There must be something in the water (please excuse me for not drinking).

I find myself knitting booties for a flood of the newly expecting. So many in fact that over the past two weeks, for the sake of fun I've taken to playing with ankle part after the eyelet holes for the drawstring style bow.



This bootie is a combo of Dale Baby Ull and tiny leftovers from three candy color different self-striping sock yarns. Like I wrote before, just a yard is enough to do a stripe, so I save every scrap.

You could argue that my petaled bootie isn't entirely successful, that the top round of contrasting welting should be deeper, and that I should have worked a round in white before launching into the crown-like points at the top. But hey - these booties are the knitting equivalent of potato chips - quick snacks tossed off in between more substantial meals. However they are excellent for playing with some basic concepts before risking those ideas on a larger piece.

In this case, I looked at the thing (shown above before the bow tie is inserted), and thought that I'd like a pointy finish. I didn't want it elaborate or deep, and was too lazy to haul myself over to my bookshelf and dig through my collection of stitch pattern books. It being a no-brain night, I decided to improvise on the fly and do a no-brain edging knit onto the live stitches of my bootie ankle to eliminate seaming (a pain on something so small.)

These booties finish out with 40 stitches - 10 on each of four needles. 40 is a good number, it's an even multiple of 4 or 5, so an edging worked on 40 live stitches can have a 4 or 5 stitch repeat. For no reason whatsoever, I picked 5.

I cast two stitches onto a DPN, and knit one, then did a yarn over and worked the second together with the first stitch of my bootie ankle using a SSK. On the second bootie-out and all subsequent bootie-out rows, I flipped the thing over and knit back to the outer edge. On the next and edge-in subsequent rows, I knit until just before the last stitch, finishing out the row with a YO, SSK incorporating one stitch from the bootie ankle. After I'd "eaten" up four stitches of the bootie ankle and was ready for the fifth edge in row, I bound off until I had one stitch on the right hand needle and one stitch on the left. This last stitch I worked together with the fifth bootie ankle stitch. Voila!? A very simple 10-row petal edging custom-matched to the stitch count of the piece being trimmed. I did seven more points (eight in all - two per bootie ankle needle) and grafted the last two stitches to the cast on row. Bootie done, and neither seaming nor casting off was required.

Neither knitting an edging onto live stitches nor creating a very simple edging in this manner are new ideas, but both evoke a bit of "How did you do that" when seen outside of lace knitting circles.

I would improve this a bit were I to do it again. Instead of each point "eating" five ankle stitches and taking 10 rows to complete, I'd cheat a bit. I'd do an 8-row repeat, working my bind off on the fourth edge in row instead of the fifth, BUT instead of working a SSK with one edging stitch and one bootie stitch to conclude the bind-off row, I'd work a SSSK, fusing together one edging stitch and TWO bootie ankle stitches. In effect, I'd be working an 8-row repeat attached to five ankle stitches. This will draw in just a bit and counter the tendency for the edging to stretch the live stitches, and be wider than the tube of the item it completes. Most lace projects that? are ended off with an edging knit perpendicular to the body and don't exploit this natural tendency to ruffle do vary the stitch attachment count in a ratio closer to 3:2 than 1:1.

So, the next time you do a top-down hat, a tubular iPod case, or even a toe-up sock, think of finishing it off with a bunch of slightly silly, fluttery petals instead of the standard bind-off row. Or if you feel really ambitious - thumb through the lace edging section of your stitch dictionary, pick one with an appropriate row count and try it out out to put a crowning touch on your piece.

I'm still sweeping out mental cobwebs, occupying my fingers with interim quickie projects. Saturday's was another pair of booties, in the bootie pattern I've blogged about before:



This pair is in lime green Dale Baby Ull, and the leftover of some tweed sock yarn long since separated from its label of origin. It just takes a couple of yards to do one of the purl welts. I've worked them in contrast (as shown here), even working each welt in a different color yarn. Sometimes I do the ties in the same color as the contrast, sometimes not. It all depends on how much I've got. This is why I never throw away sock yarn leftovers. The smallest bit is enough to accent a pair of these booties.

