negated by big smile).  Yarn though is curiously absent, so my guess is that process is less important than product to the average self-absorbed 5-year old.  Especially when she or he is to be the recipient of a custom-made present.

Good thing I'd just finished her poncho or the book would have ended with the page captioned "My mom is old."   That one I leave to your imagination.

Yesterday I went out web-walking - mostly to read other people's blogs.  I came across Life in the Frogpond, and a post on it made earlier in the week by Becky of skinnyrabbit.com.  She was looking at vintage tennis sweater patterns, and offered up this one from a 1956 Bernat Handicrafter pattern leaflet (this scan is Becky's, but the original copyright on both pattern and image is held by Emile Bernat & Sons):

I collapsed into a pile of amusement, because my mother had knit this **exact** sweater for my uncle when he was a teenager, probably circa 1958 or so.   This sweater still exists!  I have it in my closet right now:

It's held up extremely well.  No excessive wear, weak spots or moth holes in the entire piece, although once natural color ecru wool has aged somewhat to a beige/light yellow, and somewhere along the line aggressive laundering seems to have migrated some of the dye from the blue stripes. 

Not only do I have the piece, I also have a photo of ME wearing it as a teen.  This is from my high school yearbook.  As you can tell from the wire frame glasses, nerd-bunch hair and wide shirt collar, was taken in the '70s:

Now that I've dated myself, I can also say that this 46-year old tennie is waiting for my own Tween-ager should she want to wear it when she's big enough.

Moral of the story:  Use good wool.  It lasts forever.

Having finished the poncho yesterday, I scuff around with what little yarn remains here in the house (my stash being stowed in the storage cubby pending our upcoming move.)

At the Gore Place Sheepshearing Festival last month I bought two skeins of hand-spun fine gauge Merino from Greenwood Hill Farm.  Each is around 200 yards so I have about 400 yards total.  In my opinion it's more like a light fingering weight than a true lace weight.  I bought them with a lacy scarf in mind.  No pattern in particular.  I thought I'd noodle out one on my own.

I've decided to make a piece with two fancy ends, a rather plain but coordinating lacy middle, and trimmed all the way around with a killer edging. 

I swatched on several size needles, and decided I liked the way that lacy stitches felt when knit on a US #6.  (That's an argument that this stuff is truly fingering weight, because I like lace weight knit on #3s.)  Gauge is hard to estimate because I haven't decided on pattern stitches yet, but I'm not worried about making a scarf fit.  The various lacy patterns I played with worked up at between 5.5 and 5 stitches per inch, so I know roughly how wide a pattern I should be looking for to make a scarf of around 5 inches in diameter.

To that end I started paging through some of my knitting books and stitch dictionaries today.  I found several things that had elements I liked.  First, I found a wide diamond band in Lewis' Knitting Lace (pattern #42).  Nice wide diamond frames, filled with a smaller diamond pattern in the center.  It's a 12-stitch repeat, with 2 stitches before and one stitch after the end repeats.  That's 15 total for one repeat.  Narrow, but I'm planning on adding an edging.

To complement the diamond pattern, I'm looking at a couple of simple lace grounds.  Right now the leading candidate is a mini leaf pattern from Walker 1 (p.215, #3 in the set), but I'm not sure it will work out.  I'd like to use a divider to set this pattern off from the diamonds.  I've always liked a plain row of YO, K2tog framed by garter stitch welts.

Finally we get to the killer edging.  I'm looking at Heirloom Knitting by Miller, the Victorian Zigzag Edging on p. 125.  That's a WIDE piece as written - 20 stitches at cast-on, widening to 26.  I might have to eliminate some of the openwork on the attachment side to slim it down some.

The next step is to swatch a bit with each of the given patterns.  Before I do that however, I'm going to redraft them using a uniform symbol set and put all the patterns I intend to try out on one sheet of paper.  It's easy enough to adapt to each book's ideosyncratic style of stitch representation, but it's a pain to switch gears between systems and flop all those heavy volumes around while I'm knitting. 

I give no guarantee that this process will lead to an Actual Design.  I begin two or three of these for every one that ends up as an on-the-needles project. 

In the mean time just to have something mindless on the needles for last night's and tonight's weekend sofa movies, I took my other Sheepshearing Festival acquisition and cast on for another felted pillow similar to the one I did in Manos del Uruguay wool .  This one is also done in the rustic Nick's Meadow Farm yarn I've mentioned before.  The pale blue, light moss green, and light butter yellow skeins together cost less than one skein of Manos. 

