Perfecting the perpendicular pickup -- just the video, ma'am

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via youtube.com

I uploaded my latest video to YouTube, and I requested that YouTube create a machine-transcribed caption file for it. Wow, pretty amusing. As in all machine transcriptions, it was pretty weird. Could have something to do with my mumbling, maybe.
Anyway, I downloaded edited that file and uploaded the real thing. I am all about the closed-captioning. I love me some deaf knitters, and knitters who don't speak English as a first language will probably have better luck understanding the captions than my slurry words.
Does anybody use an on-line service for this? I remember reading something about Google making it easier to caption their videos, but my Google-fu is not working for this.

Posted via web from fuzzyjay's posterous

Ways to join knitted pieces

Joining a piece already knit to one you are knitting, in parallel or perpendicularly.

Edge of existing piece	Edge of piece being knit	Ways to make the join	Diagram
Side	Side	Sliding-loop (Rick Mondragon), sewn seam.
Side	Bottom	Picking up stitches from a selvedge.
Side	Top	Perpendicular grafting, sewn seam, chaining-up1 .
Top	Side	Entrelac join (ssk or p2tog), sliding loop (me)2 , sewn seam.
Top	Bottom	Knitting from held stitches, grafting.
Top	Top	Grafting, three-needle bind-off, sewn seam.
Bottom (some techniques require loops be freed from provisional cast-on)	Side	Entrelac join (ssk or p2tog), sliding-loop (me), sewn seam.
Bottom	Bottom	Knitting from freed cast-on loops, grafting, "aligned pickup from cast-on edge"3 .
Bottom	Top	Grafting, sewn seam.

notes

¹ This is a new technique I developed, to be described in more detail later. Basically, on the existing piece, you ladder-down the edge stitch column, freeing a loop for every two rows of the existing piece. You then chain up these loops while working together with each loop a free stitch from the current piece.

² To be described later.

³ See blog entry: "Picking up and knitting from a cast-on edge."

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Cabled entrelac Greek Key

Cabled entrelac Greek Key, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

How to do a continuous, sinuous cable using entrelac squares. The cable travels across the diagonals of some of the squares.

Previous posts explain the meaning of the arrows and the numerals. The green lines represent the repeat of 18 entrelac squares (15 squares + 6 half-squares [triangles]).

Three repeats are shown. The left repeat has 16.5 squares (12 squares + 9 half-squares) and the right repeat has 19.5 squares (15 squares + 9 half-squares).

All three repeats add up to 3 × 18 squares or 54 squares (42 squares + 24 half-squares, which is why the numberals go up to 66).

Here are some pieces I've knit that include the continous-cable idea in entrelac. Click the picture to go to the Flickr page for the item:

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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.

Four entrelac hats

Four hats, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

These are the last four hats that I designed and knit. They are meant to be worn with the brim folded up, either inside or outside, for more ear-warmness. To that end, the fabric is reversible. The red patch on the first hat looks better on the other side, since the red-green join is less speckled on that side.

Random time, plus another Ribbed-Entrelac Hat

I finished the third entrelac hat made up of ribbed squares. I like this one a lot, and I'm happy with the way it came out, even though there are a number of small errors in the i-cord edging.



Even more exciting to me is that I have successfully taught this pattern and its associated techniques to a pal from Thursday night's knitting group at Knit Purl in Portland. We have met three times, and each time Lori has gone home and practiced the techniques of the entrelac join and returned to the next meeting with some great samples. The last time we met, she had an almost-finished hat and I showed her how to finish the hat with an i-cord border.

Next time I see her, I hope to be able to post pictures of her wearing her hat! Hers is a variation on the other hats I've done. So, there are 4 hats in existence now that use ribbed entrelac squares according to the general plan of the first one (using a long, circular needle):

