Fiber Musings

My work life has intruded on my personal life for the time being. I was between spinning projects and am so mentally exhausted when I get home that I haven’t even spun? How’s that? I didn’t have the mental capacity to decide which of the lovely fibers I had in my stash to play with nor to sample and think about how to best show off the fiber at hand. So, I did nothing.

Don’t feel too bad for me. While work has been too exciting for words (not necessarily in a good way), it’s been kind of fun. I love living on the edge. Besides, living in fear of a spectacular server/process failure that could cause you to lose your job is good for the old ticker, isn’t it?

I leave you with a picture.

Martin and I participated in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life this past weekend. This luminaria is in memory of my step mother, Susan, who lost her battle with leukemia last fall.

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Amazingly, I also got a question about how to make the triangles. Ann has already written about this. But there are many methods that work sort of OK. Ginger Luters’ book, Module Magic shows methods for knitting equilateral triangles in garter, garter ridge and stockinette stitches. There are also general directions for determining a decrease sequence for other stitch patterns. Colleen Davis’ pattern, Triangle Mambo Sunset recommends you perform a [k1, ssk,...,k2t,k1] on every other RS row and alternating [k1,ssk...] and [...,k2t,k1] on the other RS rows in stockinette.

However, I soon switched to [k1,k2t...] at the beginning of the rows and [...ssk,k1] at the end of the rows because that keeps the stitches vertical over most of the triangle. Click on the picture below to see the detail. The large triangle on the bottom L is worked in Colleen Davis’ way, most of the rest of the triangles are worked in my method.

For stockinette stitch, Ginger Luters recommends decreasing 1 stitch in from each end on each RS row. I didn’t try that method, but can attest that Colleen Davis’ sequence makes an equilateral triangle without need for agressive blocking.

When I wore this sweater at a quilt show, a lady stopped me to ask how I picked up the stitches around the triangles. She had bought the same pattern but worried that picking up stitches the normal way, one stitch in, would distort the fabric when the triangles start out at only 6 stitches wide. The pattern called for making triangles starting with 6, 12, 18, … stitches. I wondered the same thing. Rather than adjust the number of stitches cast-on or picked-up, I just picked-up through one strand of the edge stitch only.

The triangles are picked-up, log-cabin style until you have a piece that resembles the right or left side of a sweater front or back. Page 35 of Module Magic happens to have a diagram that is identical to one of the pieces of Triangle Mambo Sunset!. Maybe this is an old, well-known technique and I don’t need to write any more about this in my sister’s blog.

Rather than knit a partial triangle to fill in the center back neck, I picked-up stitches all around, short-rowed the front and decreased when it seemed appropriate at the CB. It looks nice and smooth even though I didn’t do any calculating. Knitting is so forgiving.

Math Aside:
Row 1 is always the pick-up or cast-on row and on the RS (I used a multiple of 6)
WS Rows always P across
Type A: (sts,mod 3) = 0 or 3n stitches on needle, [k1,k2t,...,ssk,k1]
Type B: 6n+1 sts on needle, [k1, k2t, k to end]
Type C: 6n-2 sts on needle, [knit to last 3 sts, ssk, k1]

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As promised, here is a picture of the completed modular sweater. I used the module plan for the ‘Mendocino’ sweater on page 65 of Module Magic with the sleeves from the ‘Nevada City Windows’ sweater from page 21. An eagle eye might notice that I deviated from the plan slightly. (I was knitting in the car and didn’t check the pattern as often as I should.)

I used 31 stitches per module, 15 stitches for each side of a single square module plus 1 center stich. I used the center stitch decrease method (SK2P2) from the ‘Swatch Your Step’ pattern on page 70. It just looks better to me than the other double decrease methods that I have tried.

There are 11 or 12 colors of worsted weight yarns in there. Such good stash-busting behavior calls for a trip to this.

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In answer to questions I received, (OK, one question because the only people who read my entries are people whom I armtwist. “Didja read it yet? Didja read it yet?”) here are a few lessons learned.