I'm still repacking my stash after our near escape from a basement flood. In doing so I'm running across all sorts of goodies I had forgotten about. In the same box as my Kureopatora leftovers, I found about seven or eight balls of Harvey. Lang Harvey was a wool blend salad with a boucl? finish - 40% wool, 32% acrylic, 15% polyamide nylon, 10% alpaca, and 3% viscose. I'm pretty sure I scavenged it from a bargain bin at a (long gone) yarn shop I used to frequent in College Park, Maryland. And I'm also pretty sure that I bought it circa 1990 or so. Possibly earlier, so the chance of anyone finding more outside their own stash is slim to none. The original intent was to make a vest, but although I liked the yarn I didn't like the way it worked with my chosen pattern, so I stashed it.

What's boucl? you ask? It's a style of yarn that has fallen out of favor. You don't see that many of them around any more, the textured yarn niche having been consumed entirely by the fluttery fur monster.

Boucl?s have an airy hand. If you think of classic finish multi-strand yarns (like Cascade 220) as dense cream cheese, boucl?s would be the whipped variety. Unlike chenille where the fluffiness is made by little strands that are bound by some kind of "keeper thread," boucl?s have no fuzz to come unbound. The yarn's structure is of one or more two-ply strands. One ply is relatively taught, usually a very fine nylon thread. The other ply is looser spun, almost slubby, and is under far less tension. The looser strand is sort of gathered and lumped around the nylon base thread, resulting in something that has more loft and that has higher yardage per unit weight.

Here's Harvey:



Harvey has two two-ply strands. You can see how nubbly and slubby it looks. While it reminds me in color and visual appearance of the iron-upholstered sofa in my grandmother's apartment (the one that would sand your thighs off if you sat on it while wearing a skirt in the summer), it is in fact an exceptionally luxurious feeling, soft and easy to wear yarn.

Some boucl?s are even more fluffy or bumpy than this. Some have a loopy construction (I'm not sure at what exact point something stops being a boucl? and becomes - for example - a mohair loop, but I'm sure one of the spinning folk who read here will enlighten us.)?? My Harvey is marked at worsted gauge (20 st x 34 rows = 4 inches or 10cm) . It's about 126 meters or about 138 yards. A classic worsted like Cascade 220 is about 110 yards for 50 grams. Even taking the fiber salad composition of Harvey into consideration, 28 yards in 50 grams is a major difference in yardage.

Now. How does Harvey knit up??

The first time I tried it out I was disappointed, but I had picked a pattern for which it wasn't suited at all. I tried it out using a knit/purl texture pattern that was totally eaten by the yarn's texture and dark color. While it isn't optimal for showing detail on something like my Kombu, I thought it might be fun to try out in that pattern:



Again, the ribbed detail is partially obscured, although it shows up better in person than it does in a photo. But the softness and drape can't be topped. I'll be finishing out my Harvey Kombu and stowing it for the upcoming gift season. I'll probably have enough to do a matching hat, too.

Oh, and for an exceptional Kombu that really shows off the pattern's texture better than my own attempts at both knitting and photography (and not to mention her superior execution of the idea) check out Kerstin's Strickforum. Beautiful!

I've finished my Snake Scarf. It's about 58" long, which works. I've used all but about four yards of my fancy yarn. The jury is still out on the edging thing. Perhaps something very narrow in black just to give it a contained, outlined look. Perhaps not. Lots depends on whether I have time to hit my LYS, as there's nothing suitable in stash. Or I may just leave it as it is.

I played a long time with the final section, trying out several ways to do it that preserve the look of the ribbed sections that went before, because the usual way of ending off an Entrelac section lost the directionality of the ribbing. My corners don't exactly match, but that's because the entire piece has a definite beginning and end. If you were to work this idea like a seaman's scarf, with a center third of plain ribbing, and both ends worked out from that ribbing, they would match exactly. Perhaps that's the next step, provided I find a suitable yarn in a color set I like.

