Yet another spate of horrific deadlines has washed past me. I survived (barely), but I haven't had much time to knit.

I'm still working on that second lace doodle scarf - the one composed from patterns out of the Duchrow books. (Which I wholeheartedly recommend for lace fanatics.) I've finished the center panel, and have applied the edging down one long side, around the narrow end, and am now starting back up the second side:

The edging in this case is a bit unusual. It's predicated on motifs that are somewhat heart-shaped, and sports a very deep dag. I managed to fiddle around with the attachment rate so that I ended up at the corner of the body at the exact narrowest point of the edging repeat. That let me miter the corners using short rows. I wish I'd stopped and taken pictures of that process, but I'll try to explain it sight-unseen.

To miter the corner on this symmetrical lace, I knit this edge onto my main body piece, either directly calculating the pick-up ratio, or (more likely) fudging the rate of attachment so that I ended with my narrowest row (the valley between two points) at the exact corner stitch of the corner I wish to go around. Sometimes this is easy - if I'm a stitch or two off, those can be made up in the last repeat just before the corner. If I'm more than just a couple of stitches off, I might need to rip back a repeat or two and space the required extra rows or skips (or k2togs) over a larger interval. Obviously, it's easier to fit an edging with fewer pattern rows into any given arbitrary length than it is to fit a longer one, because there are fewer rows between the widest and narrowest points of the repeat.

Back to actual performance. Arriving at the narrowest point of my edging in concert with reaching the absolute corner of my piece, I'd knit the next right-side row of my edging as usual. BUT on the return journey instead of working all the way back to my attachment point, then purling the last stitch of the edging together with one from the body, I'd wrap that attachment stitch (Row 2, Column A). Then I'd turn the work over and head back on the next right side row, taking care to keep my place in the edging pattern. I'd continue like this, but on each successive wrong-side row, I'd work one fewer stitch, and wrap the next one prior to turning. All of this is complicated of course, by the increases and decreases that form the lace pattern itself. Liberal fudging is usually in order to maintain the pattern as established - or a close to it as is possible.

Eventually I'd reach the row that on a "normal" repeat, would be the longest row - the one that happens in the centerpoint of one of the protruding dags. My actual row worked is much shorter than usual because I've been wrapping stitches to form my miter. It's at this point I go back and begin the second half of my short row sequence, working each row one stitch farther along, waking them up one by one by working them along with the wrap at their base. If I've done this correctly, by the time I have reawakened all of the stitches on my row, I'll also have arrived at the narrowest row of my lace edging repeat, and all of my previously parked short row stitches will have been reincorporated. When that happens, my mitered corner is complete, and I can I begin resume working the edging along the side of my piece.

I've taken the liberty of translating the historical pattern from Duchrow into modern notation. She doesn't present a mitered corner for this edging, but I've noted where the short row shaping should take place so you can see (more or less) what I am writing about. Click on the image below for a full size pattern. Apologies for the file size.

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You may or may not have noticed, but we've made a small improvement here at String-or-Nothing. We've moved the blog out from underneath the wiseNeedle URL's umbrella. While formerly we were at

http://www.wiseneedle.com/string-or-nothing

you can now find us at

http://www.string-or-nothing.com

All of the individual page names (the part of each address after "nothing/" remains the same. All links to patterns and pages are being automatically redirected from the old address to the new one, so if you've got old links they should still work.

We did this to simplify referring tags, to manage bandwidth consumption, and to improve the reliability of the comments feature. Please let us know if you experience any problems accessing String or its archives.

For some reason the automatic spell checker kicked in and (without my approval) obfuscated my meaning a bit. I repost, with corrections. Apologies for the confusion.

I did do a small amount of gift knitting this holiday season - mostly large-gauge hiking or slipper socks, knit from DK or worsted weight yarn, respectively. I give all my socks with a must-fit guarantee. If they're not optimal, I usually make another pair or fix the sub-standard offering.

I had to honor that warranty this year for one pair in particular. The recipient was thrilled, but my foot size estimate was off. I based my estimate on a pair of shoes which turned out to belong to someone other than the target. Since the only defect was foot length, and the yarn is nice and big (and I have a small amount of additional yarn but not enough to do a whole new pair), I decided to lengthen rather than make another pair. Plus a tutorial on doing so might be of use to my one reader out there in blogland. :)

The re-toeing process works in fundamentally the same way, regardless of whether the original sock was knit toe-up or cuff-down. I use this opportunity to present a quick how-to for those looking to add length or replace worn areas on the toe or ball of the foot.

Here's my original pair, knit from the Jaeger Matchmaker DK leftovers from my dropped leaf sweater:

The measurement from the tip of the toe to the back of the heel is about 9 inches. The recipient has requested about an additional half inch of length.

