Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast - mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Author: Grace Page 6 of 12

London and Santa Monica

I woke up to news about the London bombings and had a sense of deja vu. News of these horrible events shouldn’t be so routine.

Yesterday, our family took an outing to Santa Monica for dimsum and a movie. Well, Iris and Mark went to the Aero theatre to see Oliver while I checked out the stores. I noticed something different about Montana avenue. I didn’t realize what was different until I got home. The westside (of LA) has a huge british expat population and I didn’t hear any english accents on the street.

I hung out at L’Atelier on 12th and Montana for a while and knitted. The owner, Leslie, was very nice to knitter’s both seasoned and new. In fact, Leslie let a new knitter take home a pair of needles and a ball of yarn (Stacy Charles, no less!) to get started and then didn’t make her pay for the stuff until she came back the next day for additional knitting lessons! Sadly, there were alot of people hanging out at L’Atelier but not enough people buying. So, if anyone actually reads this blog, go out there and change this!

I bought 5 balls of yarn, 4 of which will become a Mobius shoulder wrap. I will use the remaining ball to trim a plummy wool sweater, part of my haul from the Yarn Lady bag sale.

Triangle Question

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]

Yarn Diet Over

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.

Page 6 of 12

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