1. Work five squares attached to each other counter-clockwise as follows:
1. Cast on enough stitches for a square using scrap yarn.
2. Work square 1. Leave the last, right-side row on the right needle. Do not turn the work.
3. Pick up and work the stitches for the first row of the next square along the left selvedge of the square just completed. Work the next square, ending with a right-side row. Leave the last row of stitches for the square just completed on the right needle.
4. Repeat step 2 for squares 3 and 4.
5. For square 5, pick up and work stitches along the side of 4. Then, remove the scrap yarn from the cast-on edge of square 1. This will give you loops to put on the left needle. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle (from the cast on edge of 1) and use that loop to work the next 2 rows of square 5. Repeat from * until all stitches from the cast-on edge are used up. Work one more row, ending with a wrong-side row. Do not turn the work.
2. Work a ring of 5 squares clockwise, attached to the first 5 as follows:
1. Pick up and work the first (wrong-side) row of the next square from the right selvedge of the previous square. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle (from the stitches of a square in the previous ring of squares) and use it to work the next two rows of the current square. Repeat from * until all stitches from the previous ring's square are used up, ending with a wrong-side row. Leave the last row of stitches for the square just completed on the right needle.
2. Repeat the previous step for squares 7-10, ending square 10 with one extra (right-side) row. Do not turn the work.
3. Work a ring of 5 squares counter-clockwise, attached to the previous 5 as follows:
1. Pick up and work the first (wrong right-side) row of the next square from the left selvedge of the a previous square. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle (from the stitches of a square in the previous ring of squares) and use loop to work the next two rows of the current square. Repeat from * until all stitches from the previous ring's square are used up, ending with a wrong right-side row. Leave the last row of stitches for the square just completed on the right needle.
2. Repeat the previous step for the next 4 squares, ending the last square of the ring with one extra (wrong-side) row. Do not turn the work.
4. Repeat steps 2.1, 2.2, 3.1 and 3.2 as desired, to make the hat as long as you like. I did five and a half rings for the Ribbed Entrelac Hat II, and four and a half (not counting mistakes) for the REH I.
5. When the hat is long enough, finish with five entrelac triangles edged with i-cord as follows:
1. Cast on three stitches with backward loops.
2. Pick up and work the first row of the triangle from the free selvedge of the previous square. *Pull a loop from the next stitch on the left needle and use the loop to work two rows as follows:
1. Work to the last 4 stitches, then k2together, k2 (the last three stitches are i-cord).
2. Slip 3 wyif, work to end of row.
3. Repeat from * until there are three stitches left on the needle.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all five triangles are done. Graft the three stitches that remain to the three stitches that were cast on for the i-cord.

I realize that these directions are sketchy at best. The technique for picking up and working stitches from the selvedges of previous entrelac units I leave for a later post. I'm thinking I need to record a video to fully explain it. Lori has mastered the particular pick-up technique I use, so I have hope that I'll be able to teach it to others.

Here's a diagram of the first 4 rings of entrelac squares. The crown of the hat is in the middle of the diagram, and the squares are shown distorted, as they would look if the hat were squashed flat. I explain what the arrows, numerals, and dots mean in a previous post, Diagramming and Designing an Entrelac Piece:


2010-12-13 Edited to correct and clarify the connections between rings of squares.

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Entrelac Star

This would be nice as a decoration made of cotton and starched. The example is knit of worsted-weight acrylic. I don't really recommend acrylic for this. The tips of the star tend to twist, and it's easier to block cotton or wool.

Preliminaries

Materials and tools: a small quantity of yarn, with circular knitting needle and crochet hook to suit. A length of smooth, contrasting-color yarn. For the example, 8 inches (20 cm.) is about right.

Right Twist (RT): Knit 2 together, leaving stitches on left needle, then knit the first stitch again and drop the two stitches off the left needle.

You will be knitting five units. The second unit is picked up from the left edge of the first unit, the third from the fourth, and the fourth from the third. The fifth unit is picked up from the left edge of the fourth unit and its own left edge is joined to the cast-on edge of the first unit. The star is finished with a crochet border.

Ignore the brackets if you are knitting a star the same size as the example. The algebra contained within brackets is only useful if you want to make a smaller or larger star. The base number can be any odd number n >= 7. The example uses 11 for n.Cast on 12 [n+1] stitches.

Unit 1

Row 1: (Right side) *YO, RT, K2 [(n-7)/2], K2tog, rep from *.
Row 2: Lay a contrasting piece of yarn from back to front over working yarn, purl to end of row.
Rows 3, 5, ..., 21 [2n-1]: Repeat row 1.
Rows 4, 6, ..., 20 [2n-2]: Repeat row 2.

Leave the last row (21 [2n-1]) on the right needle.