Step one is to unravel the toe area. It's always easier to unravel any area that contains increases, decreases or cable crossings from the top. Knitting can be unraveled from the bottom, but anything other than plain stockinette or garter stitch can be problematic. Because these socks were knit toe-up, I need to start unraveling above the increases that form the toe. If these were cuff-down socks, I'd begin unraveling at my grafted or bound-off seam. In both cases, the process is the same. Identify the stitches that in the toe form the decrease line (in flat feature toes), then boldly snip and get on with it. Here I've put a safety pin between the side stitches a few rows up into the sock foot from my snipping point, and am about to cut. Note that the only one stitch needs to be snipped to start the process:

Having cut, I'm now placing the newly freed stitches of the sock foot on my needles as they are liberated. If I wanted to re-employ the knit part that I'm excising here, I would use two sets of needles, picking up the stitches on both sides of the unraveled row. (I might do this if I were lengthening a sleeve or sweater body above the ribbing, if I intended on grafting the ribbing back on rather than totally re-knitting it). In this case, I'll just rip out the toe and stash the remaining mini-balls in my Box of Future Stripes(tm) - there being few yarn scraps in this world that I find too short to save. The less frugal than I would probably give them the fling.

Why not use the raveled yarn to re-knit the toes? Because I already know that the bit ripped back is too short. Socks benefit from there being as few joins as possible, especially in the sensitive toe and heel areas. If I were to use the ripped back yarn I'm guaranteed to run out, and will need to add on more. That means that instead of three ends to darn in on each reworked toe (the original sock body end, plus the two ends of the re-knit area), I'd have five (original, re-knit section, extra yarn added to eke out raveled bits). More ends = less comfort for the wearer.

While I'm picking up, I don't pay any attention to how many stitches end up on each needle. Because I've marked the exact center of the side, I can assort the stitches appropriately among the needles once they've been rescued. Here you see the result. All stitches reclaimed and on the needles:

Once the stitches are on the needles, it's a simple matter to knit extra length and work a standard toe, ending with Kitchener grafting. As you can see in the after picture below taken after the toe was re-knit, there is no line of demarcation between the body of the foot (knit toe-up) and the new toe (knit in the other direction). My cuff-down grafted toes do turn out to be a bit pointier than my no-sew figure-8 cast-on toes. In any case, here's After Sock and Before Sock. Measured against each other, I've added a bit over a half an inch to the sock's heel to toe length. All I have to do now is fix the other one.

Ripping back and picking up after a garment is finished is a handy technique to have in one's bag of knitting tricks, and one that many people overlook. I've used it to replace worn sock feet, re-knit mitten ends and glove fingers that sprouted holes, lengthen the cuffs and body of sweaters for rapidly growing children, and replace worn elbows or ripped cuffs. So finished doesn't always mean permanently done. Think of it more as "in a resting state that's presently useful" than as absolute finality.

Hope you found this useful!

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O.k. I've finished and posted the half-completed blog entry I was working on last month when life so rudely interrupted me. Since then (if anyone is interested) work deadlines have come and gone; our normal holiday-related seasonal bustle has forced its way in and retreated, complete with the annual flood of cookies and New Years cassoulet; and we even managed to grab a couple of days to run away with the kids to visit Washington D.C. The last was the most fun, being a time to revisit the Smithsonian museums and a dear family friend in Maryland - about the only things I miss from the time we lived down in that area.

In terms of knitting, progress has been made as well, both by me and by Elder Daughter. I'm especially proud of her's. She designed and knit herself a pair of fingerless mitten style handwarmers from Cascade Fixation/Elan Esprit. They are K2, P2 ribbed throughout, with a twist-stitch cable running down the back of each hand.

Following up her mitts, she has now embarked upon Her First Sweater ™. She's using Sirdar Denim Ultra, a loosely twisted lofty and soft acrylic/cotton/wool blend. She's getting the recommended gauge of 9 st/ 12 rows = 10 cm, and is working up a simple top-down stockinette stitch pullover from a pattern I calculated for her using Sweater Wizard (About size 40, needle size US #11,13, approximately 720 yards of yarn knitting to Ultra's gauge)

She's up to the first sleeve, and is basking in the delight of mastering the arcane arts of following a written pattern and the SSK decrease, so that the tapering under the arm on her sleeve is symmetrical. Pix of her sweater once it matures from the large blue speckled mass phase and sports a bit more recognizable shaping. Due to the huge gauge it's galloping along, so that should be quite soon.

