First, an aside.  I finally darned in the ends of my Alcazar shawl.  I only end off ends when the final disposition of a piece has been decided.  In this case it means I've decided that as much as I love my Alcazar, there's someone who deserves it more.  My shawl has now found its way to its new (and very appreciative) owner, and I beam with my own pleasure at  joy with which it was received.. 

My socks continue.  I've finished the first and am only a single evening away from finishing the second.  I've placed the motif on the ankle.  Because I chose to work it as a knit image on a purl ground, and the motif is made up of solid blocks and strips, unstretched the sock looks rather strange.  The motif draws in like ribbing and the purl background puffs out compared to the rest of the stockinette sock.  But when worn, it looks fine.  The purl ground recedes, the proportions of the knit motif correct, and the draw-in so evident in the unstretched item goes away.



The motif on the ankle isn't very visible in this photo, so here is the graph:



Yes, it has a specific meaning.  A work-related meaning that a very small minority of the viewers here will recognize.  And no - I didn't stick to the graph in the absolute.  My final version has the same height to width ratios as this visual, but because there is very little variation row to row, I repeated the center area rows and the upper end rows more times than they are shown here. I did that because my graph was done on square units, but my knit stitches are not 1:1 ratio.   I needed extra rows to achieve these proportions.

In terms of placement, I centered the unit on the ankle bone, and repeated it on both sides of the sock.  The red line marks the centermost point and the whole graph represents half the sock's stitches.  Because I work with four DPNs in the work and one in hand with an equal number of stitches on each of the four DPNs, finding that center point was very easy.  I do admit that once I began the pattern panels I rearranged the stitches so that I held the motif and field stitches (the green ones) on a single DPN, eight stockinette stitches on a second, the other side's motif on a third, and the final eight stitches on the fourth DPN.  I did the reassortment to avoid the possiblity of a loose stitch marring the center of the motif.  While I don't have ladder-itis between DPNs in stockinette, I am less sure of myself in reverse stockinette, so I avoided the issue entirely.   I planned my vertical placement so that the motif would occupy the center third of the sock measured from the bottom of the foot to the bottom of the ribbing.  That means I worked a few rows after completing the heel and before starting the motif, and working my post-motif stockinette to the same depth as the patterned part.

Finally, I finished the sock off with plain old 2x2 ribbing, whick I did until I ran out of yarn in my standard issue Regia 4-ply 50g/210 meter ball.  I'd say the resulting sock should fit from man's shoe size 9.5 wide through 11 (possibly 12) medium width or so. With luck the target recipient has feet in that size range.  If not, I've got an alternative recipient planned, and I'll knit another smaller pair for target #1.

?Thanks to everyone who left recommendations on inverting heel flap heels for toe-up socks. There probably are lots of "official" ways to do it. Leah mentioned one in Gibson-Roberts Ethnic Socks and Stockings. Kathryn says there's one in Church's Sensational Socks. Brigid sends us to the KnitSocks Blog. Emily says just to do a plain old flap heel, as written for cuff-downs, and Rob points out a totally different approach adapted from Rehfeldt's Toe Up Techniques for HandKnit Socks.

You know sometimes there's a reason to bow to the giants who have gone before. And sometimes for no reason other than personal perversity and the joy of fiddling with something on one's own, there's a reason to keep on plugging away despite all the world's advice to the contrary. I've been feeling contrary.

I worked my heel as described in yesterday's post. Here's the result:



I tried it on. It fit, but the sock ended up being too long. Plus I wasn't entirely satisfied with the location of the gusset. it was centered too low on the foot, with too much above. Fabric sort of lumped up on top of the ankle. So in this aspect at least taking a recommendation from Emily, I ripped my sock back to about a half-inch below the heel and reknit the thing on 50% of the total stitches. I ended up picking up 15 stitches on either side of my heel flap.