I make no claim as to inventing this concept. Entrelac is pretty standard. I've seen recipes for it going back to instructions for sock tops printed in the 1890s or so. Nor is doing it in a narrow strip unique. Quick searches on the Web will surface lots of other people's experiments with directional knitting and narrow scarves. And I certainly can't lay any claims to ribbing, or to using long repeat multicolor yarns in a narrow scarf. However, I can claim the serendipty that happened when I played with all of these concepts together. The trumpet like manner in which the ribbing spreads and curves is (to me at least) both amusing and graceful, and presents a different effect than working this idea in garter or stockinette stitch. I did work out the ribbed treatment for the final end, and have provided my own graph for it.

As far as using this with other yarns since the Kureopatora is now long gone - I suspect that Noro Silk Garden or Kureyon would work nicely, as would some of the Daikeito yarns that are beginning to show up here in the US. (I haven't seen the latter in person, but I've read reports of them on the Web.) What you want is a yarn in which each individual color lasts for about a yard (or more) before shading into the next one. The glorious hand-painted yarns that are hank-dyed in skeins that are about a yard around would NOT produce this wide stripe effect. They'd be lovely, but the color sections would not be long enough to make dramatic stripes like Kureopatora's.

Just to annoy the natural-fiber-only crowd, I do observe that the yarn for this project needn't be a top-drawer luxury product. There are some very inexpensive acrylics that have exceptionally long color repeats. I'm not fond of working with them in general, but if you're thinking of knitting a rugged scarf for a little kid, those yarns might be worth considering.

Enjoy!

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KUREOPATORA'S SNAKE - A KNITTING PATTERN



Materials

• US #6 needles
• Gauge for this project, taken over 1x1 ribbing, at the midpoint of a section where it isn't particularly stretched out: approximately 6 stitches (3 ribs) per inch
• 30 stitches at widest point
  
• Width of scarf: about 4.25 inches. Length of scarf: about 58 inches.
  
• Anticipated yarn consumption for this size: About 250 yards of a multicolor worsted weight yarn that normally knits in stockinette at 5 stitches per inch.
  

As for working method, this scarf is done in a pretty standard Entrelac edge column technique - think Entrelac project reduced to just the right and left most columns, without the basket weave effect sections between.

Row 1: Cast on 1 stitch, knit in the front, then purl in the back of this stitch [2 stitches on needle]
Row 2: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, K1 [3 st on needle]
Row 3: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1 [4 stitches on needle]
Row 4: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1, P1 [5 stitches on needle]
Row 5: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established K1, P1 ribbing [6 st on needle]
Row 6: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established K1, P1 ribbing [7 st on needle]
Row 7: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established P1, K1 ribbing [8 st on needle]
Row 8: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established P1, K1 ribbing [9 st on needle]

Continue rows 5-8, adding one stitch in each row but doing it to maintain the K1, P1 rib pattern. Keep doing this until you have 30 stitches on your needle.

Entrelac body section:

Row 1: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, SSK. Turn work over so the next row heads back in the other direction. Note that this first row is only 3 stitches long.
Row 2 and all subsequent even numbered rows: Work P1, K1 ribbing as established.
Row 3: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, SSK. Note that from now on this row-ending SSK will be composed of one stitch worked on the previous row, plus one stitch from the dormant stitches on the left hand needle. Turn work over so the next row heads back in the other direction. You now have 4 stitches in the row.
Row 5: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, K1, P1, SSK. Turn work. You now have 5 stitches in the row.
Row 7: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1, P1, SSK. Turn work. You will now have 6 stitches in the row.

Continue to work in the manner of rows 5-8, adding one stitch at the edge of each right-side row in the established rib pattern until you have incorporated all of the dormant stitches on the left hand needle. You will again have 30 stitches on the needle. At this point your segment is done. To do the next one, flip the work over (the and begin again from Row 1 of the Entrelac section). Continue adding entire trumpet shaped sections until your scarf is of sufficient length. (Mine maxed out at about 58").

Final section:

Rows 1-25 - work as for a standard Entrelac section. At the completion of Row 25 you should have fifteen active stitches on your right hand needle. The left hand needle should hold the other fifteen stitches. Work Row 26 as usual (marked in blue on accompanying chart).

Row 27 and all subsequent odd numbered rows: SSK, work in established ribbing, ending row with SSK and turn in the same manner as in the Entrelac section.
Rows 28 and all subsequent even numbered rows: Work P1, K1 ribbing as established.