The movies that accompany this excercise in autopilot garter stitch?  Last night it was Master and Commander.  Tonight it's John Cleese in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.  If you like either adventure stories or Jane Austin, you'll enjoy the series of books from which the former was adapted.  The movies skipped over the whole drawing-room/social manners side of O'Brian's books, especially the rivalries in love that divide the two lead characters.  As for the Shrew - it's so non-PC it's over the top, but it's also one of my favorite plays.  I'm really looking forward to seeing Cleese as Petruchio, and finding out how the actors cast as Katherine and Grumio stand up to him.

Back to knitting.  Thumbing through my stitch books I lighted again upon Indian Cross Stitch (Walker I, p. 112), a variant on enlongated stitches.  I used it in my Suede T.   It seems that in just the past three months, I've seen elongated stitches, including this one and Seafoam (Walker II, p. 21 ) all over the place, including the latest Interweave Knits and Knitters,  Berroco's patterns, and Lana Grossa's patterns.  Given the long lead time of both magazine and yarn makers' pattern development cycles, it's always interesting to see the same idea hit multiple sources at the same time.  Shadow knitting cropped up in parallel issues of IK and Knitters a while back.  Lacy knitting featuring lily of the valley-inspired textures is another recurring theme (IK led the pack with Forest Path last summer). 

About the only explanations for this parallelism I can come up with are that the designing knitting community is quite small; some things are natural fits (elongated stitches work well with ribbons, ribbons are hot right now); and many designers draw inspiration from the same fashion industry sources (deconstructed/slashed looks were big on the runways two seasons ago, and it takes a season or two for runway ideas to percolate into retail knitting patterns.) 

So far most sources talk about doing the elongated stitches do them with the multiple wrap method.  Can a revival of Condo Knitting be far behind? 

My Classic Elite Waterspun poncho is done!  Here it is mid-block:

I am really loving the improvised blocking wires I got to finish my Forest Path stole.  I threaded them through the I-cord edges, two per side, then spread the poncho out on some towels to dry.  The edges are straight, the corners are perfect, and dreaded curl-up has been eliminated.  And I didn't even need pins! 

And here's a shot of it on the happy recipient:

For those of you who wrote to ask for the pattern, here it is.

1. Make swatches until you get a fabric that you like.
2. Figure out your gauge.
3. Measure how big a neckline you need to go over your head.
4. Multiply that measurement by your gauge, and round it up to the next multiple of four.
5. Cast on that number of stitches, placing 4 markers evenly spaced.
6. Knit 6 rounds.
7. On the 7th round, K1, make one, knit to one stitch before the next marker, make one, K1.  Repeat this three times.
8. On the 8th round - knit
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 until your poncho is as long/wide as you like it.
10. Bind off, or work one or more rounds of attached I-cord to finish.
11. If the neck is too wide, pick up purl bump stitches at the base of the rolled collar.  You should have the same number as you cast on.  Put 4 markers in your work evenly spaced.  Then work one round starting with k2 tog, (k1, p1) until you have two stitches left before the next marker, ssk.  Repeat between the other markers.  Then work a K1, P1 round continuig ribbing as established.  Continue this way, alternating decrease rounds and plain ribbed rounds for about 6-8 rows.  Bind off VERY LOOSELY, making sure you can still get your head through the hole.

As to what yarns are suitable, what number to cast on given a particular gauge, what size needles to use, how much yarn you'll need - this is all up to you.  Experiment!  Here are some thoughts to keep in mind:

What yarn is suitable?  Look at it.  Will it feel good when worn?  Is it hand-wash only, otherwise hard to clean, or a light color?  If so - are you prepared to care for it when it gets dirty?  Is it loosely or tightly spun?  Loosely spun yarns are more prone to pilling, catching and looking "used."  On the other hand, they're often softer with a more luxurious drape and sheen.  Is it heavy?  A poncho is a big thing - larger than a lap blanket.  Lift about 10 skeins worth.  Can you envision yourself dragging around that much weight (or more)?  Will the yarn stretch under its own weight when used in a large quantity? Cottons are heavy yard for yard and are infamous for this.  Wool is less weighty per yard or meter.  Wool/acrylic blends are lighter still.  Is the color/texture not only attractive on its own, but will it look good on you?  A puffy or furry yarn will add bulk and increase the size of your sillouhette.  A giant-gauge or shiny yarn will make a garment look larger than it really is.  Some colors and textures look fantastic as accents, but applied over an entire garment may not be as appealing on every wearer.  Decide what's important to you and choose accordingly.  Remember, you can always buy one skein to try out before you commit for the whole project.  If that yarn doesn't work out for a poncho, one skein might make a nifty hat or scarf.

