Put Them All Together...

Knitting is a strange beast sometimes.  A technique that one knitter "gets" instantly leaves another gnashing her jaws and throwing her project across the room (TAR) which is probably why I like it so much.  There is never just one way to do things, and for some things there are lots of different ways to achieve the same end.

If you "google" short row knitting and look at the wikipedia page it says :

"In knitting, a short row is a row that is not fully knitted; the work is turned before reaching the end of the row. Just before the work is turned, the yarn is generally passed around the next unknitted stitch to prevent a hole from forming at the turning point."

Looks like the writer of that article only knew one kind of short row!  But there are many more to pick from.

While working on my Quill Cardigan, which uses short rows for both the wide shawl collar and the top down set in sleeves, I did a lot of thinking about short rows and the different ways they could be done.

As you may have noticed I wrote up and entire series of tutorials on Short Rows for Knotions this month.

The first up was German Short Rows



















Followed by Japanese Short Rows and the Catch Method (these two are very similar!)

















And then  Shadow Wraps
















Which led to Yarn Over Short Rows

This week Knotions put them all together in a free pdf download with a bonus demonstration of how all the different kinds of short rows, I could find, stack up in garter stitch.  (If you know of any short row methods that I missed, let me know in the comments so I can swatch them too!)

But...give them all a try, see which one you like best, because no matter which method the pattern actually calls for, you can swap out one type for another because they all end the same way : with  a row that is not fully knitted; giving extra fabric on the outside edge of a curve, in the bust area if you need a little more give, an attractive alternative to bind offs that take several rows like in shoulders, heels of socks...the list goes on! 

Who knows you might find your own new favorite way of working short rows.

Now that that series of tutorials is complete....might be time to find another technique that can be done several different ways!  Are there any you would like to see me explore?  Leave a comment with your suggestions!

~M

The Adventures in Short Rows continue.....

Do you remember when I played with German Short Rows?

Today on Knotions I revisit short rows with two more methods.....

Short Rows

How many ways do you know to perform short rows?

~M

Toot...Tute..... for ....Tutorials

Into each knitter's life some short rows appear!

As a sock knitter who prefers a heel flap and gusset in my socks I do one version of short rows.  No wraps and turns in those ones, but for short row heels, there are wraps and turns to deal with...but what if you don't like wrap and turn?  Are there other choices?

You Betcha!  In fact, I played with some and one of them is available for you to see at Knotions!.

German Short Rows....

For the entire month of July, rumor has it, that Knotions is going to be all about showing you how to Craft Smarter with lots of tutorials.

I can't wait to see what else is going to be on there!

Where do you go when you are looking for tutorials?

~M

What's Your Style?

Knitting style, I mean.

Not do you "throw" or "pick".  Not do you like lace weight or bulky.  But, how are your stitches mounted on your needles?

Still not sure what I mean?

First, we need to define some terminology.  For front and back loop.

Oh the conversations I have had with people over this one and it is so easy. The front loop is the side of the stitch that is closest to your body while knitting.

The Back Loop is the one furthest away from your body. (Click the pictures to embiggen them!)


Which brings us to our next terminology which is leading leg.

If you look at the pictures above you can see that the front loop is just barely closer to the needle tip than the back loop, that portion is leading the way.  (Kind of like a cowboy sitting on a horse, your stitch has one leg on each side of the needle.)

In Western Mount the leading leg is also the front loop...to knit that stitch without twisting it you would insert your right hand needle through that front loop from left to right, wrap your yarn around your needle and so on and so forth until you had completed the stitch.

Like this :

But there is another way of mounting your stitches so that the leading leg is actually the back loop.  (People who knit both Combined and Eastern Crossed Uncrossed styles mount their stitches this way.)

To knit that stitch without twisting it you would need to insert your right hand needle through the back loop from right to left, wrap your yarn around the needle and so on and so forth to complete making the stitch.

Why does it matter you ask?  Well, for many things in the knitting world, so long as you know which way to approach your knit and purl stitches to not twist them, it doesn't make any difference at all.  There are places where the mount of your stitches does make a difference : decreases, gathered stitches and in my opinion nupps.  Today, let's just look at one...gathered stitches.

I love gathered stitches from the Estonian tradition of knitting. (The link goes to a book with a few patterns in it that show what I mean. )  I actually have some lace knitting books in Estonian, so I can't read a word of what they say, but I can follow the charts! But, sometimes making the gathered stitches can be hard with a Western Mount stitch...my answer is easy...I knit Eastern Crossed Uncrossed which means that my stitches are mounted with the leading leg at the back of the needle. Working into the same group of stitches multiple times is much easier when you don't have to drag your right hand needle all the way across the front of the grouping to knit them. (It's all in the purl folks!  So when I work in the round my knit stitches sit Western Mount...people who use this method get very good at reading which is the leading and which is the lagging leg so that we don't get twisted stitches when we move from flat knitting and in the round knitting.)

