May 2004 Archives

Work continues on the Springtime charts. I think I'm getting there! I'm pretty sure the basic building block that I came up with in the last entry is the correct one. Yeah! I also have the mirror image mesh half-diamonds drafted. I need to check them and be sure the counts are correct.

I came up with a handy little worksheet to test my charts. (worksheet will open in pop-up window).

For each row of the pattern, I first check how many stitches the row uses, and then check how many stitches the row results in. As I mentioned before, the stitch count for this pattern varies (from 26 to 38 per row, as it turns out). If row 1 results in the same number of stitches that will be used in row 3, everything is copacetic (row 2, and all even rows, are knit plain).

I did these counts by hand, although I imagine there is a way to get Excel to do them for me. I have an email from a knitter on the knitted lace list, describing how she uses the find and replace feature to replace all the symbols with their numerical result on the stitch count. A K2tog, for instance, uses 2 stitches, and results in 1, thus reducing the count by 1. So she replaces all the symbols for K2tog with a -1 (and does all the other symbols likewise). Then she creates formulas to add up the rows. Since I'm using so many plain squares, and gray squares for "no stitch," and both of those "symbols" would be difficult to replace, I think this method might not work easily with this pattern.

Counting manually didn't really take very long. I counted the rows of the building block, which came out perfectly. Now I need to count the mesh half-diamonds to make sure they work as well. At least I'm on the right track, and there is movement!

This should have been obvious to me, but I hadn't really analyzed it until this afternoon. The reason that fiddling with this chart is particularly tricky is because the stitch counts do not stay the same from row to row. Here is a photo of the basic "Building Block" of the chart (terminology of the building block from Myrna Stahman), charted in MS-Excel.

click for larger view. (will open in pop-up window)

The little gray squares mean "no stitch," and as you can see, there are more or less of them in each row. The stitch count of an individual row varies from 26 to 36 stitches. All over the place, one might say! While you're knitting, this means that you are subtracting stitches on some rows and adding them back on other rows, and requires paying careful attention. It also makes moving bits and pieces of the charts from place to place, and recombining the sections in new configurations, a bit more complicated.

Another issue is that the full-size diamond contains the leaf forms mostly in the top half and mesh in the bottom half. But the split isn't exactly at the half-way point, so there are bits of the leaves extending down into the bottom mesh of the diamond. In the tablecloth, there are also plain mesh diamonds that have no leaves, and which are charted separately. I want to use those diamonds in several places: at the top of the back panel, so there aren't leaf points at the beginning, and at the sides of the back panel, so I don't have half leaves trooping down the sides of the back panel. But that means I need to extract the relevant pieces of those mesh diamonds and integrate them into my existing charts. Whew!

At this point I think I have at least four charting problems left to solve:

1. Integrate bottom half of plain mesh into the top of the back panel
2. Make sure the first row of the back panel makes sense and can be knitted (I can tell this is a tricky bit by looking at some of the adjustments to the first rows of back panel charts in Myrna Stahman's book.)
3. Come up with two mesh half diamonds for the sides of the back panel. I need a left and a right one. Hopefully they will just mirror image!
4. Draft the side panel charts (this looks relatively straightforward, but we'll see)

And there may certainly be problems lurking that I haven't yet spotted. I was thinking that it might be wise to knit this up in a heavier weight yarn first, mainly to test the charts. Two or three repeats in length would make me more confident about the charts, and also I could get to know the pattern better (I knit the swatch about three years back). I suppose I could make a small shoulder shawl, or just have a really big swatch!

It does feel really good to be engaged with this again. Really learning to chart lace and arrange things to suit myself is something I've long wanted to accomplish. And I think I needed a knitting challenge! My mother reminded me that this was supposed to be a 'non-stress' project, so I will try to relax, keep at it, and see how it goes.

Happy Mother's Day!

No wonder I've been putting this off. Two hours of charting later, and my head is swimming. But I made progress, I did! I even think it may be possible to figure this out and get started. Whether it is possible to figure it out and get started tomorrow is anyone's guess!

But I'm working on it, Mother! And the thing you work on...

What's that basic law of inertia? An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, or something like that? It's pretty much never a good idea to stop in the middle of a project and procrastinate for months or years ;) Why do I never learn? (The answer to that question is thankfully beyond the scope of this blog!)

At least my mother has years and years of experience with me on this point, and won't be surprised! I blogged quite a bit last fall about my plan to design a Faroese shawl from the "Springtime" pattern from Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting. I even knit a "prototype" shawl from Myrna Stahman's Stahmans Shawls and Scarves, and got a good bit of the charting done. And then life apparently got in the way.

So the last few days I've been trying to get myself back up to speed. I did find a handy dandy list of the tasks I needed to do next. A list is generally helpful! And there are only five items on the list, one of which is "Cast on and get knitting!"

I checked my measurements with the swatch and my finished "Elizabeth" shawl (the first item on the list). I want to make the back panel narrower than the "Elizabeth," which has a 16" back panel. The "Springtime" block is pretty wide, so I need to choose between two repeats (9.5 inches) and three repeats (14.25 inches). I'd rather have about 11 inches, but that's not possible without adding an additional design element, and I don't think I want to go there. Actually, come to think about it a bit more, I don't have any choice. The back panel needs to begin with the edge of a diamond on each side, so I'll have to have two there, which will increase to three across the back panel. At least that makes it easy to decide what to do next!

I also did item #2 on the list (checking the charts I drafted from the Kinzel pattern). So I just have a bit of charting left to do (ha!) and then I can get started. Umhmm.

Audiobook I'm listening to: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.

Eek! Somehow it just occurred to me that it's nearly Mother's day (it's been a very very busy month)!

I started thinking about what sort of present I could still pull off in a week. Including a few days for shipping, that makes the list of knitted items pretty short . Um... okay.

But you know what? I could at least START on the shawl that I've been promising my mother for a couple of years now. Come to think of it, that shawl was one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place.

By next Sunday I could get re-oriented to the project, find all my notes and graphs, wind my yarn into a ball, and cast on, wouldn't ya think? ;) Oh, and send my mother a nice card and point her to my blog? She really would love to have this shawl, and I really would love to knit it for her! I can do this!

As a reminder, here's my swatch for this shawl:

click for larger view. (will open in pop-up window)

Audiobook I'm listening to: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.