Charting 'Dayflower'

Dayflower is a really pretty pattern in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, but it only has written directions. I was looking for a challenge for my charting skills and this one looked like a good one. It took me a while, but I figured it out. Here are some of the steps I used.

Charting 'Dayflower', originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

I photocopied the picture of the Dayflower pattern from Barbara G. Walker's Treasury, then drew circles over the yarn-overs, then blue lines to join the yarn-overs on the same row. Next, I used red lines to show stitch-columns and decreases, referring to the written pattern. Eventually, through several iterations, I transferred this to graph paper. The trick was to find where to distribute the "no stitch" squares in the graph of the pattern.

Straightening out the lines that represent rows, with no regard to spacing of stitches:


Eventually I got to this point where I could arrange the stitches on a chart. The trick there was to figure out, based on the photo and the previous attempt, how to move the rows back and forth for best alignment of the stitch columns.:


Once I had the stitch columns aligned properly vertically, I could do the more-detailed stitch diagram. This one shows the path of the yarn through all the stitches, but not the actual over-and-under crossings of the yarn as the stitches are made. It's a bit sketchy because I only did one half of a repeat, then used Photoshop to flip and copy the repeats, and my Photoshop skills are not the best:



As I've said before, I'd rather figure out 5 ways to diagram a knitting pattern than knit it. I'm all about understanding the architecture...

I am grateful that iLoveButter on Flickr has shared this photo under a Creative Commons license so I can show you the pattern used in a garment (before blocking, which will open up the lace):

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Entrelac joins comparison swatch

These photos show a swatch with two different entrelac joins.

On the left of the swatch (the right when flipped over) is the usual method of slipping the first stitch in every row of each entrelac square. Stitches for new squares are picked up from behind the slipped stitches. The squares are joined along their selvedges by working a stitch together with a live stitch from a previous square (on the left selvedge by ssk and on the right selvedge by p2tog).

On the right is the new method I've developed (not entirely original). For the squares on the right, the first stitch in each row is worked. Stitches for new squares in this method are picked up from the thread between the last stitch of a row and the first stitch of the next row (the turning thread). Squares are joined not by decreasing but by pulling loops from live stitches of a previous square and using that loop to knit two rows of the new square.

One advantage of the new method is apparent in the close-up pictures. There is no "grinning"-through (an industrial-knitting term) of the other color along the selvedges of the entrelac square.

Another thing to note about this swatch: The new joining method produces slightly bigger squares, since there is less overlap between adjacent squares. That is, the squares are no bigger, but the fabric produced is slightly bigger because of less overlap.









Below, I show the two sides of the swatch before blocking:





Notice how the new method produces entrelac fabric that has much higher relief. The fabric becomes much flatter with blocking.

I'm going to illustrate the two components of the new entrelac join (picking up from the turning thread, and the loop selvedge-join) in a later post.

YAREH! Yet another ribbed-entrelac hat

Lori made herself a ribbed entrelac hat using the techniques I taught her. It's her own design, though it shares an affinity with the other hats I made with this technique. Like the others, it's seamless, reversible and knit in one piece. I guess seamless implies one-piece... well, maybe not, since Elizabeth Zimmerman's sweater designs are often seamless but not made in one piece. Here she is, modeling it at Knit Purl's Thursday night Sip 'n' Stitch:





I am such a proud "uncle"! Now Lori says she'll write up a pattern for this that I can edit. I hope we can then teach a class at a local yarn store.

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"Walkerized" decreases

Barbara Walker started the whole thing when she changed slip-one-knit-one-pass-slip-stitch-over (sl1-k1-psso) to slip-slip-knit (ssk). Did you know that most decreases can be modified in a simi­lar way? 

For example, the most common way to do a double decrease when you want the decrease to slant gently to the right is “ssk, return the stitch thus formed to the left-hand needle, then pass the next unworked stitch over the stitch just worked, then pass the just-worked stitch again to the right-hand needle.” A Walker-style modification of that de­crease would be as follows. “Slip two stitches separately as if to knit.[1] Insert the left-hand needle into both stitches togeth­er from the right and transfer them back to the left hand needle.[2] Then knit three together.” You may find that, once learned, this is a faster way to do the stitch.

Suppose you want a double de­crease gently slanting to the left? The traditional way: “slip one stitch as if to knit. Knit two together. Pass the slipped stitch over the k2-tog.” The Walkerized decrease is very similar to ssk: “Slip one knitwise. Slip two as if to k2-tog. Insert left hand needle into the front of the three slipped stitches and knit them all together.” 

Instead of having three mo­tions, one to slip an old stitch, one to pull a new stitch through, and one to pass a slipped stitch over, you now have two: slip stitches, and pull the yarn through.

Notice a pattern? The basic idea is to perform all of the slipping of stitches first, lining them up, then pull the new stitch through. Try this for a central dou­ble decrease: “Slip two as if to k2-tog, slip one knitwise, then insert l. h. needle into all 3 stitches and knit them together.”



[1]this straightens out the two stitches so that they don’t knit crossed.

[2]this motion is the mirror-image of “slipping two stitches as if to k2-tog,” which is used when you want to make a central two stitch decrease.

Charting Marianne Kinzel's "Ladybird" pattern

The "Ladybird Stitch" from Marianne Kinzel's lace knitting books has long interested me. Scroll down to Figure 6 in this embedded excerpt from The First Book of Modern Lace Knitting to see a picture of the fabric:

I have found it useful in graphing my own patterns to sometimes represent groups of stitches that usually are shown as several symbols as one symbol. This has helped me, for example, to un­der­stand better the stitch structure of the “Ladybird” pat­tern. If you replace the “yo, k1-b, yo” group with a single symbol, it makes for a more compact chart that more clearly shows the proportions of the knitted piece. Here’s a graph of the ladybird mesh to show what I mean (edge stitches aren’t graphed correctly):

A full repeat of the ladybird pattern (shown on the graph inside the heavy lines) when knitted really is approxi­mately square. And using the  “yo, k1-b, yo” symbol means that the placement of the yarnover symbols in the chart more accurately represents what is going on in the knitted piece. The “yo, k1-b, yo” group is approximately equal in size to the single yarnovers since the latter are strained horizontally by the sudden decrease in stitches on the rows in which they appear.

Here’s the same pattern when graphed as Kinzel does it in her Modern Lace Knitting books:

Done this way, there’s no way to tell from the graph that the yarn overs form 45˚ diagonals in the knitted piece, or that the proportions of the pattern when knitted are square, roughly the same as garter stitch (one stitch = two rows), though much less dense a fabric! The graph may be a little easier to read, but that is a matter of taste, I think. And on patterns like this one, where the stitch count changes from row to row, one square in the graph can’t equal one stitch. Mrs. Kinzel uses blank squares to address the imbalance.

More of my idiosyncratic charting style here:

Image by fuzzyjay via Flickr