I like this better. I had thought that not having a heel cup (the turning the heel bit) that I'd end up with little wings at the corners of the heel flap. The sock unworn kind of looks that way, but when worn, everything fills out and no little corners protrude. Perhaps that's because my feet are so wide. This particular pair is a gift, so I'll have to knit another pair using this heel and give them a thorough wear testing. I am keeping this heel. (The color on this second photo is closer to Real Life.)

In any case, I'm now up to the ankle part and am about to place the knit/purl motif I've drafted up. It's a very simple geometric design based on some rectangles. Thinking on the way knit/purl patterning looks, I'll work the foreground in knits, and the background in purls. I'll either place it in a stripe of purl that goes completely around, or box the motif in a purl field. More on this tomorrow...

A couple of people wrote to me yesterday to report on faux chain mail sightings - mostly in movies. With the exception of a couple of very recent mega-budget fantasy and historical pictures, the majority of movie mail is the fake stuff. For example, in Branagh's Henry V, a couple of the leads wear real chain (laughably without the padding that actual use would require), but the majority of the cast including some characters with significant screen time wear knit yarn mail.

On the knitting front, I am finally tinkering with the reverse Dutch heel flap for toe ups thought experiment I wrote about back in March. I'm working a fingering weight sock on US #0s, on 68 stitches around (17 stitches each on four DPNs). The method I wrote about then looks confusing to me, even in retrospect, but trying it out all became (sort of) clear.

I knit my foot until I achieved the length I thought I'd need from toe to hard up on the ankle. Then, taking care to center the pre-heel bottom of the foot stitches on the bottom of the foot - I worked a protruding flap on about 20% of the heel's stitches (more on the figure later). I slipped the first and last stitch of the flap to make picking up along it easier, and knit it about 1.5 inches long. When the flap was that length, and finishing with a knit row, I picked up the stitches along the flap's left side, then knit across the top of the foot, and picked up the stitches on the flap's right side. I then was ready to begin my gusset decreases. I worked along for a while, decreasing at either side of the picked up stitches every other row.

It quickly became clear that this heel - although structurally correct, was flawed. I had a narrow band of stitches along the center bottom of the foot, with two prominent ridges made by picking up on either side of the heel. I had extra depth in the ankle, but the heel itself was too shallow for a comfortable fit. So I ripped back and began the heel again.

Right now I'm inspired by Emily Cartier's suggestion from the blog comment she left on the entry cited above. She suggests working a reverse flap heel on 50% of the available stitches rather than 20%. Bigger is most certainly warranted here, but 50% looked a bit big to me. So (apologies, Emily) I'm going to try a figure closer to 30%. Now I'm at the large rumply yarn clot formed by ripping back, and naked foot stitches just before the heel begins stage, but this is what I'll do, and how I'll go about working the heel on 4 DPNs.

1. I'll look at my toe and identify the center of the bottom of the foot (no point in working a heel akimbo). That point will lie between two of my DPNs, as I work my socks using a set of five.
2. I'll arbitrarily set my bottom of the foot flap at 22 stitches total. Since I'm working with 17 stitches on each needle, I'll slide six stitches from the leftmost bottom of the foot needle left to the one that normally holds only the top of the foot; and I'll slide six stitches from the rightmost bottom of the foot needle right onto the other top of the foot needle. Finally, just to make things a little clearer, I'll consolidate all the heel flap needle onto one needle. I now have three needles in my work: one holding 22 flap stitches, and two I'll ignore for a while, each holding 23 stitches.
   