Continue in this manner until you have completed Row 50, and three stitches remain on your needle.
Row 51: Slip, slip, slip, knit all three stitches together through the back of the loop (this is a three-stitch variant of the standard two stitch SSK decrease).

Darn in all ends.

The Kureopatora snake scarf continues. It's longer, but otherwise looks the same. I will probably finish it up tonight and post my how-to thereafter.

In the mean time, here's another of the embroideries that litter my house. This one is another doodle - a sampler in the true sense, done to try out patterns that ended up in my book. It's done in a single strand red linen on a linen ground, at about 15 stitches per inch on linen that's about 30 threads per inch. The long dark band at the bottom was done in long-armed cross stitch. The lion, the knot at upper left, the narrow diagonal band next to it, and the dark band at the left edge were in more standard regular cross stitch. THINK was stitched on the count using chain. The rest of the patterns were worked in double running (aka Spanish Stitch, Holbein Stitch).




The dense rose corner surrounding the lion is original, the rest (except for THINK) all have historical precedent, and are all graphed out in The New Carolingian Modelbook. In general I'm not that fond of this one. Done as a true sampler as it was, placement of the motifs was very haphazard. I stitched whatever I felt like trying out, and if the pattern didn't fit - I didn't care (the leggy grapes are truncated at the bottom edge). I didn't plan anything, and the imbalance of the whole thing reflects that.

THINK ended up hanging in my husband's office for a time. That company he was working for in '89 used the heraldic lion as a logo element, which is why THINK and the lion both ended up on the thing. He's no longer there and has another, better embroidery at work now. THINK along with its obsolete logo has been exiled to the upstairs hallway.

In answer to so many questions - yes, I did finish the halfie mittens I showed last week:



Except for darning in the ends, that is. You'll note that the thumbs are on the same side in the picture above. That's because I'm trying to show the palm (stockinette) and the back of the hand (textured) of the pair. A little ending off, and they're ready to go into my hamper of potential holiday gifts. Or if it gets cold here before I get around to distribution, being pressed into immediate service.

My snake scarf continues to grow:



It's just at the point of Scarf Length Viability, but not really long enough yet As you can see I'm just about done with my first full ball of yarn. That leaves just one. I don't think I'll be able to save out my second for edging. It's going to get consumed just doing scarf body. Some have pointed out that I really don't need edging, but I haven't abandoned the idea. Getting more of this yarn is of course impossible, but perhaps something in black.

As soon as I end off the top end, I'll write up a how-to on this one.

Yesterday's entry on the KFI/Noro Kureopatora Plus provoked much curiosity about that yarn. What I have is left over from my Taco Coat. I bought a bag of about 12 balls at a seasonal clearance sale at my local yarn shop back in 1996. It sat for a half year waiting for a project idea to ripen. It ended up being the color accent in my original Taco Coat. The other two yarns used on this project were Cascade Lana d'Oro alpaca blend in black, and Reynolds Tolouse, an ancient black Astrakan textured yarn.



I used about 9.5 balls of my original 12 Kureopatoras. The 2.5 shown yesterday are all that remain. I don't remember the yarn as being particularly cursed with knots. Maybe one or two balls had a knot in the whole lot, and no ball had more than one. I do know that at the time it was available in a couple of color sets, with the one I used being the most eye-popping. Two others I remember were mixed browns, khakis and olives; and another that was a set of various blues.

Another question was on softness and full/felt-ability. Having now tried it, I can say that there's enough wool content in this wool/cotton blend to spit splice. It is possible that it would full. Experimentation would be called for, although with limited availability I'd prefer not to spend my yardage doing so. Also, while it is less scratchy than Kureyon, it's not Merino soft - not by a long shot. This is an outside the coat scarf, not something most people would snuggle up next to under their chin.

All in all, Kureopatora Plus was ahead of its time. It was sold under the KFI (Knitting Fever) label, not the Noro brand. It came out well in advance of similar yarns today, with very little exposure or pattern support compared to its later siblings Silk Garden or Kureyon. In fact at the time people were rather mystified about how to use it, and appreciation was limited. As a result it got added to many people's stashes but wasn't knit up. You can still find it stash aged Kureopatora every now and again on eBay, although I have to say I rarely see any in the color #982 screaming rainbow mix I'm using.