I generally followed the directions given in the Sew News Threads of Distinction article. I also cruised the web and discovered some people had trouble removing the stabilizer completely or removing the residue from the basting spray. I decided to use plain old Solvy instead of the thicker Ultra Solvy. Sure enough, it dissoved fairly easily when swished around in a sink full of warm water and a little shampoo.

Further cruising seemed to indicate that the basting spray does not dissolve so a light hand is called for. I used the very minimal amount of spray that was still tacky enough to hold the fibers still as I worked. Other people’s blogs indicate that the brand of basting spray matters. I stayed away from the brand that people had trouble with and used the June Tailor basting spray as recommended by the Threads of Distinction article.

I have one beef with the ToD instructions. If you spray both layers of Solvy, then how do you lay the top one down without getting a wrinkled mess? I enlisted the help of a friend and we still had trouble laying it on straight and wrinkle-free. For the second scarf, I sprayed only the bottom layer of Solvy. I rolled the top layer of Solvy up and then carefully unrolled it over the fibers and bottom layer, starting at one scarf end and finishing at the other.

Machine stitching the grid can be rather tedious. Music and a mellow attitude helps. My sewing machine chewed up the metallic thread when I tried to use it in the needle. But the metallic thread worked great when put in the bobbin. Rather than buying multi-colored emboridery thread, I just used up all sorts of leftover colors of sewing thread. If you use different colors of thread in the bobbin and needle, you get a very neat (as in nifty-neato) look. The finished scarf looks nifty-neato but not neat.

I wrote down my process step-by-step in gory detail.

-Cut a piece of 19″ wide Sulky Solvy to the length of your scarf.
-Cut it in half lengthwise to two 9.5″ wide pieces.
-Roll one piece up and set it aside.
-Lay the other piece out on newspaper and spray enough June Tailor basting spray to make it tacky enough to hold your fibers down.
-Move the newspaper out of the way (so your fibers don’t stick to the newspaper).
-Weight the tacky Solvy down with sewing weights at the corners to keep it taut.
-Lay ribbon or ribbon yarn around the perimeter of your scarf.
-Lay a few pieces of ribbon lengthwise to give it a bit more structure.
-Lay your other yarns, fibers, fabric bits down in any way that appeals to you.
-Admire your work.
-You could try slipping the newspaper back underneath and applying more basting spray, but I wasn’t that brave.
-Carefully unroll the remaining piece of Solvy over your fiber collage.
-Pin as necessary to keep the sandwich together.
-Sew with a medium straight stitch (~2.8 mm) around the perimeter of your piece.
-Sew a mesh (both lengthwise and crosswise) about 3/4″ apart.
-Admire your work.
-Swish the piece in a sink full of warm water and a few drops of shampoo until the Solvy is completely dissoved. Rinse.
-Roll the piece up in a towel to blot the water out, then air-dry.
-Admire your work.

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Ann is not the only one who has problems with top-down sweater sizing.
Exhibit A, should have been sized for a baby Iris when she was less than a year old. The panel door gives you an idea of how large this sweater became. It does fit the teddy bear rather nicely, though.

Exhibit B, the armscythe that reaches my waist. How the heck did my armscythe depth and body width calculation go so wrong? No jokes about math majors being terrible at arithmetic, please.

Exhibit C, the puffy sleeve. Somehow, I confused the armscythe depth with the hypotenuse and ended up cramming a lot more increases at the bottom than at the cap. Then I realized that the sleeve was too wide and I had to taper the sleeve down dramatically. It looks like a bad leg-o-mutton sleeve. I knit this sweater on my world tour summer (2003) in which I went to Sapporo, Berlin and Australia for work. Maybe we can blame jet lag for the poor calculation skills. Luckily, Iris liked her ‘Puffy Sleeve’ because it looks very princessy.

Here is a closeup of the top-down inset sleeve. Note that the increases on the bodice maintain the cable and lace pattern somewhat decently. The sweater is supposed to resemble a lacey flower on top and sedgey leaves on the bottom. Get it? Like an Iris? The ribs were not as pronounced as I would like. Next time, I will try a P2 or maybe a broken rib to emphasize it.

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