3. I'll knit back and forth in stockinette on the 22 heel flap stitches, slipping the first and knitting the last stitch on all rows (making chain selvedges on both sides of the flap), until the flap is about 2 inches long. I'm not sure how many rows this will be - I could do the row gauge computation, but the exact number of rows is pretty much immaterial.
4. Once I've decided my flap is long enough (some trying on may be required), I'll make sure I finish at the end of a knit row. Then I'll pick up stitches along the left hand edge of the flap, taking advantage of the chain selvedge to do so. I'll remember this number. Then I'll knit across the top of the foot, back to the base of the flap, and pick up the same number of stitches I picked up before, this time heading up the right side of the flap.
5. While I'm working the pick-up row I'll reallocate my stitches onto four needles. The two needles that hold the top of foot stitches each have six extras. When I finish the pick up row, I should return to having the 17 original stitches on each of the two top of foot needles. The other two needles will each hold half of the remaining stitches. They'll be a bit crowded, but the goal will be to work the gusset decreases until they too have 17 stitches each.
6. I'll begin the gusset decreases by looking at my left-most heel stitch needle, and noting which stitch is the last of the ones I picked up along the heel flap. The stitch after that one - the first stitch of the actual foot is the one that will be the top stitch of the SSK decrease column on this side of the ankle. Likewise, the last stitch of the actual foot will form the top stitch of the K2tog decrease column on the other side of the ankle.
7. I'll work in plain old stockinette until I get to the last picked up stitch, identified above. I'll do my SSK, then work across the top of the foot. I'll continue in stockinette until the last actual foot stitch before the picked up stitches on the other side of the heel flap. I'll do a K2tog with this stitch and the first picked up stitch, then finish out my round by knitting to the center of the heel.
8. I'll work a complete round in plain stockinette with no decreases.
9. I'll repeat the last two steps above until I have 17 stitches on each needle again. At that point the heel should be done.

Now, there's no guarantee that things will actually work out as planned. This is theory only. I have to try it out and see if the heel flap is too narrow (solution - try again with more stitches allocated to it); if the gussets are too shallow (fix - knit the initial flap to be longer); or if the total heel is too deep (fix - rip back a bit of the foot before starting the heel again).

Now - why is there no picture to accompany this grand experiment? Because all I've got is a sock foot knit in solid gray Regia on four needles, sitting next to a rat's nest of rippled yarn. Not exciting in the least. That and I'm still relegated to posting away from my base station because my computer is still in the throes of reassembly.

I'm doing fine, but my base station computer is lying on the dining room table, completely gutted. A new motherboard, new power supply, and a new video card are arrayed nearby. But you didn't come here to read about my digital woes.

I'm working up a follow-on to the charting articles - a set of thumbnail reviews of the knitting pattern books on my shelves. I've got most of the standards, plus a couple of the harder to find items. But that's much easier to do when I'm working in the same room the books are.

In the mean time, I've been working on various small projects - mostly holiday related. I've finished off several more pairs of booties (there must be something in the water, as there appears to be spike up in the local numbers of the gravid). Socks march on, with the latest pair being toe-ups in a very conservative gray, possibly with an inverted flap heel and the placement of a spot motif on the ankle. Those bits may yield something of interest to write about. Plus a quick stitched piece that is destined to be given to an unsung hero at work. More on that tomorrow.

In the mean time, I present with a bit of sadness, the knit fake chain mail coif and hauberk I made for Older Daughter when she was five:



Apologies for the even lousier than normal picture quality. I don't have access to the photo editing tools I normally use.

This is the knight costume that was featured in the note I wrote that ended up in the first volume of KnitLit. I made it for Elder Daughter in 1996, when she was in Kindergarten. The sadness creeps in because Younger Daughter just wore it for Halloween, and it was clear that this is the last year that she will be able to do so. The coif will still figure in fantasy play for or a while, but the mail shirt is ready for The Box of Knitting That No Longer Fits.

In the mean time, if you want to knit up some play armor for your own miniature warrior, the method description is on wiseNeedle.

Computer failure at this end. Please bear with me. I'll return to offering up tangled knitting thoughts ASAP.

A person left a comment on one of the counterpane pages here, asking for help identifying the technique or stitches used in blanket she owns. She neglected to leave an eMail address. I'd be interested in seeing a photo and possibly posting it here for discussion, but without contact info not much can be done.

Yes, in the midst of all the charting stuff I was knitting. I finished up the Harvey Kombu, and I did a pair of plain toe-up socks from Lana Gross Meilenweit. I'm not sure which color variety it is, as I lost the label in an airport. It's not Fantasy, the repeat is too short. It' s not Multieffect, or any of the MultiRingel colors, either. It's possible it was part of last winter's Jacquard color crop.



