Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Knit, Purl, Or Get Out Of The Way

Here is my organic progress.


It's starting to look a little more organic. I like the emerging hand-drawn look.

Here is one of the edges.


You can see the how the stripes are starting to look wavy, due to short rows. The blue markers are to help me track how far out I am from the middle, to keep it roughly symmetrical.

Here's another look.


This gives you a better view of the stripes I've added on the left. I'm starting to play with the colors more, which keeps it interesting to knit. I like the idea of having it appear more organized in the middle, and then getting wilder towards the edges.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Triangles Go Organic

I was going to do something with more integrated colors for a change, instead of segments or modules, but then I saw this piece by knittinweaver on Ravelry: (used with permission)





She is calling it 'Log Cabin Goes Organic.' For those on Ravelty, here's the direct link.

She started a regular log cabin, and then

Okay, anybody who knows me, knows I usually have the attention span of a 5 year old. I just couldn’t see me making more rectangles the same, so I decided to go organic.

Maybe she's my long-lost twin.

She is using short-rows, and just doing a lot of on-the-fly estimating, or, in my terms, conditional knitting.

Well, I had wanted to make a triangular shawl all out of log cabin triangles anyway, since I've been on a log cabin triangle spree, so I couldn't resist trying this. Integrated colors can wait.

Here is my progress so far, with a shoe added for an idea of size.


Like knittinweaver, I usually bind off at each segment, but mostly because I don't care for the needles flapping around. But this time, since with a triangle they are more out of the way, I'm not binding off. This also means I don't have to pick up along the entire segment, which is a time and patience saver. So far it is working out well. 

Here's a closer look at the center


I was adding short rows at different points in a segment, but they didn't seem to show much, so now I'm adding 3 extra rows on one end each time. That has helped, but it doesn't get to the truly organic look yet.


So I went back to the source. Here's a closer look at knittinweaver's piece:




Over and above the fact that she's been more daring than me, I see that she has emphasized the short-rows by making up for them on the first rows of the new color, for a more sudden effect than my middle short-rows.  And finally, she's now adding stripes to really emphasize the shape.

I'm trying for a sort of wavy but roughly symmetrical look, so I'm reluctant to really go wild with the short-rows, but these tips will help me inch closer to the look I'm hoping for.

And then again, maybe my attention-span will run out, and I'll go just as crazy. Oh, the joy of knitting adventure!

And speaking of adventure, here is exactly how much ribbon yarn was left at the end of this one segment.


It made for some nervousness towards the end, but don't you just love it when there is exactly enough?

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A Scarf for Every Dragon

It's a little unusual, but I didn't have a new project idea screaming out for my attention, so I made a couple of scarves. (Okay, technically, I finished a scarf which I started before the last afghan, but did make another in its entirety.)

Two passing dragons volunteered to model.


The one on the left is made from leftovers from the last afghan. It's a simple ripple pattern over 21 stitches, knit 2 together, knit 3, make 3 stitches out of 1, knit 3, knit 3 together, knit 3, make 3 stitches out of 1, knit 3, knit 2 together.

I used 3 yarns, starting out with 3 rows of yarn A, 3 rows of yarn B, 3 rows of yarn C, so that when I dropped yarn C, yarn A was ready to pick up and continue with. When you have three yarns going like this, the next color is always on the correct side for a continuous knit.

I started out with 3 colors which looked different enough for me, but blended together a little too much in a ripple pattern, so I frogged back to the last yarn added, and put in one which really contrasted. This brought the pattern alive for me.

Then, to keep it interesting, I varied the knit and purl rows, and added in yarnovers, varying the sequence in sets of 9 rows.

Here's a closer look.



The scarf on the right is the multidirectional diagonal scarf, one of my go-to standard scarf patterns. What fascinates me is that it is essentially the same as 
Kureopatora's Snake Pattern Scarf, except that it is in garter stitch instead of ribbing. What a difference, though, in the end product!

The way to work 2 colors in either of those patterns is to change colors not at the end of the row, like one would expect, but after the turn. That way you have the correct yarns at the correct location when you start a new segment.

I really like how this one ended up, and the edging finished the look nicely. I really like what edgings do for scarves.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Eighth 2010 One Finished

Here it is, Log Cabin Triangles, with the final edging. That's a yardstick, for size.


It's a heavy afghan, but not unduly so. Here are some detail pictures.



Here is a close-up of the edging -- the final outside yarn matches the middle of the triangles. Note the different sizes, because of the extra row I put at the top and bottom for a little extra overall width.


My husband said wistfully, "Maybe one day you'll make something symmetrical." His sense of design yearned for the colors to be in the same position in all four quadrants. He's a woodworker, and matching perfectly tends to be a goal.

I had to tell him, "I don't think so. Imagine how boring it would be for your eyes, nothing to tantalize them or to explore!" That's my sense of design. I also get too impatient for the next thing to enjoy making identical pieces.

And, as is fairly common with me, this gives me some future ideas. Here is how the diamonds look vertically, instead of horizontally.


And the angles made think of doing a sort of mountain theme, with the diagonal strips for the mountains, and then shades of blue for a sky? (I put some dotted lines for where the mountain shapes might be.)

