More on corners. Using the same principles as the knit-from-center-out framing area on my cashmere shawl, I've done a mitered corner on my baby blanket. I do envision a problem now that I've finished a credible Corner #1, but I'll deal with it when I get there.

The first step was to make sure that I had a multiple of my halved row count available as live stitches along each edge of the project (small alerts should be going off in your head right now, but back to this later). That's because using my chosen attachment method, two rows of edging are attached to each live stitch.

Edging right side row: S1, work pattern to end
Edging wrong side row: Work pattern to penultimate stitch, SSK last stitch together with a live stitch of the body.

I can modify this scheme by doing an occasional SSSK on that wrong side row, in which one edging stitch is knit together with two live stitches from the body. This can be periodic and eat a specific number of stitches over a given number of repeats (eating one on every Edging Row 1, or every third row of the edging, for example); or it can be ad-hoc - performed when the thing looks like it's getting too ruffly. Being a precise person, I prefer the former, but I'm not above sneaking one in using the latter should it be necessary. You've probably already figured out that working an edging onto a top or bottom of live knit stitches (or stitches rescued after unzipping a provisional cast on) will require a different rate of attachment than would knitting them onto stitches picked up off a side edge formed when the body was knit, via a standard slip stitch edge.

The second step was to identify a clear diagonal on the existing pattern, and use that as an alignment point on which to build my mitered corner. In this case, the edge of the eyelet diamonds makes a good divider.

So having stated the obvious, I violate it all. To create the live stitches all the way around my perimeter, I picked up, putting all the new stitches on a large circ. I started at the end of a knit-side row of stockinette, placed a marker and picked up a stitch in every slip stitch selvage on my left side edge. Then - not having done a provisional cast-on because I was on vacation and was lazy - I placed a marker and picked up the same number of stitches as I had stockinette stitches across the bottom of my half-hitch cast-on row. Then it was a march back to the origin point, placing a marker then picking up stitches along the remaining selvage.

It so happened that my picked up stitch count on each side is pretty close to a multiple of my edging row count-halved. So I started knitting my edging a couple of stitches in from my corner, commencing with good old Edging Row #1. (Hearing that ding-ding alert again? You should be.)

All is well and good (sort of). I've now marched around three of my four corners, and am in the home stretch, working my last straight side. Then it's on to the final corner and graft.

Now. Why all those alerts?

Because my corner as graphed works best when I commence it on the tallest row of my point - not on Row #1, which is the shortest row. I didn't figure that out until I was well along. Not wanting to rip it all back a THIRD time, I'm going to see if I can somehow cheat on Corner #4.

Here's a graph for my modified edging and corner, with attachment instructions (done to the best of my ability).

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On the baby blanket, I decided to rip back the entire edging (about half-finished at the point of decision). I decided I wanted to re-do corner #1, plus I didn't like the way that the joins along the first edge looked. I'd been reducing along the body, working roughly every six rows of edging onto four live body stitches. While the points were lying flat, the yarn I'm using is heavy enough to make the necessary decreases along the body look clunky. (You can get away with this in a fine lace, but not in the almost DK weight I'm using). Instead I've opted for a bit fuller edge with (perhaps) a bit of ruffle. I'd post pix, but they pretty much show the same blanket body as the last post, but with an arrow that says "edging used to be here." More on this later this week.

In other news, I finally got to the post office to pick up the mail I had on hold over vacation week. There, perched on top of the pile was my July No Sheep secret pal package. The formerly mysterious (but now known) Melanie was kind enough to send this:

That's two skeins of Schachenmayr Denim in a sunshiny yellow/orange, plus two tins of killer tea. I dance a dance of thanks! I'm looking forward to trying it all. On the downstream end, I finally made contact with my secret pal recipient, and am busy picking out the goodies for her.

And finally - progress on the bathroom front. Which is a good thing because washing one's hair in the sink can get old after five weeks. The tile is now (mostly) up and grouted. Vanity, storage cabinet, fixtures and finish work are left:

From the top - the view from the hall door. You can see the cleaned, repaired and repainted radiator, the pipes for the bathtub, and the new window frame into which the original stained glass will be fitted. Next is the shower, followed by the view from the window. No I didn't crawl out on the roof to take this - there's a sleeping porch on the other side of the window. And finally, a close-up of the tilework's green pencil line and chair rail - just for Kathryn, who has confessed to extreme bath envy.

If you've written to me in the past two weeks and haven't had a response - apologies. I'm still munching my way through my inbox.

Technorati : bathroom renovation, knitting

Back from our annual no-computer vacation on Cape Cod. Seven days of blissful nothing in North Truro.

This year's round of nothing included lots of knitting and reading time, a whale watch, some golf, watching the opening night of a thoroughly enjoyable Much Ado About Nothing, a couple of excellent dinners out, plus several equally excellent ones we prepared ourselves. Including paella on the beach - cooked on the grill against a Provincetown sunset:

The only less than ideal moment of the week was the last voyage of the Feckless, seen here in happier days:

Our Gannet II model two-person open cockpit kayak was swept away from the beach behind the Top Mast Hotel in North Truro by a pre-dawn storm on 5 July. We searched Beach Point, and the Provincetown area surf and mud flats for two days, but never found it. The loss has been reported to the Harbor Masters at Truro and Provincetown, and to the police in North Truro. In the remote chance that there's anyone on the bay side of the Outer Cape reading this, there's a finder's reward out for the Feckless, please keep an eye out for it.

