Garter stitch shawl on 3.00mm shawl is deathly dull, no matter how pretty the yarn is.
12 bobbins of singles? 6 down. So far, over 1400 yards of light worsted weight yarn. I think I will have well over 2400 yards by the time I’m done. More than enough for a sweater.
(This post was started while I was still in Washington. I’m back in California now.)
All of my reference books are back in California, but I want to cast on now. Thankfully, there are a lot of excellent references on the internet. I have always wanted a Faroese styled shawl. Something that will sit and stay on my shoulders, no matter what I’m doing. I found this excellent reference* on shaping all manners of shawls from simple triangles to faroese styled shawls with shoulder shaping.
I grabbed a piece of paper and sketched out the schematic of the shawl that I want to make. I made a swatch in pattern. I like the way it looks. I like the fabric. So, now for a quick bit of math.
My swatch is 11 sts over 2″ on 3.00mm needles. The row gauge doesn’t really matter here because I’m working neck down. I’ll keep working until I get to the depth I want. I’ll continue to try it on as I go. If I were a taller person, I would worry about the row gauge and yarn usage. But for my purposes, I’m 99.9% sure that I will reach my desired depth before I run out of yarn.
Design considerations:
My schematic has 4 lines of increases at the top of the shawl, and it divides the work into 5 sections with increases at each edge of the sections. A quick measure (and a sample) shows that the start will look something like this:
Again, since I am not knitting an edge as I go, I can go directly to the cast on. For my shawl, I need to cast on 58 stitches. Since the cast on will be hidden by the applied I-cord, I will cast on using the yarn that will be used for the I-cord edge.
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock, 1 skein each of White/Natural (S269, Lot A) and Reds (S84, Lot A)
Needles: 3.00 mm
Gauge: 11 sts/2″
So, here are the pithy instructions for my yarn, gauge and sizing:
Cast On: With color A, cast on 32 sts (I used the knitted on cast on)
Neck & Shoulder Shaping
Stop increases inside the center panel when the center panel reached desired width.
Remove outer stitch markers (and stop increases at these points) when you reach the desired shoulder depth, or slightly short of it.
Bind off.
Aside:
This has been an interesting exercise. In addition to pen and paper, I used the draft of this post for keeping my notes of design, modifying it as I go. Hopefully, this will last longer than the little pieces of scrap paper that I design on and disappear in the way of all things you want to keep.
As for the Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn…it doesn’t take to ripping very well. It’s extremely sticky. When ripping out your knitting, it just gets more and more sticky. After several frogging, the yarn gets pretty difficult to work with. Hopefully, I’m done with all that and we are on to easy sailing from here on out.
Why so many restarts? Well, there was the swatch. Then, my initial design was too large. (It was what I designed, but I didn’t like the way it sat on my shoulders.) Then, I didn’t like how wide the center panel became after a few inches. First design attempt had my center panel as the widest part of the cast on. Second attempt had them all the same width. The most current version, has the center panel as the smallest set of increases.
I’m still not 100% happy with the current one. I think the next time I make this, I will start the shoulder increases after an inch of shoulder work. Yes, I said next time. I’m not ripping this yarn out again for anything. It’s difficult enough to work as it is.
Why not just cut it off and start anew? Well to find out whether it sits well or not, I have to knit about 5-6″. That’s a lot of garter stitch.
* Editor’s Note: As of 2013-Mar-20, the link to my reference page have disappeared. Here’s another shawl shape reference, without the faroese shawl shaping. For faroese shawls, there’s a series written by Liberty’s Yarn: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Here she is. I’ve been told that all sock machines should be named, but I haven’t yet named mine. I’ll have to work with her a bit more, and learn her personality before I give her a name. Isn’t she a beaut?
My first cranked item…a bonnet (seen mounted in the CSM above).
I’ve kitchenered the bottom around a D ring. The ring is there to hang your weights from. I had a devil of a time with the kitchener on this. I originally tried kitchener the bottom with the waste yarn in place. This is the same as kitchener the toe of a sock with a toe chimney. Simple enough, follow the path of the existing stitches. Except I didn’t. The waste yarn was blue, which was hard to see in my already blue yarn. And I was doing it late in the evening without my Ott light. When I pulled out the waste yarn, the tip came wide open. After a few nasty words, I picked up the stitches with some DPNs and tried again. Much better. I think I will be doing it using the DPN method from now on. No need to do it twice.
So far, this is my only finished item on the sock machine, because the sock didn’t make it.
Here’s the sock to be. Looks good, doesn’t it? Well, here’s the close up…
See that nasty run at the corner of the turned toe? There’s a matching run on the other side. There is just no easy way to pick all those stitches up and ensure that you maintain the short row toe turn. At least, not in my inexperienced hands. I’ve decided that it would be much easier and faster to rewind this sock back on the cone and re-crank.
Or it would be, once I start cranking again. This week is full of holiday parties. I found that it isn’t a good idea to work on these things after a night of festivities and drink (see above paragraph on the kitchener attempt). I’ll give it a go this weekend.
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