In The Summer Time

It's no secret, even in the summer time when the weather is hot I still knit!  Sitting on the patio with a glass of water (or wine) with my feet up, watching the hummingbirds dart to the feeder or the chipmunks rushing around stealing bird seed...all the while with a project in my hands.

I even  wear my hand knits during the heat of summer...my Norma Jeanne tank top, or a light shawl over a commercially made one...and in that overly climate controlled office...a pair of lacy fingerless mitts to keep my hands from freezing!

Do you need something to keep the chill from your fingers while you work?

Presenting Scrolling Mitts, available now on Knotions!

Made from a light cotton blend yarn...I used Brown Sheep Cotton Fine...these mitts feature an all over, but very simple, lace pattern, thumb gussets and a twisted ribbed cuff.  Ideal for knitting on the patio, with that glass of water (or wine), no large mass of wool in your lap making you hot.

They also make great gifts, so if you didn't start your holiday knitting in February, you can start now and probably have a pair finished by the end of the weekend!

What colors would you make yours in?

In other news, if you missed your chance to pick up Aviarium as a single pattern download from Knotions you can still get it...

either in their Full Issue E-book or now from my Ravelry Store and soon on Love Crafts.

Until next time...Happy Knitting!

~M

Lace Star; a review

(Note: This post contains affiliate links.  If you use them, you won't pay a penny more, but we here at Chez Yarn Diet will receive a small commission which helps keep the lights on!  All opinions expressed are my own, though!  Thanks for understanding!))

When Jody, the editor of Knotions, asked me if I would like to preview, and review, the newest Knotions E-Book; Lace Star, I couldn't say yes fast enough!

Photo Credit Knotions.com Lace Star cover

As you know, I am a big fan of Shawl Star, where Elizabeth Felgate goes into detail of how to create over 40 different shapes for shawl knitting, in recipe form, so you can design your own. I was sure that her writing about lace would be just as educational and fun to read and knit along to!

I wasn't disappointed!

So, let's dive in!

The book is broken into 4 major sections :

Section 1: The theory and practice of lace knitting - how it works, how to make it easier and get better results


It's not a secret that I am a bit of a knitting "geek".  I love the tech talk of how/why/when/where things work and on the flip side, when they don't!  Liz walks the knitter through everything from picking yarn; which materials and colors work best; and needle size...but goes on to say the words that make my heart sing " Once you know what you like, I trust that you will ignore these guidelines with impunity."

Section 2: Lace knitting exercises - from first yarnovers to advanced skills





This is probably my favorite part of the book...The exercises include several dishcloth sized swatches, presented in both charted and fully written line by line instructions, with specific call outs for what to look for when reading not just the instructions but your own knitting!

Here I worked up Exercise 3: Right and wrong side patterning and have to say that the pattern stitch choice for this is the ideal place to start learning (or get additional practice)  working that wrong side patterning. (Really, it isn't as hard as you think...I know knitters get tied up in knots thinking about it, but if you have ever done any flat knitting that is more than garter stitch you have done wrong side patterning without any trouble!)

And Exercise 4: Breaking New Ground swatch...I stopped long before it became a shawl!

This exercise is a great tutorial for how to incorporate a stitch pattern into the increases needed to create a shawl that starts from just a very few stitches and grows into a much larger piece.

Finally I knit Exercise 9: A mini project for a lace bookmark.

This piece pulls together all the things that you will have learned working through the other exercises...worked in a finer yarn that the dishcloth sized swatches at the beginning of the section, it incorporates right and wrong side patterning, pattern repeats, and...a difference of opinion on how it should be blocked!  :)

This is how it looks in the book..

Photo Credit: Knotions.com Lace Star e-book

and this is mine.

As you can see, in Lace Star the pattern itself was worked one and a half times before binding off...mine was worked twice.  I also blocked it a little differently and then decided I liked the beginning better as the "top" of my bookmark.  Is either way wrong?  Nope!  That is the beauty of knitting and lace knitting in particular...you can make those choices!  (Remember, you can ignore the guidelines with impunity!)

Section 3: Finishing lace knits


I have said it before, I will say it again...blocking lace, like heel turns in socks, is knitters magic! This section goes over the common methods of blocking, from wet blocking wool to steam blocking synthetic fibers, with photo tutorials for each method.

Section 4: Fixing mistakes

Missed a yarn over?  Knit instead of purled?  Lace Star has you covered with photo tutorials for fixing the inevitable mistakes that manage to creep in. (Even expert knitters make mistakes, knowing that you made them and how to fix them is what makes an expert knitter!)

My Conclusion:

I had an awful lot of fun knitting the swatches I picked, and I by no means knit all of them, there are several more fun ones...but to see those you will have to get your own copy of the book!  And if you haven't already, get a copy of Shawl Star to go with it!  Paired these two e-books are probably the most comprehensive guide for designing and knitting your own lace shawls I have seen.

