I haven’t been posting anything here.  I’ve been trying out Twitter.  I think I get the idea.  But I really don’t want to talk to anybody.

I knit up a hat for Emma accidentally in starlight lace (from Barbara Walker, vol 2).  Pics to follow when I get them off my camera.  I needed a circular swatch for starlight lace.  I already had a straight knitting swatch that was about 4 inches for 2 stars, and I approximately measured Emma’s head to be 20 inchres, to that is 10 stars.  Cast on 60 stitches, figure out how to modify Barbara Walker’s pattern for cirucular knitting, and zoomed up a buncha repeats.  My straight swatch said 1.5 inches per star, so I figured a repeat was pretty close to just one star, because they are offset by the half-drop method or whatever.  So roughly guessing without ever measuring, I one repeat in blue, two in lavendar, another few rows in blue, then cracked down the reduction rows in white.  3 repeats is roughtly 4.5 inches, which seemed maybe too short, but that’s fine, I didn’t care.

The reduction wasn’t too bad.  I found it worked best to dump the first yo in the pattern.  I dropped stitches every other row, with a row of knit in between.

My reduction plan was:

2:2  cumulative: 2   remaining: 58  (kill off two stars on opposite sides)

4:2 cumulative: 4 remaining: 56

6:4 cumulative: 8 remaining:52  (a difficult row because here the pattern reduces to 4 st from 6st)

8:4 cumulative: 12 remaining:48  (8 repeats of 6 sts)

10:8 cumulative: 20 remaining: 40  (now reduce one stitch per star)

12:8 cumulative: 28 remaining: 32  (one more gone)

14:16  cumulative: 44 remaining:16  Ah, but this is wonky, because the pattern reduces to 4 st.  Went for sl2-k2tog-p2ss0, y0

16 : 16cumulative: 60 remaining:abort abort

I bailed out on the plan at row 14, deciding instead to just do some yo and knits, trying to keep the reduction pretty severe but keeping in mind that switching from a lacy yarn-over state to all knit state would be most likely waay too fast.  I I think I put in 2 or 3 rows total of things like

16: ssk, yo, k2tog

17 knit

18: I forget.  maybe k3tog, yo?

20: cut end and loop through twice.  Or maybe on row 22.

Currently blocking the hat as severely as I can on a childs-size soccer ball!  Deflated a bit, pulled on the hat, stitched the open end of the hat round and round with some waste yarn, and then pulled.  Then inflated the soccer ball back up.

I’ll find out when I get home if that all worked.

]]> http://contourline.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/not-very-regular-posting/feed/ 0 jmarca http://contourline.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/knitting-diamonds-in-the-round-hm/ http://contourline.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/knitting-diamonds-in-the-round-hm/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:09:29 +0000 jmarca http://contourline.wordpress.com/?p=125 ]]>

Blog stats are funny.  My incomplete and possibly incorrect posting for my original diamond lace hat is by far the most popular thing I’ve written (popular being a relative term, with only like 300 views).  Looking at the stats, it is mostly one off google searches for diamond lace knitted in the round, etc. etc.  So I really will make an effort to post the actual chart that I used for my second hat, which came off without any glitches and flew off my needles in two evenings.

I’m actually working right now on a cabled hat (v2) and am taking notes on the decreases.  The cables themselves are pretty easy (using Barbara Walker’s second knitting treasury as source, and her advice that fisherman’s sweaters are vertical cable samplers—so this hat is just a cable sampler).

But first I’ve got another monster project  (scarf) to finish.  My goal is 60 rows a night, but I’ve only done 18 and then 24.  At 24 rows a night, I will finish by Christmas, but with no time to spare.

I was scanning my stats in this new WordPress world, and noticed that my older, incomplete post on diamond lace knitted in the round for a little hat has a lot of hits.  Whatever, must be from ravelry users…

I don’t have any updates on the pattern, as I can’t find my notes.  But I do have pictures of the hat I knitted for my friend Jon’s son Matthew.  Jon never gave me any action pics, so I assume it was quickly dropped over the side of a stroller and lost in the park.

The hat. A small pom pom at the top should have been a little bigger for proper proportions

slightly better light for this pic

You can sort of see how I decreased diamonds along the top in this pic

Okay, my previous post on this diamond lace pattern was all wrong. I read Barbara Walker’s third book, and there is a throwaway line that when you knit in the round you can just skip the extra stitches at either side of the repeat pattern. I also figured out charting knitting patterns, and indeed that is true, both on paper and in reality. I banged out a test little cap that fits Grace’s American Girl doll.

And charting has helped me to figure out how to be more methodical in reducing towards the top of this hat. Not sure how things will pan out as I complete rows 11 to 20, but we’ll see, hopefully soon.

Okay, this isn’t final or anything. Here is what I am knitting.

Cast on 96 stitches onto size 4 needles, using some thin yarn. I’m using really soft Rowan 50/50 wool cotton.

First knit the hem of the hat. I did k2 p2 for a buncha rows until it looked good for a baby. Unfortunately, the lace stitch has a bit more stretch than I anticipated, so this is probably a child’s hat. Anyway, I did 9 rows, and got a little under an inch.