Sanity check: there are 11 [n] lace eyelet holes going up the center of the unit. There are 10 [n-1] loops being held by the contrasting-color yarn.

Units 2-4

Pick up loops held by contrasting yarn onto left needle, from the previous unit's left edge, starting from the bottom left to the top left corner. Remove the contrasting yarn, and use it while turning the rows for this unit.

Row 1: (Right side) *YO, RT, K3 [(n-7)/2 + 1], rep from *.
Rows 2-21 [2n-1]: as for Unit 1.

Leave the last row (21 [2n-1]) on the right needle.

Unit 5

Unpick the cast-on and place the freed-up stitches on the left needle, so that the right side of the first unit is facing you (you start picking up loops from the lower-right corner of the unit toward the lower-left corner). There should be 11 [n] stitches on the left needle. Then with the left needle pick up stitches held by the contrasting yarn. There should now be 21 [2n-1] loops on the left needle.
 
Row 1: YO, RT, K3 [(n-7)/2 +1], YO, RT, K2, SSK, turn.
Row 2: Purl.
Row 3: YO, RT, K2 [(n-7)/2], K2tog, YO, RT, K2 [(n-7)/2], Sl2, K1, PSSO (central double-decrease).
Rows 4, 6, ... 20 [2n-2]: Repeat row 2.
Rows 5, 7... 21 [2n-1]: Repeat row 3.

Leave the last row (21 [2n-1]) on the right needle.

Finishing

Crochet *chain 1, single-crochet in a stitch or yarn-over loop, repeat from * in each stitch or loop around the star. When you get to the inner corners, gather three stitches/loops together into one sc. Finish with a slip stitch into the first single crochet. Block flat.

PDF link

Download this pattern as a PDF formatted for printing.

Entrelac diagrams

For the last year, I've been experimenting with entrelac knitting. I find diagrams to be a good way to think about and explore entrelac knitting.

In this post, I'll show how to read my diagrams, assuming you already know how to do entrelac. I'll start with the simplest diagram and build from there.

Here's the minimal diagram to describe a piece of knitting:

The line inside the rectangle represents the grain of knitting. It's sometimes hard to tell the beginning edge from the ending edge of a piece of knitting—especially if the piece was cast off with a sewn cast-off—but with a flat piece, you can always tell which edges are selvedges.

These two diagram elements, rectangle and line, are enough to show the gist of an example of entrelac knitting:

The basic technique of entrelac is to join pieces of knitting end-to-side and side-to-end.

Looking at knitting, especially if it's stockinette, garter, or reverse stockinette, it's not always easy to see the direction of knitting. With entrelac, you're joining many little pieces of knitting as you go, so it's important to keep track of the direction of knitting. I use an arrow to show the direction:

Another thing to keep track of is which side the knitting starts and ends on. I use dots to show this. The diagram below shows a piece of stockinette knitting that starts and ends on a right-side row (when it's knit in the conventional direction):

The one below starts on a wrong-side row and ends on a right-side row:

Now I'll show an entrelac diagram with dots and arrows:

This is the minimal diagram to show how an entrelac piece is knitted. I suppose the dots can be inferred from the arrows, but they make following the diagram a little easier.

To make it clearer, for each square I'll often add a number in place of the dot that indicates how the first row begins, like so:

From the diagram above, you can infer how to work each square:

• Start on a wrong-side and end on a wrong-side row: 1, 2, 7, 12, 13.
• Start on a wrong-side and end on a right-side row: 3, 8.
• Start on a right-side and end on a right-side row: 4, 5, 9, 10.
• Start on a right-side and end on a wrong-side row: 6, 11.

Now, all this assumes that you know how to join entrelac squares.  In a subsequent post, I'll write about different ways to join entrelac pieces.

