How many stitches are in a shawl anyway?
I thought it’d be interesting to calculating the number of stitches in the last shawl FO I posted about (dang it’s been awhile since I posted a shawly FO.)
Lapidarius was a basic rectangular shawl with:
67 stitches per row
48 rows per repeat
12 repeats in the shawl
1 set up row
and 6 border rows on either end.
So:
(6 border rows) + (6 border rows) + (1 set up row) = 13 border rows
(48 rows per repeat) x (12 repeats in the shawl) = 576 patterned rows
(576 rows in the patterned section) + (13 border rows) = 589 rows total
(589 rows total) x (67 stitches per row) = 39,463 stitches total (damn!)
I was expecting a lot of stitches, but certainly not that many! I was expecting maybe a couple thousand, but not almost 40,000 stitches for a (relatively) small shawl!
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go pick my jaw off the ground.
(Have I done my math wrong? Is it actually 40,000?)
12 shawls in 2013
All the shawls of 2013.
Shawls that were just finished, or begun and finished.
1. The Shawl Without A Name. From very early this year.
2. Aella. Also finished up early this year. I actually want to reknit this shawl, and make a bunch of pattern tweaks.
3. Mayur. The first shawl started and finished in 2013. A really simple pattern, knit with the delightful Unplanned Peacock’s superwash merino fingering.
4. Red Mesh Shawl. Started as a very last minute gift for Christmas last year. Bound off on New Years. But not posted about (or gifted) until March. The pattern is exclusive (and free) for people who join the Announce Announce list.
5. Anwar. This was a huge lesson in trusting my own color sense, and it looks way more complicated than it is.
6. Lapidarius. Because diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and Latin is fun to play with.
7. Katherine’s Shawl. This was a sample for Katherine as far as I know the pattern isn’t available yet, but it certainly was a pleasure to knit.
8. Cotton Candy Shawl. I love how bright this shawl is, but I really wish I had taken better notes while knitting it.
9. Green Mutant Shawl. Garter stitch with simple shaping and i-cored edging. What’s not to love?
10. Lace Cables. Knit with the lovely Verdant Gryphon’s Eidos, this was partly an experiment in combining colorwork and lace in one shawl.
11. Teeny Tiny Flower Fields. This shawl managed to hide from the blog, all year long.
12. Plucky, Plucky, Shawl. Not quite finished when I took the photo, it still needs a good blocking, but almost there.
Plus 42 “mini shawls” aka swatches for the Shawl Geometry books. Because swatching is awesome.
I tried to list them in the order I talked about them on the blog, and in doing so realized I’ve been falling down big time on FO posts. Something to work on in the new year I suppose. 
See you in 2014.
xx
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.