My own holiday-related knitting was light this year - three pairs of socks and two scarves. In addition, I knit myself another pair of Fingerless Whatevers, quick replacements for the last pair, one of which has now gone AWOL. I'm also now about halfway done with Elder Daughter's Kyoto, and made good progress on my latest lace doodle scarf. Pix of these in the next post.

Resolutions? None. Except for this.

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Again, I have to plug these books and the endless fun I'm having with them. If you like free-form adventures in lace, and have the fortitude to take lace designs and work them into your own projects, you'll have a great time with the three. Content does vary a bit among them. Each volume of the series "The Knitted Patterns of Christine Duchrow" edited by J & K Kliot is available separately from Lacis. Each compiles several German language pattern booklets published in the early 1900s by Duchrow. These 8.5" x 11" facsimile editions are very readable, with the graphs being especially big, but there are a few pages where image quality is a bit muddy (no big deal though).

• Volume I: 128 pages. Combo of wide and narrow strip patterns (borders and insertions), plus collars and jabots, small and medium size doilies (square, round, and oval), tablecloths, some medallions possibly suitable for a pieced tablecloth or bedspread, camisole tops, lace fingerless gloves and some baby bonnets. These patterns are highly geometric featuring lots of triangles, diamonds and squares rather than floral or figural motifs. While directions for the lace patterning are charted and accessible, instructions to use the patterns to make the gloves and baby hat are in German, and are quite cursory. The pattern on the cover is not in this book, it's from V.II.

• Volume II:96 pages. Similar to V1, more wide and elaborate borders and insertions, some with spots to knit in knot style stitches or include beads to add texture, some doilies, a tea warmer, an octagonal lace box (I'm dying to make this up), several large tea cloths/table cloths, some camisole bands. Again, lots of geometrics, I'd rate this book as being slightly more complex to knit than V.I. The pattern on the cover is included in this book. At the end is a one-page modern English redaction of one of the smaller doily patterns (also charted), which might be of use to those who are having problems with the original notation and want to see how it compares to contemporary instructions.

• Volume III: 144 pages. More. Lots more. The emphasis of this book is a little different than the other two. It's mostly on circular and oval cloths and doilies ranging in size from coasters to full table spreads, although there's a goodly sprinkling of strip edgings and insertions, too. Again, the aesthetic is geometric, but looser than the other two books, with stars and petaled flower forms common in the oval and round pieces. A couple of the doilies rival the Kinzel ones in detail. If anyone is looking for a huge graph for a knitted lace altar cloth, there's one in here, along with a knit petticoat and a kids' pullover/hat/gloves/gaiters set (not graphed, with cursory instructions in German). Again, these patterns are a bit more complex than V.I and V.II, but aren't beyond most dedicated modern lace knitters. The pattern on the cover is in this book. There's a lagniappe at the end of this volume - five pages of hand-drawn patterns by Gertrud Wywod, a contemporary of Duchrow's. These are very striking - extremely floral rather than geometric. There is no symbol key for them, but I've made some progress translating the hand-notation to modern graphs for a couple. However I haven't worked my way through a successful test-knit of any of the Wywod patterns yet. When I get one tamed, I'll post my redaction here.

I have run into a couple of challenges knitting from these books. First, not everything is on the graph. For example, edging patterns with ragged left edges (right edge straight, left edge dagged) don't clearly show that on "uphill segments" where the piece is increasing in diameter the knitter should work an increase into the first stitch on the wrong side row; and on "downhill rows" where the edging is narrowing, the first stitch on the wrong side row should be a k2tog. There are also a couple of symbols used on one or two charts that aren't in the symbol glossary, or are problematic. And the most infuriating thing of all is that a purl stitch is represented by a lower case letter l, and a yarn over is represented by the number 1, both of which can be difficult to distinguish from each other in the older style German blackletter font used in the charts.

Still, for all of the challenge of working from books I can't read, puzzling out notation system that's new to me, to make items that I'm noodling out on the fly, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.

Technorati : knitting

You know your life is chaos when you look at a two-hour school opening delay due to snow and say "Great! I finally have a chance to update the blog!"

Life here has been subsumed to work, right through the Thanksgiving holiday. We managed to cook and serve a great meal, and enjoy the company of old friends, but after that it was back to what my grandmother would call "hocken shteiner" (Yiddish for breaking stones ). I'm weeks behind in holiday shopping. We haven't a candle or a potato in the house for Hanukkah, and my annual cookie fest hasn't even hit the planning stage yet.

But for all of that, little bits of knitting have happened. Not any of the gift socks I've promised this year though. I will most certainly be visited by Franklin's Ghost of Christmas Knitting this year. But I can report some small progress.