You'll notice ends dangling off both pieces. I really can't say why I do this (perhaps it's a personal superstition, perhaps it's a reminder not to use the item myself), but when I make gifts in advance, I don't darn in the final ends until I have decided whom the recipient will be. I'm not quite sure who will be receiving these, so the ends are still there. Go figure.

The socks were done on US #0s (2mm) needles - 72 stitches around. That makes them rather large in gauge for me. I used the standard figure-8 toe and short-row heel I use in all the sock patterns on the wiseNeedle pattern page. Nothing fancy here, just miles and miles of plain old stockinette, finished off with a K2P2 ribbing at the top. The pattern for the Kombu scarf is also there. In this case, I used a US #6 (4mm), and used just under two full balls of my ancient stash-aged Lang Harvey yarn.

Finally, one other person asked about how I construct my charts. As I've described at length before, I use Microsoft Visio. I'm sharing my Visio stencils. If you've tried graphing knitting or stitching patterns using them and have feedback or questions, please let me know.

To recover from the charting series, I present tiny mental vacation in the past. 1972 to be exact. That was the year I embroidered this jacket.



It was well before The Warner Brothers Store and WB characters being available on licensed merchandise. I drew my Roadrunner freehand from cartoons on TV. As you can see by the variant color (the official Roadrunner is blue), my Looney Tunes years were spent in front of a black and white TV.

I had a lot of embroidered clothing back then - a pair of jeans with large phoenix that wound up one leg, starting in flames at the cuff and finishing with a peacock-frilled head on the hip pocket; a blue workshirt covered with wildflowers copied from herbals; and a denim vest done in Shisha mirrorwork. Except for the denim jacket all are long gone, sold while I was in college to pay for books. You might have seen the other pieces if you wandered past the window of the Red Dog second hand clothing boutique in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, sometime between '75 and '78 (back when the Square was more edgy and gritty than it is in its current Urban Redevelopment/Mall of America glory). I've always wondered who bought my pieces.



My Roadrunner is done in plain old 6-strand cotton floss, mostly in chain stitch. The two-tone tail happened when the store that sold Coats & Clarks embroidery thread dropped it in favor of the DMC line. I ran out of my original stock and had to do the closest color match I could. You can barely make out the blue sig block below the front foot. When I stitched this, the denim ground was the same color blue as that block.

Elder Daughter wears this now (fraying and all), and would kill for the other pieces. They may be long gone, probably discarded from the homes of others, but I still have some of the Medieval history textbooks they funded.

Here's the last item in the chart series. Thank you for all the kind words. I'm delighted that people are finding this useful.

I have gotten some questions about why I am not using the standard Japanese symbol set. That set is quite broad compared to most of the sets in Western books. My answer is that it's relatively unknown in the US and Europe. Perhaps I'll add a symbol glossary that equates its symbols to notations used by other more commonly available sources. That's a big project though, and might be better suited for wiseNeedle than for this blog.

Barbara Walker's Starlight Lace, Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, p.288

I will use this last Walker pattern to show some more complications to charting life. This time, the pattern's stitch count varies in a couple of rows, plus there is a large number of edge stitches. My method is to graph out everything verbatim row to row, then (if needed) introduce no-stitch boxes for clarity. Again, all quotations from Walker are in bold. Here goes...

Multiple of 6 st plus 5
Row 1 (wrong side): and all other wrong-side rows - Purl.
Row 2: K2 *yo, ssk, k1, yo, ssk, k1-b; rep from *; end yo, ssk, k1.

The repeat is only 6 stitches, but I think I'll chart out three repeats plus edge stitches. That should give me enough room to see the play of the edge stitches, and the staggered effect of the offset design itself. Row 1 is plain old purl, but it's a wrong side row, so it graphs out as shown below, with the "1" on the left hand edge rather than the right hand edge. Remember, I'm just graphing verbatim at this point. I'm making no effort to read ahead. I just want to get the stitches down on my chart.