What needle size to use? When swatching with a new yarn, start with the needle size recommended by the yarn maker.  Do up a good size swatch in your chosen texture stitch or colorwork design.  Do you like the feel and drape?  If so, measure your gauge - you're good to go.  Swatch feel too stiff and tight?  Try again on a size larger needle.  Swatch too drapey and holey?  Go down a needle size and try again.  You'll know when you've hit the best combo.  If you're combining several yarns of different weights or textures, be sure to swatch them as you will use them, using the stitch and needles you intend for the final project, even if that means making a VERY large swatch with multiple stripes.  Once you do get the look/feel you like, make a note of your needle size and FINISH  YOUR SWATCH.  You'll need it to do both gauge measurements and yarn consumption estimates.  (I'm not good at keeping paper notes, so I make knots in my dangling tail end to help me remember what needle size I used to make my swatch.  For example, four knots = US #4 needles.)

How many to cast on?  Simple math.  If your gauge is 4.5 stitches per inch, and you've decided that a 24 inch neckline is big enough, you start with 4.5 x 24 = 108 stitches.  That lucks out because 108 is a multiple of 4, and you don't need to round up.

How much yarn will you need? You can figure out roughly how much yarn your gauge square took for that number of square inches or centimeters.  Draw out a diagram of your project (in this case - a big square), and estimate how big you want the thing to be when it's done.  Figure out its total area and divide that area by the area of your swatch.  Got a 6-inch square swatch?  Want to make a peice that's 4 feet on a side?  4 feet x 4 feet = 48 inches x 48 inches = 2304 square inches.  6 inches x 6 inches = 36 square inches.  2304/36 = 64.  It will take you about 64 times as much yarn to knit your 4-foot square piece than it took to knit your six inch square.  Ravel back your swatch and measure, or weigh it to determine the amout of yarn you used.  Now do the math.

Shortcut:  If you like a slimmer poncho than this super-easy square one, there's a poncho pattern generation utility available elsewhere on-line.

A while back I worked for Bay Networks, before they were on the receiving end of the Nortel engulf-and-devour experience.  Like most companies, Bay did many things right, but others with less precision.  One of the things they did right was to insist that all sales and marketing employees actually know and have experience with the products they sold.  As a proposal drone, I was sent off to the same training sessions as the sales engineers.  Training was dense-pack: thorough, totally useful, informative, and lasted an entire week.  A long week.  An interminable week.  Did I mention that it took five solid 8-to-5 days?

For four days I sat in a dank conference room watching two things - the oh-so-serious instructor and (through the door-side window)  the traffic in the elevator lobby in front of the training room.  On the opposite wall of the lobby from the conference room was a sailfish, stuffed and mounted on a trophy plaque.  It was a handsome blue devil, gape-mouthed and arching mid-leap in fishy defiance, but like all long dead and dusty things - it never moved.

Late in the afternoon on Day #4 I had an inspiration.  I went home that night and knit up a teeny gray and red sock.  I stuffed it with a piece ripped from my business card.  The next morning I got to class early, and slipped the thing into the sailfish's mouth.  The little toe and heel poking out of the fish's maw made it look like a tiny person was being swallowed alive.  Day #5 was infinitely more interesting as I watched people doing a double take as they passed by and noticed my addition.

I left the sock in place for the entire three years I worked at Bay/Nortel.  Finally the time came for us to part ways.  I went back to the fish's building to retrieve my sock.  Some people tried to stop me, as the display had become a building mascot. I had them remove the sock and reveal the business card fragment inside.  There was my name, and I took my knitting.

The blue one I knit up as a KnitList membership badge for the '97 Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival.  It was however too small for that purpose, and no one noticed that I was wearing it until I pointed it out.

Both of these were knit from the reinforcing yarn that came with Special Blauband.  They're both fully-fashioned toe-ups, using exactly the same figure-8 cast on, short-rowed heel and ribbed cuffs I use to make all of my more wearable socks.  I used flat toothpicks to make them, although now in retrospect I probably could have used blunt needles intended for tapestry or needlepoint.  Gauge on the gray is something like 14 spi, although it's tough to estimate accurately.  It measures about 2 (5.1 cm) inches from toe to heel, and 2 inches (5.1 cm) from heel to cuff.  Little Blue is about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm)  from toe to heel, and about  1.75 inches (4.4 cm) from heel to cuff.