In knitting news, I spent the week working on a small baby blanket. I'm using Lana Grossa Merino 2000 (aka Cool Wool) - an extremely soft multi-strand machine washable Merino, in a weight somewhat between sport and DK. It's well twisted although like any yarn made up of huge number of tiny plies, it can split. Stitch definition is superior thanks to its spring and almost tubular construction. I've adapted yet another pattern from the Duchrow series. This garter stitch based double zig-zag pattern has particularly nice eyelet roses in the center of each diamond. It was meant as a strip insertion. I've used it three times across my blanket, separated and framed by plain stockinette. For the edging, I added a garter stitch adaptation of a large eyelet border, shamelessly plucked from Heirloom Knitting, but altered a bit to better match the garter stitch all SSK eyelet texture of the main body. Also, I'm attempting to miter my corners on the fly. So far I like the second one I did, but not the first (I may rip back the edging to that point and re-do #1 now that I understand how to do it better. Second corner is shown in detail below:

I probably won't be posting this pattern here because there hasn't been very much interest in my recent pattern posts, and also because I've been working without making notes. The corners in particular would be difficult to explain.

So there you have it. Where I've been and what I've been doing. Standard post vacation let-down here, contemplating the 51 weeks before I get to do it again.

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I posted a correction to the companion border for my shawl, previously posted a couple of days ago. To minimize confusion, I've updated the files on the original page, rather than re-post them here. I'm up to Row 15, and in working it - spotted an error mid-row. All fixed now.

On the home front, we've got walls and the beginnings of a tile floor now in our new bathroom. Everything is working along swimmingly. I'm happy just seeing the fresh hex tile on the floor in place of patchwork scuffed, curling, mustard yellow vinyl.

Next step is grouting and sealing the tile floor, then it's on to the tiled wainscoting and built-in storage cabinet (on the partial wall, dead ahead in the left hand image, above).

Technorati : bathroom renovation, knitting

Some (minimal) progress on my lace shawl, knitting from the framing area chart presented in my last post. Other than that - a quick post in passing, because I've been stacked at work with little time for knitting in the evenings or weekends.

So far, the corner miters appear to be working. The blue marker below indicates a corner point. There's one plain knit stitch on either side of it, making a column radiating diagonally out from the center basketweave area. Moving away from the marker, the yarn overs immediately adjacent to those two stitches are the ones highlighted in my chart. The green YO coming just before the corner, and the blue YO right after it.

You can also see the double YO insertion between the basketweave area and the more solid areas above. I like that detail, too.

Once work chaos clears, expect a sojourn in blocking land, because I've got a totally full to-be-blocked basket. Also reports on the baby blanket still in swatching stage.

Technorati : knitting

The shawl continues to grow. My center is very busy. I thought that the final piece would look nice if I used a complementing frame of a more solid appearance. After paging through lots of lacy knitting books and pattern treasuries and finding nothing that sang to me for this purpose, I decided that I needed to make up my own design for the framing phase of my gray-brown shawl (curiously gray in natural light, and tobacco under artificial light).

I came up with this (click on it to see it full size):

[LATE BREAKING NEWS: THE DIAGRAM ABOVE WAS CORRECTED ON 28 JUNE 2007]

I've taken the center diamonds that fill the interstices in the basketweave and framed them with an interlace two "lace bars" deep (the basketweave sports lace bar elements that are four deep. I've got the thing charted out alternating solid centers with the diamond centers, but I am not sure if I'll keep that or fill all of the centers with diamonds. Also, no I didn't make a mistake. I deliberately cut off the pointy tips of the outermost lace bar unit. I charted it out both ways, but preferred the snipped tips. I think that one tiny detail adds to the horizontal focus of the piece.

A real challenge in doing this was to come up with something that would work well both with my established stitch count (upped one to 52 per repeat to aid symmetry, with the required stitches to make the repeat count and corner picked up on one plain knit row just before commencing), and that would play nicely with a mitered corner. To do that, natural YO diagonals had to figure somewhere in the pattern, where they were (mostly) unaccompanied by a corresponding decrease. If they were coupled with a decrease, my stitch count for that round would not increase the required 8 per round needed to keep the piece flat. I've marked those lines in blue and green on the chart above.

By placing my mitered corners at the indicated points I minimize the need for fudging counts - almost all of the green and blue squares bear a YO anyway (those that don't I'll work as one on the corner-most repeat). There are a few rows that might pose problems. - 27, 31, and 35, also 61 and 55. On each of these a blue or green YO needed to form the mitered corner is paired with an immediately adjacent decrease on the "will be worked" side of the diagonal establishing the miter. I'm not quite sure what to do about them, and will experiment when I get that far. Right now I suspect that I'll need to do a double YO at that those spots in order to maintain stitch count.