Varying the ribbed-entrelac hat

In the previous post, I described how I diagrammed the ribbed-entrelac hat, showing you the steps involved in figuring out how to knit an entrelac piece with a continuous piece of yarn.
For that hat, I used an entrelac square that was 15 stitches wide, in a ribbing formed with (k5, p5, k5, p5, k5). Each square is 15 stitches wide and 31 or 32 rows long.
Recently, I designed a fabric that uses 6-stitch, 13-or-14-row squares. Each square is ribbing with 3 knits and 3 purls. The squares come together in such a way that the fabric is reversible, and the knits and purls create a hound's-tooth check. I'm pretty happy with the way the fabric came out, and now I want to use it in a garment. I figure I can adapt the entrelac-ribbing hat I just made to use this fabric.
I can make the reversible hound's-tooth check entrelac with any square that is half-knit, half-purl ribbing. So, if I chose to, I could just use the same diagram I used for the first hat, and use (k7, p7) or (k8, p8) for the squares. But that would make the symmetry of the hound's-tooth motifs too hard to see (except in a larger garment like a sweater).


I decided that I would rather use k4, p4 ribbing, which would mean I could subdivide the squares in the first diagram and get approximately the same shape and size of the first hat. Four of the new squares will fit in each of the squares in the first diagram, like so:

Next, following the same procedure as the previous post, I take this diagram and indicate the grain of the knitting for each square.
That ends up looking like this:

Next, I figure out what order to knit the squares in and how the yarn travels from square to square.
I used Skitch to overlay arrows and colored lines on the last diagram, to show the "rings" of squares that I will knit to create the hat. The inner ring is green, next ring is blue, then green, etc., alternating outward. The colors only serve to distinguish the "rings." I don't intend them to represent colors on the finished piece.
One thing I didn't realize until I finished the diagram is that, while coloring the outer edges of each ring with the same color as the arrows that show the direction of knitting, I leave some edges uncolored. These edges only show up on "increase" rings, and if you count the edges they tell you how many more squares there are on this ring than the previous one.
For example from ring 0 (nothing, the very beginning) to ring 1, there is an increase of 5 squares (from 0 to 5). From ring 1 to ring 2 there is another increase of 5 squares (from 5 to 10). From then on, there are no more increases, and each subsequent ring is 10 squares. What this means is that once I finish ring 4, I can keep repeating rings 3 and 4 indefinitely to make the hat as long as I want.

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Diagramming and Designing an entrelac piece

In this post and the next, I want to describe the process I go through before I cast on an entrelac piece, how I figure out the way the entrelac squares have to go together to create the shape I want, in such a way that I can knit the piece continuously with one length of yarn.

To join entrelac squares in such a way that the fabric is reversible is a topic for another post. In this one I'll describe how I make diagrams that show me how and in what order to knit the entrelac squares.

For the Ribbed-Entrelac hat, I figured that I would do five squares at the crown. I probably could have done four squares, but I figured 5 would be more interesting. First diagram is here:

This diagram shows the crown of the hat at the center, and the hat stretched out flat. Each of the 4-sided shapes in the diagram is a square in real life, well, an entrelac square made of ribbing, so not really a square, but square enough.

Once I have the squares plotted out, the next thing to do is to show the grain of the knitting. In entrelac, squares that are next to each other have the direction of the knitting at right angles. So, I indicate the grain of the knitting with a straight line that goes through the center of the square(ish) parallel to the direction of knitting. Like this:

 

Next, I need to figure out the order of knitting the squares and the direction of knitting each square. Over the years and with much practice, I can sort of visualize what direction to knit the squares. I start in the center of the diagram and knit one "ring" of squares at a time, and change direction between rings. In this case the inner ring is 5 squares knit in the counterclockwise direction, surrounded by a ring of squares knit clockwise, then counterclockwise again, like so:

Next, I figure out what order to knit the squares in, and indicate the order with numbers on the squares. I place a number in the corner of the square where the yarn enters the square and I place a dot right inside the corner where the yarn leaves the square.

Knitting squares 1-5 is pretty straightforward. Where to place square 6 is the first decision point. It could have gone between squares 1 and 5 rather than as shown, between 5 and 4. The reason I chose it the way I did is related to the way I'm joining the squares (a topic for another post.)

Note that each square except the last in each ring has an odd number of rows, starting on a right-side row and ending on a wrong-side row (for the counter clockwise rings), or the reverse (for the counter-clockwise rings). The last square in a round has an extra row, to double back and start the next ring of squares going in the opposite direction.

Here's the first ring of squares knitted out, and next the first two rings:

Image by fuzzyjay via Flickr

Image by fuzzyjay via Flickr

Next time: how I converted this pattern so that each square is replaced by four smaller squares.