I've mentioned this resident of my Chest of Knitting Horrors^TM before.  It's my Fortissima Colori/Socka Color Mexiko pullover.  This yarn has since been renamed Fortissima Colori/Socka Color Mexiko Disco, and the fiber content has changed.  No review yet under that entry. 

The pattern was issued by the manufacturer.  It's one-size-fits-most with the sizing limited by the width needed to express the yarn's flash patterning, and I'm at the upper end of the fit range.  I bought it kitted with five 100g balls of the stuff.  Here's what I'm supposed to end up with.  Thankfully, braids, salt, and the forced toothy smile are not required accessories:

My copy is a bit worse for the wear, but you can see the happy striping.  This effect is achieved by worked flat from one ball for front and back and from two balls for the sleeves (2 rows A, then 2 rows B).  Thrilled to have a fine-gauge pattern and to be using sock yarn for something larger than socks, I took the plunge.  Here's what I've got so far:

Just to be annoying, I decided to knit the front and back side by side, althuogh each is knit flat from its own ball of yarn.  I wanted the patterning to sort of match at the side seams.  I'm not going for absolute fanaticism on this, a rough approximation is good enough.  I found comparable spots in two skeins and started on in.  It went o.k. for the first six inches or so.  Then the problems started.

See all those balls hanging off the ends?  Those are out-takes where the yarn's color repeat went off-phase, got muddy enough for long enough to interrupt three or more full rows, or disappeared entirely.  My intent was to loop out such annoyances, then later go back and use them on the sleeves.  (I kept them attached to the work so that in theory - when I went back to re-use them I would have a better idea of where they fit in sequence.)

I'm still hoping to eke out a semblance of matching until I get to the point where sleeves are introduced.  Since the front and back will no longer butt up against each other, mismatches will be easier to ignore.  I long ago gave up any thought whatsoever of color or pattern-balancing the two sleeves. 

As you can see, the problem is getting worse.  What started out as a fun lark in fingering weight has turned into an agonizing slog on #3s, with all too many excised bits.  I put it down when the fun leaked out.  I do hope to take it up again because I still want to be able to wear this piece.  Someday...

Moral of this sad tale?  If you make life more difficult for yourself,  things are not going to be easy.

Messing around with the edging on the Waterspun poncho, I realized that I was using two different methods of attaching I-cord, and that "How do I work attached I-cord?" is a common question.

Recap:  The first round of I-cord edging was applied to live stitches.  Instead of binding off my last row of the poncho body, I left its stitches on the circs.  Using a DPN and a half-hitch cast on, I cast on four stitches and knit one row of I-cord.  On the second row, I knit three stitches, then did an SSK, working the last stitch of the I-cord together with one stitch of the poncho body.  I worked this way, doing three rows of attached I-cord, followed by one round of "free" I-cord.  This 3:4 ratio of attached rows:total rows kept the edging from being either gathered or ruffled.  When I got all the way around my piece and had incorporated all of the body stitches, I grafted the live stitches at the end of my I-cord to its beginning.

On the second round of I-cord I was not working with live stitches.  Instead, I was picking up stitches along the outer edge of an established row of 4-stitch I-cord.  On the previous round of cord one stitch was "eaten" by the attachment row.  That left three to form the rounded edge.  I used the centermost of these three as my line of attachment.  To do this round of edging, I again cast on four stitches using half-hitches, and knit one row of unattached I-cord.  Then I began working it onto the established round of edging.  On the next row I knit two stitches, then did a SSK and picked up a stitch under both legs of the designated spot on the previously finished I-cord.  In this shot you can see the knit two, the SSK (under my thumb), and the needle thrust under the stitch of the existing I-cord, ready to do the pick-up.

The reason why I didn't use this method to attach the first round of I-cord is that the attachment rows of each method  look different.  Pre-block waviness aside, you can see that the first round of I-cord has a smooth chain-stitch like appearance to its bottom edge.  The second method produces an attachment row that looks rather like crochet, although you can't see the non-crochet look rounded multi-stitch upper edge from this angle:

I prefer the speed of the second round's style of attachment (less fumbling and shifting stitches between needles), but I like the look of the first round's style of attachment.  Note that the reverse of the second round's style is a bit smoother and less leggy.  Sometimes I work it around something clockwise instead of counterclockwise, so that the I-cord's other side presents itself on the public side of my piece.

There's another nifty use for this second method of attachment.  You can use it along with I-cord or a lace edging to make a  decorative seam, or you can use it for counterpanes or pieced blankets, multi-directional or domino-style knitting to join motifs or sections together without sewing.   More on using this for decorative seaming tomorrow.