So I will continue knitting along, working my framing chart until its completion. After that I might work another row of double YO beading to finish off the section. And then comes choosing (or devising) a suitable edging.

If anyone out there has done this - designing an original lacy knitting mitered corner on the fly - and is now experiencing a forehead-thumping moment because I've missed something obvious, please let me know. Your input would be most appreciated!

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No, I haven't forgotten about the ongoing projects here. I've been a bit buried in the usual tumult of work-related deadlines, but progress is being made.

First, on the lace shawl, I finished the center square. When that was done, I picked up stitches all the way around the edges - taking care to pick up the same number of stitches on every side, and indicating the corner points with stitch markers. Then, taking a riff from the Spider Queen, I worked two knit rows, then a purl row, a row of wide eyelets [(K2tog, YO, YO)repeat], followed by another purl row (with P1,K1 in the double eyelets) and two more rows of knit. I interrupted that patterning with a standard odd row - YO, K2, YO/even row - all knit corner centered on each corner marker. I did this not only because I like the framing look of the big eyelet bands, but also because that row is good for disguising any oddness necessary that might arise in forcing equal stitch count pick-ups along all sides.

I've now got four equal sides, each 153 stitches long, with clearly defined corner points. Since it's now on one big circ, it looks vaguely snood-like:

I've also got another conundrum. what to do next...

As I knit the center part, I was thinking of what borders might complement it. Because the basket weave was so geometric I wanted something that had similar lines, but that added a different movement. I found this in the new Duchrow book:

At first glance I thought it was knit from edge to edge, rather than longitudinally. I based this on the mirrored center. I thought that with a little play, I could map it to my project. But closer examination of the chart shows that it's knit strip style - the long way. That's one problem. Even though I wanted to work this bit center out, I was willing to bend the paradigm and work this pattern along the edge.

But there's a second problem The graph offers up the repeat, plus a piece that makes the turn backs seen at the strip centerpoints (green indicator on photo above), but offers it for only one orientation - knit beginning at the center turn back and working back towards the corner. I can't just take the graph and invert it to make that mirrored center. The spots where increases and decreases are formed are not direct cognates. For example, you can't use a double increase in place of the K3togs that form the top points of the angles if you're headed in the other direction. It just doesn't look the same.

It may be that in the accompanying German there are directions on either how to get that flip, or instructions to knit eight half-strips, then sew them together at the centers and along the mitered corners (orange indicator on photo above).

So I'm back to thinking on what I can use on this next project stage, riffling through my stitch pattern and lace books. I think though I'll end up rolling my own. I've played with lace and texture pattern design before. My design elements are pretty simple (four-stitch moving bars, interlaces, diamonds filling the interstices). Maybe I'll be able to pull some of the elements from the Duchrow longitudinal piece and apply it to mine, but knit it side to side.

On the bathroom project, it's one step forward, two steps back and recover. The crew had framed in the shower, but did it to the wrong dimensions (there would not have been enough room for the bathroom door to open next to the sink). Luckily we trust but verify, and pointed out the error in time for it to be fixed.

Moral of the story: I don't care if they're professionals. Confirm all measurements yourself as the project progresses. Ask for explanations if you note discrepancies. If the crew's mumbles seem specious, escalate the issue to the foreman. And if answers are still mushy - to the business owner.

Next big interruption - another spate of work-related deadlines, plus a baby shower gift I didn't realize would be needed so soon. Perhaps another Oat Couture Curlicue blanket... Stay tuned.

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It looks like I've been tagged as a "Thinking Blogger" by several people, including Jenna at Girl from Auntie, and Swapna. I'm flattered, also delighted to be food for thought for someone out there.

Although I don't do memes, I'll bend the rule and tag some other websites that make me think. But they're not necessarily knitting blogs. Believe it or not, I don't think about knitting all the time. Besides almost all of the knitting-related sites I would have tagged have been touched over the last month. That's a basic problem with referential memes in special interest communities - they loop back on themselves quickly, like big ripples in a small pool.

1. Things Magazine - Wandering compendium of fascinating links to explore. Most have a tie to architecture or art (but not all do). Some are departure points for contemplation, some are just plain neat. Others are immediately useful. Today's for example has a link to an international dress size converter.
2. Chocolate and Zucchini - What's it like to be 20-something, food-smart with a participatory bent, an analytical mind, and living in Paris? Go through the archives here and melt with envy. The author has issued a cookbook, which is the first and only blog-related book I've ever bought.
3. Bibliodyssey - This author combs through on-line libraries looking for masterpieces of illustration. What's presented is a jumble of everything from Medieval manuscript illumination and incunabula, to early 20th century childrens' books, with detours through academic illustration, Japanese and Chinese scrolls, natural history compendiums, Islamic calligraphy, and early mechanical drawings.
   
   And two knitting blogs that (to my knowledge) haven't been tagged yet:
   
4. Twosheep - June "DNA Scarf" Oshiro is playing in her garden right now, but when she turns to spinning and knitting, all sorts of explorations happen. If I ever pick up spinning, it will be her fault. As it is, I'm looking at worms differently this morning.
5. TECHknitting - How-tos, presented by a far better illustrator, tech writer, and indexer than I'll ever be.

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