Want to see what I mean?  (For you non-Eastern Crossed Uncrossed knitters start by :  slipping three stitches as if to knit, individually and then slip your left hand needle into the front of those same three stitches so that we can knit through what is now the leading leg, but the back loop.  ECU knitters just insert your right hand needle into the leading legs of the next three stitches like you normally would.)

Pull the stitch you have just made onto your right hand needle but do not drop those three stitches yet!  

Yarn over and re-insert your right hand needle into the backs of those same three stitches and knit them one more time.

Now you can drop them from your left hand needle and proceed as you normally would.

Put in groups, even just a 3/3 gathered stitch can do some interesting things in a pattern.

The same would apply if you were doing a 5/5, 7/7 or even up to a 9/9 gathered stitch, although for the larger numbers it is easier if you use the cheaters method and employ a crochet hook.  I will share that trick another day.

What's on my needles today, other than a swatch?  My Colourmart Shawl is within 20 or so rows of being finished.  Lots of beads to come before the end, although I waved goodbye to the nupps just yesterday.  (A couple of secret design things are happening ) and Quill made it off the needles, into a bath and is ready for her photos.  You'll get to see her on Friday.

What's on your needles today?

~M

Friday are for Finished Objects

But not knitting ones this time, although I did share Overgrowth with you yesterday, honestly it has been completed for a while!  :)

Today I want to share my latest DIY project, but there is a bit of a back story to it.

When I complete a pair of socks, so that I can get a nice picture I usually wash them and put them on sock blockers while they are still wet and let them dry.  The blockers help to even out any of the irregularities I might have in my stitches and in the cases of lace and cables the slight stretching allows the patterns to pop.

Which means, when I first give socks to my kids they are smooth and neat, ready to go into their sock drawers.

But, when I wash the socks and just lay them flat to dry they do not look quite so "finished" any more and my kids got picky. They wanted their socks to look the same way as when they were brand new each time they were washed, which meant putting them on the blockers every single time.

You would think that wouldn't really be a problem, I have several different sock blockers in various sizes, but...when everyone washed their socks on the same day, we ran out of blockers before we ran out of socks!

I tried bending some wire coat hangers into shape, but, well I wasn't very good at it and they ended up slightly different shapes and sizes with the occasional hard angle rather than gentle curve.

Looking some more on the internet I found people had used cardboard, which I had done once for some child sized socks that I knit, and plastic place mats. The place mats sounded good to me as they wouldn't need to be covered in tape to stop them from absorbing the moisture from the socks, so off to the dollar store I went.

The problem with the place mats I found?  They were very thin.  Trying to pull a wet sock onto it wasn't going to be easy, so I tried gluing two together.  (Also not easy!  Superglue dried too quickly, rubber cement didn't dry well enough.....)  While I was digging through the drawer in my garage where various glues and tapes were I spied a roll of double sided carpet tape. (Although we no longer have any carpet in the house, I do have carpet runners on the stairs which I had taped down using some of it in the past, but there was still lots on the roll so I gave it a try.)

Taping the two place mats together gave them a little bit more structure and although still flexible they don't bend as much when trying to pull that wet sock onto them.





After taping the two mats together, I traced the outline of two sock blockers on each one and cut it out using regular old scissors.









(I found that I could get one Men's Large and one Women's Medium blocker out of each pair of mats, or 2 Women's Mediums but the Men's Large were too short when I tried getting both out of one pair...) You could just draw an approximately foot and leg shaped outline if you don't have an existing sock blocker to trace! I cut portions of the centers out to allow for air flow, you could do pretty designs if you are more creative with cutouts than I am!

Using a single hole punch I punched a hole in the top of each blocker so they could be hung on hooks to dry.

And Voila!  Cheap easy sock blockers to keep picky kids happy.

After I was all done making the sets of sock blockers I planned on making I realized that they would also make a great presentation for gift socks.

To Make 3 pairs of Sock Blockers, 1 Men's Large, 2 Women's Medium/Men's Small:

Supplies:  6 plastic dollar store placemats, double sided tape (I am sure that any would work, I just had carpet tape on hand) marker for outlining the blocker shape, scissors to cut them out, single hole punch to put a hole in the top.  Optional but helpful, razor knife for cutouts.

That was my project last weekend, this weekend?  Well I think I am back to swatching design elements!  What's on your agenda for the weekend?

~M