Then knit up the pattern. You need to be careful to track groups of 6. I put in little bits of yarn every 12 stitches, and counted every 12, because it is just a pain to back up a lace stitch. In my own computer programmer’s variant on typical knitting notation, square brackets are the repeating section.

Round 1: [k4 yf sl1 k1 psso]

Round 2 and every other row, knit. This is the cool thing about knitting in the round. In the pattern book it says purl, but hah!

Round 3: sl1 [k k2tog yf k yf sl1 k psso]. The first slipped stitch is picked up at the end. And you have to do it because you need to psso that stitch. The whole point is to line up the yf holes on either side of the first row’s hole.

Round 4: Here’s where I need to go back and do it again to figure this out properly, but the first time through I did

Pass back one stitch you slipped on the previous round, so that your starting point is the same. Make a big ugly knit stitch there, and then knit.

I hate that round.

Round 5: [yf sl1 k2tog psso yf k3] Here the yf hole at the beginning is actually connected to the yf hole at the end by the k3. That is, if you look at the pattern, this is where the diamond formed by the yf holes is widest (separated by 3 stitches).

Round 7: [k3 yf sl1 k2tog psso yf] Here the two yf holes are connected by the jumble of sl1 k2tog psso, which serve to reduce the three stitches at the diamond’s widest point to a single stitch.

Round 9: repeat Round 1. You are just finishing off the diamond, putting the yf hole at the top of the diamond.

Round 10: knit.

Now you’ve got 10 rows of knitting done, and you should see 16 diamonds (6 into 96 is 16). The next 10 rows make another set of 16 diamonds offset 3 stitches from the first set. And here is where I totally screwed up translating the straight knitting pattern (6 + 3) onto 6 stitches in the round. Unfortunately, I didn’t really see the mistake until I was done with row 25 and looking back at row 17. There was no way I was going to undo that many rounds. Especially when I’ll probably just give this hat to Emma, and she will probably lose it at school. Again.

Anyway, here is what I’ve come up with as the correct set. I think.

Round 11: [k yf sl1 k psso k k k] Note that to better understand the 6 stitch pattern, I stopped writing k3, etc. Notice also that the yf is offset exactly in the pattern from Rows 1 and 9 (second in, rather than second to last).

Round 13: sl1 [yf k yf sl1 k psso k k2tog] As with row 3, you have to slip one stitch at the beginning of the row to keep the pattern oriented properly. If you don’t, then the k2tog at the end is all messed up. But unlike the first 10 stitches, I’ve figured out that you don’t have to put that stitch back. So as you do this round, make sure you shift all of your stitch markers along too, as you won’t be coming back.

Round 14: knit, and ignore the fact that you’ve rotated the row starting point one stitch over.

Round 15: [yf k k k yf sl1 k2tog psso] As before, this is the widest point of the diamond pattern, with the three knit stitches separating the two yf holes.

Round 17: [k yf sl1 k2tog psso yf k k] Closing up the diamond, with the k2tog and the psso making the three stitches into one stitch separating the two holes. Actually, my notation here on my notes is I T Y° T I I. In figuring this pattern out, I came up with the notation system that I is just a knit stitch carried along from the prior row, T is a new stitch, Y is knitting two stitches into one, and the ° (or zero, but degree is cooler) is short hand for slipping a stitch and passing it over. So K° is sl1 k psso, and Y° is sl1 k2tog psso. I like that method because when I am writing it down, the bottoms of all of the marks can be summed up to count the stitches. [ I T Y° T I I ] is clearly 6 stitches.

I haven’t actually done round 19 yet, but I will put in what my notes say and fix it if I am wrong.

Round 19 (Maybe): [k k yf sl1 k psso k k ] You should be repeating row 11, except you can’t because you’re shifted off by one. Except that this makes no sense to me right now, so maybe I have messed up this row.

So a fix to this post coming, and then the next challenge is how to reduce this gracefully.

Update:  I loaded up pics

figured out the stitch for diamond lace by screwing up on rows 15 through 19, then trying to fix it and failing, undoing it, writing it out, and finally getting it right last night. Here are my rough notes, I will fix them up when I get home and can read my correct notes

The basic theory is that you enter and exit the diamond in certain ways. Entering is done with k2tog (to decorate the edge and to make up for the stitch you are about to add) then yf (for the hole in the diamond pattern). Exiting is yf (the hole) then ss k psso (for the decorative edge and to make up for the added stitch.

The tricky bit is the rows with just one hole (start and stop of diamond, rows 1 and 9 if I remember right—1 has one hole, 3 has two holes, 5 has two holes farthest apart, 7 has two holes, 9 has one hole) are done with the exiting pattern, that is, yf ss k psso, not the k2tog yf pattern. And to reduce the 3 knit stitches in the middle of the diamond to one stitch in the next row (surrounded by holes) you have to both psso and k2tog, so you do yf (hole) ss k2tog psso (one stitch from three) yf (second hole).

The first go around I didn’t know what the stitches were doing, and just blindly tried to adjust a straight knitting pattern to knitting in the round. Now I get what the stitches are doing in the finished work, it makes sense and I can see what really needs to be done. I guess I am a knitting engineer now, not a slave to the directions. Not a knitting scientist, however.

I will post the correct pattern tonight when I can read my notes and get it right.