Progress on the snake-like scarf:



It does a bit of the side to side salsa slide than do most other scarves of this type. The biggest reason for this is my working this up in ribbing rather than the more usual garter or stockinette stitches. Ribbing draws in. You can see how it fans out like a lotus flower where the entrelac attachment "seams" stretch it. I like the effect.

Jury is still out on whether or not I'll end up edging this piece. If I do it will be in a very narrow sawtooth or point edging - small enough that the colors of the edging will change every point or two. In terms of yarn consumption so far, I've finished the third to half ball I had left over, and I've cracked into the first of my two untouched Kureopatoras. We'll see how long the scarf is after I've finished most of that ball. If it's long enough, I'll do the edging with the remains of it plus Ball #2. If not - someone is bound to appreciate a Dr. Who length rainbow squiggle.

Thank you to all who saw something redeemable in yesterday's blanket. I think the most telling thing of all is that the entire time I was working on it, my parents smiled sweetly and offered up yarn leftovers and encouragement. At no time did they grimace, giggle, or point. That sort of unconditional support must be something one learns in Secret Parent School, because I find myself smiling sweetly at earnest yet flawed first attempts made by my own kids.

On the knitting front, I'm still blowing the cobwebs out of my brain. This weekend past we narrowly averted a minor flood, and in doing so learned yet another advantage of keeping a large yarn stash stored in plastic boxes. What we see here is several tubs of yarn, dumped out on the projects table in the basement, and an "after" shot of the flood site, with the now empty and drying tubs perched on top of the sump they helped drain.


Had I not had a bunch of tubs lying around the house I would not have been able to stem my mini-tide.

In the course of the whole thing, I ran across two and a half balls of Noro's Kureopatora Plus. This is a multicolor wool/cotton blend yarn that's about six years old. The label calls it out at 23 st = 4 inches, but it knits up more like a heavy DK or even a worsted. It's long since discontinued which is unfortunate.

Although it won't full like the Noro multis popular right now, Kureopatra's cotton content makes it softer than they are. The colors are distributed not through dying but through spinning. It's double ply in construction. It looks like the spinner did a thick/thin thing on each ply, starting with one color and introducing fiber of the second in the thinner sections. Change is gradual (with occasional slubs) from color to color. Then two strands were plied, with the thin strand of one matching up with the thicker section of the other, so that the contrast color of the thinner strand is very evident against the puffy part of the other strand.

I started my latest bit of gratification by working up another of my Kombu scarves. Hey - it worked with a multicolor before, right? But I didn't like the look. The rainbow of this yarn is too strident for the textured Kombu:


So I ripped it out (hard going with this loosely plied fuzzy stuff); and began again. This time with my own off the top of my head variant on the single repeat entrelac rooted multidirectional idea. Mine is done in ribbing on 30 stitches. Provided I have enough yarn, I intend on finishing it with some sort of edging knit on after the main body is done:



I like this much better. Thank goodness my color sense has matured since 14.

Yes, it's true. I made this:



My excuses:

• It was 1970
  
• Limited yarn budget, using whatever I could find in the 25-cent bin, or beg or borrow from friends, relations and people with a grudge against me
• Unlimited time
• Not yet knowing how to knit
• Hating the seaming and end-darning common to standard issue granny square blankets
  
• Having no concept whatsoever of what a useful size might be
• Being 14 years old at the time

I came across it on Saturday, at the bottom of a box of first apartment leftovers I rescued from a narrowly averted basement flood. I did actually use the thing. I did most of my Junior High School and High School homework while wrapped in it. It also accompanied me off to college, where it kept other people from sitting on my bed, or provided a modicum of insulation when hung up against a very cold cinderblock wall.

I will say the haphazard design and awful colors sort of grow on you after a while. Kind of like fungus, or a particularly gruesome looking pet. My kids want to use it as our TV room sofa throw. Maybe you have to be pre-adult to appreciate it. Plus it's absolute proof that Acrylic Is Forever.