We've got 23 stitches [(6x3) + 5]. Note that the k1-b (knit one stitch through the back of the loop to twist it) has its own symbol. All wrong side rows in this pattern are plain - worked as purls if the thing is knit flat, and as knits if it's worked in the round.

Digression: Most modern texture patterns alternate rows with something happening on them (cable crossings, decreases, increases, etc.) with plain rows, and many pattern authors don't bother graphing the alternate rows if they're all plain. This can cause a bit of confusion. I got tripped up recently by Hazel Carter's Spider Queen shawl. It's a masterful bit of charting, but the first chart is stripped of those plain wrong-side rows. The later charts include them. I wasn't paying attention, and didn't notice that the numbering on that first chart labeled every row, but counted by twos. I ended up having to rip back a bit when I noticed that my piece didn't looklike the project photo. So be warned. Look at the numbering. If it begins with "1" on the left, and you're knitting flat you start off with a wrong-side row. If the "1" is on the right and you're knitting flat, you start off with a right-side row. If every other number is missing, you've got a pattern with the plain rows left out. Look elsewhere in the write-up to find out if those plain rows are to be knit or purled.

I'll skip writing up the plain rows, but I will include them in my growing graph:

Row 4: K3, *k2tog, yo, k1-b, yo, ssk, k1-b, rep from *; end k2


Again, no problems here. Everything graphs out nicely and stitch count is constant. There are equal numbers of stitches increased (the yos) and stitches decreased (the ssks and k2togs).

Sometimes if I'm having problems with a repeat, even if it's charted, I'll grab a piece of graph paper and draw out my stitches. Sometimes I catch an error in my knitting using my pencil that went totally unnoticed on my needles.

Row 6: k2, k2tog * yo, sl2-k1-p2sso, yo, sl1-k2tog-psso; rep from * end yo, sl2-k1-p2sso, yo ssk, k2.

This is where that "off to hell in a handbasket" feeling begins to creep in. We've got double decreases, both with the rightmost leg on top (sl1-k2tog-psso), and with the centermost stitch on top (sl2-k1-p2sso). We've also got a number of yarn overs, and just for fun - a couple of plain old decreases, and an unknown number of times to do the ** repeat between the k2, k2tog opening unit, and the end yo, sl2-k1-p2sso, yo, ssk, k2 closing unit.

To figure this out, we need to remember that we've got 23 base stitches on the previous row. That's 23 stitches to play with. All of the plain knits plus the stitches in the decreases on Row 6 must add up to 23. Let's look at the math:

• One ** repeat on this row adds up to six stitches (the two double decreases).
• The pre-** opening row unit is four stitches (k2 plus one k2tog)
• The after-** closing row unit is seven stitches (one double decrease plus one ssk and k2)

If you add up our fixed numbers (the pre- and post-** stitches) you get 11 stitches. The previous row contained 23, and we subtract those 11 from the total. We get 12, which (serendipity) is a multiple of our ** unit. We graph out the pre-* stitches (shown in blue) plus two repeats of the ** unit, followed by the post-** unit (also shown in blue.


We're out of that handbasket, even though our graph is showing a very short row. Not to worry. Going through and counting stitches confirms that we've got the correct number here. We'll worry about neatening everything up and inserting those no-stitch boxes after we get all the rows charted. So let's move on.

Row 8: K3, *k1-b, yo, k1, yo, k1-b, k1; rep from*, end k2.
This row is also problematic. How many times to repeat the stuff between the **s? Again , stitch count comes to our rescue. Evil Row 6 brought the stitch count down to 17. Row 7 (worked plain) preserved that count. Now on Row 8, there are increases, and "as-is" stitches but no decreases. There should be 17 stitches on this row EXCLUSIVE of the YOs. Again we do the math. We start with 17 stitches, then account for the three before the *, and the 2 after - that's 12 stitches left. NOT counting YOs, each between the ** repeat contains 4 stitches. We need to graph out three iterations of the stuff between the **s. Happily once we graph in these instructions (including the 6 YOs) that restores us to the original stitch count of 23.