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Almost Done

The body is finished.


Not too bad.

Before I started on the edging, I took a break and tackled another problem: a tangle.


Do you remember this research about knots?

By tumbling a string of rope inside a box, biophysicists Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith have discovered that knots--even complex knots--form surprisingly fast and often.

No surprise to knitters. We prove it all the time.

Most of it wasn't a true knot -- I just had to keep the tangle loose, and pull out different strands. I also have to admit, I enjoy untangling, because it's pleasant to end up with a tangible and tidy outcome.

Then, on to the edging.



I decided to go with a crocheted edging, mostly because my hands were tired of knitting the thick yarns, and I found it mentally easier to face one stitch at a time rather than a long line of stitches. I did start with single crochet, to give a nice linear look to match the garter stitch. However, I also wanted to add a little width, because the proportions looked a little too stretched out, so I added an extra row to the top and bottom.


(The bottom is on the right in this picture.)

I need to add at least one more row, in the same color as the centers of the triangles, as a final way to tie it all together.

I do love how the edging changes so much.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Three Quadrants Done

Progress, and, um, the design is looking a little busy.


It appears a little more organized in real life, but because the stripes and the diamonds are in the same colors, you don't get a foreground-background effect. The colors come across as very summery -- very warm.

It turned out not to be difficult to make the quadrants which start from the middle diamond. Here is how it looked just before joining the small diamond.


Here is how that part looks now.


When I got to the part where I needed to join the smaller diamond, here is what I did.


When I finished stripe #1, I didn't cut the yarn. When I started stripe #2, I carried yarn #1 down the back until I got 16 stitches in. Then I dropped yarn #2, and did a double bind-off between the rest of stripe #1 and the diamond until I got to the point.

Then I cut yarn #1, picked up yarn #2 and continued on my merry way.

Fairly easy, actually. So much for yarn trepidation.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

First Quadrant Done

My friend Sandy came up with a modification to my original idea -- she suggested positioning the background stripes as if radiating out of the central diamond. Here is the preliminary result.


I think it turned out well so far. Here are some close-ups.



It look me one false start, but here is how I made this quandrant.


I picked up 40 stitches along 'd' just along the edge, not with yarn, in the same proportions as for making the triangles.

I started at 'a' by knitting two stitches into the first stitch, knit back. Then knit twice into the first stitch, knit the next stitch together with the next picked-up stitch, knit back. After that, each right side row was: knit two into the first stitch, knit across, knit the last stitch together with the next picked up stitch.

Each stripe was 5 ridges wide. I had also picked up along the side of the large diamond and knew that was 55 stitches, which told me that I needed to have 15 stitches above the point of the smaller diamond (plus one edge stitch, created when I knit two stitches at the beginning instead of one). This told me when to turn the corner from A to B -- when decreasing one stitch each ridge after the turn would leave me with 15 + 1 stitches at the top of the diamond. This worked out to be in the middle of the sixth stripe, where after the third ridge, I started knitting two together on the first stitch (decreasing one instead of increasing).

For how I did C, let's move to the next diagram.


After reaching the tip of the small diamond, on the next stripe I picked up 40 along the 'f' side of the diamond, and then knit the last stitch together with the first stitch picked up from the side of the large diamond (side 'e').  Then I continued in the same fashion as before, decreasing one on the first stitch, knitting the last stitch together with one from large diamond along side 'e' until I had decreased them all away.

I can use this same method for the bottom left quadrant of the afghan, but I'm going to have to mirror the progression for the other two sides, starting from the tip of the large diamond instead of ending there. Otherwise, I will have the wrong side of the ridges on the front, which won't give me clean joins.

That won't be so much fun, because it means casting off along the side of the small diamond instead of picking up. In our next installment, I'll tell you how that goes.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

More Log Cabin Triangles

The new one is underway, and I've returned to the idea that interested me earlier: Log Cabin Triangles.

Here is the yarn grouping:



Here the triangles are underway:


I'm trying to balance the green vs. the blue, to some extent, using the peachy colors to tie it all together.

I used the double bind-off to join the two triangles along the hypotenuses.



Now what do I do? I could make an entire object from such triangles, or turn this from a diamond to a square.


What I think I'll do is make this a central diamond, and then put two slightly smaller diamonds on either side, with diagonal stripes in the background. That's my working idea, but, in the best conditional fashion, I'll see what I think when I get the next two diamonds finished.

A more detailed description of how to make log cabin triangles can be found in the link in the first sentence, but a quick version is below. This is a generic recipe for garter stitch.


A is the central triangle. Cast on, and decrease one on either side of the right-side rows until down to two or three stitches, knit together and bind off.

In starting the following pieces, pick up one for one when picking up parallel or perpendicular to the stitches you are picking up from, and pick up 4 stitches for each 3 stitches or rows when picking up diagonally. (I bind off each piece and then pick up, because I don't like to have all those needles sticking out.)

For the B and C pieces, increase one stitch on the right-side rows at the bottom (D side).

For the D pieces, increase one on both sides of each right-side rows.

There you go -- why don't you join me?