Playing With Construction
This is a small excerpt from Shawls to Play With, the shawl collection I’m working on. There are four shawls in the collection (named Gratia, Xylia, Yuki, and Idril) all of which are designed around elegant simplicity.
PLAYING WITH CONSTRUCTION
The shawls in this collection are all variations on traditionally shaped, knit in the round, shawls. The traditional shawl shapes being, the wedge circle, the concentric circle, the pi circle, and the center out square.
Gratia is a variation on the concentric circle, Xylia on the wedge circle, Yuki on the center out square, and Idril is a variation that falls somewhere between the concentric circle and the wedge circle.
Why are there multiple ways to knit a flat piece of fabric in the round?
Because all circular shawls are simply variations on each other.
They all follow the same ratio of stitches increased to rounds worked, 8 stitches increased on every other round, but each shape has the increases arranged in a slightly different configuration.
For the shawls in this collection, I took those traditional increase placements, and the ratio of stitches increased to rounds worked, and played with them.
This is an excerpt from Shawls to Play With, which, with a bit of luck, will be making it’s first appearance later this week.
Knitting From Both Ends of a Skein
The pattern collection I’m putting together at the moment has three patterns that call for holding multiple strands of yarn together. Sometimes the best way to work multiple strands of yarn together is to work using both ends of one skein of yarn. There are a couple methods for knitting from both ends of a skein of yarn.
With a CENTER PULL BALL
The first is to wind the skein into a center pull ball and hold the end of yarn on the outside of the ball together with the end of yarn at the inside of the ball. Winding a skein of yarn is often done with a ball winder, but you can also use a Nostepinne, (or replace the Nostepinne with a knitting needle, dowel, pencil, even a bottle of sunscreen.)
with TWO SEPARATE BALLS
The second is to split the skein of yarn into two balls, and work holding the end of each ball together. The tricky part about this method is getting the two balls of yarn to have the same amount of yardage. Generally the best way to do this is by weight.
Take the ball band off your skein of yarn and measure your skein. I just use a basic kitchen scale that I liberated from the kitchen and now only use for yarn.
If your skein doesn’t fit on your scale you can use a basket or bowl to hold it, but be sure not to include the weight of the basket in the weight of your skein.
If your scale includes a “tare” button, set your basket on you scale, and press “tare” this will zero out the weight already on your scale (the basket) and just weight your yarn.
If your scale doesn’t include a “tare” button, set your basket on your scale and make a note of it’s weight, then subtract the weight of your basket from the weight of your basket plus your skein of yarn.
Then divide the total weight of your skein in half.
Wind a ball, measuring it’s weight periodically, and stopping when it reaches half the weight of your original skein.
Break the yarn and then wind the second half of your skein into the second ball.
Then simply knit holding the end of each ball together.
I prefer using a center pull ball, but knowing how to split a skein into to equal balls is certainly useful, especially for knitting pairs of things, (like mittens or socks).
even complicated projects usually start simply
Unfortunately complicated projects don’t generally fall out of your brain fully formed.
It usually starts with an outline, or a sketch, a rough approximation. There’s a reason painters sketch, novelists outline, and knitters swatch.
Sketches, outlines and swatches are all places to play and experiment, to solve problems and work out contingencies, with low expectations, and little investment.
I’ve talked about my love affair with swatching before, but I also “sketch” for many of my knitting design projects.
I open up my charting software and draw out what I want the design to look like, using yarn-overs and decreases, kind of like a proto-chart . Then I refine and tweak, refine and tweak, until I’m happy with the chart, and I start knitting. (This tweaking is what turns the initial sketch into the final chart.)
This process of sketching, then tweaking and refining, isn’t just for knitwear or pattern designing. The execution is different, but the process is the same.
For example, the map for Shawl Geometry III, started as hand drawn sketches on a piece of paper. Actually, the entire book started as handwritten scribbles on graph paper.
Which then turned into hand drawn scribbled schematics on top of typed text.
The complete map started as kind of a total mess. But drawing these hand messy maps served the purpose of getting the idea out of my head and onto paper.
Getting something out of my head is the first step towards being able to put an idea down and walking away. Walking away from an idea allows your brain to quietly munch and mull on all of the information you have, and come up with creative solutions to whatever problem you’re running into.
It turned out that the key to creating this map, was to have a central hub around the square and the right triangle, then have all of the longer paths looping around the outside of this central hub.
So if you look at the map closely, you’ll see that the center out square, and the right triangle (the two most interconnected shapes) are right at the center of the map, with half a dozen lines leading away from either of them.
Then if you look at the outsides of the map, you’ll see that’s where the shapes that are connected to two or three other shapes are, such as the crescents, and the half circles.
This rather simple idea of a hub, with longer paths looping around the outside, meant that I could go into illustrator and sketch out the final version of the map. Other than lots of small annoying tweaks* here and there, that was it.
*the tweaks that are a total pain in the butt to do, but that make the final product look so much better. Details matter.
It’s a crazy complicated map. That started as some pen scribbles.
Big complicated projects usually involve:
an idea
a sketch/outline/draft/plan/swatch
messing about with said sketch/outline/draft/plan/swatch
a period of thinking about anything else a.k.a. brain munching time
a final draft/sketch
rearranging
tweaking
stupid annoying tweaking
stop tweaking (it will never be perfect, but at some point it will be damn good)
ta-da! a finished a big complicated project. yay you!
What crazy project are you working on? Or are thinking about embarking on?
Announce! Announce! You can get Shawl Geometry III (the book that explains the map) here.