First, on specific request, I've begun Knitty's Kyoto for Elder Daughter. But I'm working it in a DK weight tweeded alpaca. I'm using Grignasco Top Print in color #29974 - a ragg type mix of soft antique pink, pale turquoise, lavender, apricot, pale brown, ecru, and sea green. The "distance read" on it is sort of fallen cherry blossom, somewhat pink/lavender with a touch of pale brown, with the natural streaks imparted by the ever changing tweed.

Gauge is hard to get with this stuff (I agree with the review posted in the yarn review collection, above). The label reads 30st x 38 rows = 4 inches/10cm on #3.5-4mm. I'm getting 19 x27 with #5. The pattern gauge is 20x27, so I'm making some small adjustments. Also, this is the most incestuous yarn I've ever used. It comes in evil mushroom puffball style 50g balls. The yarn is so soft and supple that it falls off that put-up at the slightest provocation, and so surface fuzzy that it twines around itself and sticks given any opportunity at all. With that level of fraternization in the bag, I'm surprised that reproduction hasn't occurred and that I still have only 14 balls.

The other bit I'm working on is a second doodle scarf, using two more stitch patterns from the Duchrow series. That's done in some of the leftover from my big woven diamonds shawl. It's not exactly zipping along, given the complexity of the pattern and my limited knitting time, but it is progressing. I've finished the center strip, picked up all the way around the outside, and I'm on adding the edging.

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You can always tell when Life overtakes Discretionary Time here. Blog entries dry up. Lack of time means less knitting. Less knitting means that I've got no interesting things to write about. The past couple of weeks have been dense-pack. The next few bode to be that, plus havoc. Apologies for the silence.

In the mean time, while I haven't had time to be very productive, I have been able to dip into the stash of to-be-finished projects, polishing off a couple of pairs of socks, and blocking and seaming up my ribbed leaves sweater.

To recap since I started the project about a year ago, this one was done from a commercial pattern by Sarah James. I used Jaeger Matchmaker yarn, with excellent effect. The yarn was soft and lofty, especially for a machine washable wool. I suspect that given the structure and twist of the yarn it will resist pilling a bit better than other more softly spun Merino wools. Matchmaker was a perfect choice both for this project, and for any highly textured project requiring a DK or heavy sport yarn with good stitch definition. I'd use this stuff again in a heartbeat.

I found no flaws in the pattern at all, and my finished sweater ended up being 51 inches across - just a smidge wider I believe than the suggested final measurement, but close enough not to matter for fit. I elaborated on the pattern in a couple of very minor ways - adding both tubular cast-ons, and matching tubular cast offs. I enjoyed this one immensely, although I have to caution that if you're not a fan of left and right twist (1x1 cables) you'll hate this with a passion, because the entire texture design is formed by twists over the whole surface.

And proof positive that I'm done - the traditional String or Nothing blurry and indistinct photo, showing very little beyond a finished object in silhouette:

And a slightly better detail shot showing the stitch texture pattern:

And one showing a nice mattress stitch seam in the texture pattern, done on the increase area of the arm, where the sleeve widens from cuff to shoulder:

If you want a full blow-by-blow recap of this one, it's indexed at the right as "Project - Ribbed Leaf Pullover."

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For your holiday themed enjoyment (and because I've been stacked with precious little knitting time of late), I present our very own whistling demon. This candid of Younger Daughter is courtesy of a kids' Halloween trick or treat party hosted by my employer, and the clever camera of Ms. L. Smith:

Elder Daughter however has more elaborate costuming in mind. She loves the black lace doodle scarf, but wants to complement it with black lace fingerless mitts. Never one to back down from a challenge, I've been playing with the concept - flying without a pattern, but as you can see - not without a black lace net.

Left is the thing patted flat, right is the mitt stretched out a bit on a roll of paper. I began at the cuff with a provisional cast-on, then worked a fused picot hem (barely seen here). I continued in pattern, with a mega-eyelet band after I'd done a bit of cuff. I might end up threading a wide ribbon through those eyelets - or not, depending on the bespeaker's preference. The thumb gusset is done entirely in stockinette, and both the thumb and the top are also finished off with a picot hem, although on the cast-off row, I'll need to take a tapestry needle and stitch down the live stitches now stowed on the white cord, cast-off fusing being a bit too fussy for the inside of such small spaces. I don't know if anyone is interested in a stitch by stitch pattern. If so, I'll consider writing one up from my notes.

The white cord itself is a handy tip. It's plastic lanyard string (aka gimp or boondoggle). I've found it to be quite handy for provisional cast-ons, and as a flexible stitch holder for exactly this purpose. It's stiff enough to make threading the stitches onto it easy, can be cut to any length, and it's very inexpensive, especially if you scoop up a spool in an unpopular color from the craft store's discount bin.

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