Until next time...

~M

Softly

Tips on Thursday: Pattern Repeats

This might be the first in a series of Tips on Thursday about some of the behind the scenes thinking that goes into writing out a knitting pattern.

Today I are going to talk about charts and finding ways to make them smaller so they can be bigger in the pattern!  (I know that sounds weird, but bear with me!)

For the sake of this discussion I took a repeating lace pattern and charted it out to a 39 stitch wash cloth.


The Chart looked like this:

While no where near as large as some of my charts are; as you can see here, it looks rather small and the more stitches you chart the smaller each stitch becomes when printed!

One way to reduce the stitches and rows in the chart would be to take the borders out and just list them in the written portion of the pattern...so in this case I could say :

Cast On 39 stitches.

Rows 1- 3: Knit.
Row 4: K3, place marker, k to last 3 sts, place marker, k3.

Following Rows:
K3, slip marker, work chart over next 36 stitches, slip maker, K3.


Final Rows 1-4: Knit.

Bind off loosely.

And the chart would look like this:

Which is a little bit better, but we can make it smaller (bigger) by using pattern repeats...but where to put them?

Disclaimer : Every designer has their own method for this, none are wrong, this is just how I do it!

Let's find a landmark! I look for stitches that remain pretty constant throughout the pattern, so if there is a column of plain stitches all the way up the chart I start there.  (In this case, there isn't, so I looked for the stitches with the least amount of "action steps".)

So we can see that there are definitely 3 pattern repeats and in that column of stitches there are only two times where something other than just plain working the stitch happens.  So we could put a repeat around those stitches and drop some columns...like this...

Note I reduced the height of the chart as well to make the next few segments easier to see...and would amend my instructions to say to work Chart Rows 1-16 twice and then Chart Rows 1 -15 an additional time (47 rows worked.)

Now as charted, that is a fully workable repeat but, if your knitter uses stitch markers to help keep track of where they are in the repeat, they will have to move the markers...this very messy color coded chart shows where the stitches end up on the following row, just track each color up to see when it lands.

So while the stitch that I picked as my "beginning of repeat" does have the least action, it isn't the wisest choice for where to put the repeat...let's try again!

By centering the double decrease between the yarn overs, now the stitch markers won't have to be moved!

And...we can reduce the chart size even more.

Does changing where the pattern repeat is to make it so that stitch markers don't have to move or to make the chart appear larger on the page make a difference?  In my opinion, yes.  It makes the pattern easier to follow for the knitter and shows that I, the designer, care about their knitting experience!.

For those who are wondering, the stitch pattern is called Arrow according to my stitch dictionary and this is what the chart looks like knit up!

Hey, really quickly, before you go...anything you would like to learn about "how a designer" or rather "how this designer" does things?  Leave me a comment and I'll try to answer next time...or the time after that!

~M

Keeping It Real Challenge

Obviously this is not a Silent Sunday Post!

The #Keepingitreal challenge started on IG yesterday.

Full disclosure, some designers (including me) on Ravelry have been talking about it for about a month now!  So, we have had time to plan things out a little but my May was so hectic...apart from noting the prompts I haven't "curated" anything for the challenge.

Wait?  You mean you don't know what it is about?

How does that line go..."Let me explain...No, there is too much...let me sum up!"

With all the conversations happening (specifically in the stories) on IG there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what the true life of a designer and the pretty instagrammed life of a designer (knitter, crocheter, dyer) looks like.

Surprise..it isn't all rainbows and sunshine.  Being a designer (or dyer or crafter) doesn't mean sitting around in an IG perfect environment, eating bonbons and (in the case of designers and dyers) rolling in cash.

My first post included a picture from several years ago (before I needed progressive glasses because some meds I am on mean my eyes don't work properly and I can't change focus...I am like that old pin-hole camera...fixed focus which is not so great in real life!) and one of the comments I got (from someone I chat with regularly on Ravelry) was she had never seen a picture of me before!

Yep, that's me...looking at yarn, as I love to do!

In light of the conversations happening in IG stories I think that there is a prompt missing...maybe two...Why do you design (craft) and What do you gain from it?

The "I knit so I don't kill people" is true for me!  I design because I love it. I get kinda geeky about how/when/why things go together and I (apparently) have the secondary skill set of being able to explain what I did so you, the knitter, can duplicate what I did.

One of my test knitters accused me of having an "over active imagination" and that is probably true!

I can imagine a world where we all get along, can be real and everyone can be what they want.

Yep, I have an overactive imagination!

I'll jump off my soapbox now and let you get back to your crafting...I have 14 more rounds of a shawl to go...and while I love the concept (fractals, anyone?) I am itching to get something else...anything else... on my needles!  I am a very productive knitter and have had this design on my needles for nearly two weeks (with frogging and rewriting when things didn't look quite the way I envisioned) it's time for me to cast on something new!

~M