Remember, we're not worrying about lining stitches up right now, our only concern is getting the correct number of them on the chart. We'll think about how to represent those low-count rows 6 and 7 later.

Row 10: K2, *yo, ssk, k1-b, yo, ssk,k1; rep from * end yo, ssk, k1
We're back to a stable stitch count, with the same number of increases and decreases per row. Graphing it up is easy. I notice something here though:



See those two blue units? They're identical. It looks like this pattern is formed by an exact duplicate of rows 1-6, offset by three stitches (one half of the repeat). While you can see it (sort of) in the prose directions, the duplication leaps out in the charted ones. I find this sort of half-drop duplication and charting makes the pattern really easy to memorize. More on this later, after we've charted some more rows.

Row 12: *K2tog, yo, k1-b, yo, ssk, k1-b; rep from *, end k2 tog, yo, k1-b, yo, ssk.
Again this looks veeerrrryyyy familiar! I've highlighted the repeat (in fact I just cut and pasted those boxes).



Row 14: K1, *yo, sl2-k1-p2sso, yo, sl1-k2tog-psso; rep from *, end yo, sl2-k1-p2sso, yo, k1.
Remember Evil Row 6, with all those double decreases? It's back! Offset three stitches, but otherwise the same. We start with 23 stitches on the previous row, then subtract the 1 before the **, and the 4 after the **, leaving 18 stitches - so we do the 6-stitch bit between the **s three times.



Row 16: K1, k1-b, *k1, yo, k1-b, k1, k1-b, yo; rep from * end k1, k1-b, k1.
Just like row 8, offset again by three stitches. Again we've got 17 stitches on the previous row to account for. Not counting the YOs, we've got 2 stitches before and 3 stitches after the ** accounted for, leaving 12 - so we do the 4-stitch ** unit three times. One you add in the YOs, we're back up to to the 23 stitches of our original count.



Now to add the finishing touches. It looks like each of the decrease units on Rows 6 and 14 visually caps off the clusters of decreases on the rows below. So I'll spread them out across the row, adding in my no-stitch boxes as best I can to maximize the read of the pattern compared to the photo of the worked swatch.

I'll also add in my stitch key, header and footer info at this point. Remember that there are NO increases or decreases on alternate rows. Therefore I don't need to include that second column of "if it's a right-side/wrong-side row" instructions that I had to include in yesterday's write-up.

One final note, there is one small bit of strangeness here. Because of the way that the repeat works out, and the way that edge stitches are handled, the last decrease on Row 6 is handled differently if it is the final stitch of an "inside repeat" or if it is the final stitch of the last repeat on the row. Since this isn't easy to graph, I've added a special note about it, and made it blue on the chart.



The memorization thing?? This pattern looks complicated at first glance. Especially if you just look at the prose directions. However it's not that tough. There are only four substantive rows - 2, 4, 6, and 8. The entire pattern repeat is only six stitches wide. Everything else is a repeat, either straight on the same row, or (in the case of rows 10-16) offset by three stitches (one half the width of the repeat). ? I can't remember the prose directions verbatim, but I can and do memorize the pattern in its visual representation. Not everyone can memorize a nonverbal visual representation (and it's no shame not to have that bit of wiring) but many people can, and have surprised themselves by being able to do so after becoming comfortable with charts.

This concludes my mini-series on graphing - how to read them, how to build them, and how to solve common problems translating prose directions to charts. Please feel free to post additional questions about graphing and reinterpreting prose instructions as charts, but please know I will not be offering a graphing service here. My goal is to show others how to do it for themselves, not do it for them.

One last tech note - the visual presentation of the charts changes mid-way through this note because I experienced a massive computer failure. I ended up finishing this post on a different machine using a different version of MS Visio. The later version has a slightly different GIF translator than the earlier version I normally use. So it's not your monitor - it's me. Apologies for the visual confusion.