So far I’ve written a series of blog posts about knitting stitch structure, and the three paths the yarn can take between two stitches if it isn’t pulled through a stitch that is between them.
This post is going to be different, and it starts with a story.
Continue reading Brioche knitting stitch structure, part 2I’ve talked about basic knit stitch construction in two parts:
I’ve talked about knitted slipped stitch structure, where when a stitch is slipped, the yarn that would otherwise be pulled through the knitted stitch below forms a horizontal bar that can either sit in front of or behind the slipped stitch.
There’s one major remaining straightforward place for that strand of yarn to go when a stitch is slipped, and that’s to sit immediately on top of the slipped stitch. In hand knitting, this structure is called brioche.
Continue reading Brioche stitch structureI didn’t quite manage to finish writing the post about brioche knitting I wanted to post this week, so I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long time: a link post! (Click on the links tag at the bottom of the post to visit my other link posts. No guarantees that all sites linked in my older posts still exist, alas.)
Here’s five things elseweb I think are particularly interesting:
Back when I unvented* the bunny ears back decrease (I’m using the name that another unventor came up with because it seems to be somewhat standard by now), I thought about trying a variant with a yarnover in the middle, but never got around to it.
However, I finally had reason to try it out with the regular bunny ears decrease variant, for my Smile lace. I thought it would be good to write up the result in more detail in a blog post by itself, because I know myself well enough to know that I’m about to embark on playing with it to make other stitch patterns. (There are already ideas lurking in the back of my head.)
A while back, I wrote about a method to make the bottom loopy edge of long-tail cast-on looser. I haven’t ended up using it much, though I do think there are circumstances where it might be the best option. But a little while afterward, someone taught me a trick: after casting on each stitch, set your right fingertip down on the needle to ensure that there will be plenty of space between each stitch. The further apart the stitches are cast on, the stretchier the cast on will be.
Here’s why:
Continue reading Long-tail cast on for tight knittersI’ve been noodling around for years, trying to find a consistent way of producing images that look like stranded knitting that make me happy. I think I’m finally there. I’m going to share an overview of what I do, just because. It’s written for people who already know how to use vector art software (Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, or other programs like that). I explain what I do, but not how I do it.
If you’re not comfortable with that kind of software, Chart-Minder.com is a reasonable alternative. I used it for quite a while. It doesn’t quite work out for the effect I have in mind, but if you want to design colorwork, it’s good for that aspect.
Continue reading How I make pictures of stranded knittingI came up with the DSD double decrease several years ago. It’s a double decrease that is visually an exact mirror of sk2p: work ssk (or any of the other left-leaning single decreases), slip it back to the left needle and pass the next stitch over it, then slip it to the right needle again.
It took me a while to find a name for it. I knew I couldn’t have been the first person to invent it, and I wanted to use the same name as other designers. When I asked on Ravelry, I got a kind answer from Annie Maloney (Ravelry patterns, stitch dictionaries), who also designs lace. She told me that she calls this decrease a double slip decrease because that is what Barbara Abbey called it in her book about lace design. Annie Maloney abbreviates it as DSD, so I do likewise.
I didn’t know if I’d ever come across it again in anyone else’s work, but amazingly, in the last couple of months I’ve come across examples in two books I’ve had for a very long time: my Mon Tricot stitch dictionary and Susanna Lewis’s Knitting Lace, which provides charts for a 19th century stitch sampler and talks about lace design.
Continue reading DSD and other people’s designsI’ve mentioned before that I’m a tight knitter. This doesn’t trouble me much these days; I’ve loosened up enough that I don’t need to struggle to push each stitch along the needle one at a time the way I did when I was a child. I often get the gauge on the yarn label using the recommended needles. (Yes, really, though it’s not as useful as you’d think.) The biggest benefit to being a tight knitter is that I don’t need to knit socks using the thinnest needles.
But there’s times that it used to get a little aggravating, and I’ve realized that the reason those times don’t happen any more is that I’ve worked out various unconscious tricks for dealing with them. One of the things that used to vex me was knitting (or purling) three stitches together: such a struggle to get the needle through all three stitches at once!
Here’s how I loosen them up:This is a continuation of last week’s post about 3-to-2 cable/decreases.
Continue reading on 3-to-2 cable/decrease hybrids, part 2Several years ago, I came up with a decrease because I wanted to decrease a single stitch without having the decrease lean to one side or the other. I thought of it as a centered single decrease, and went looking to see what other people called it because I figured it must exist. And indeed, it was the bunny ears decrease. It can also be described as a 3-to-2 decrease because you start with three stitches and end with two.
I also worked out a way to combine a 1/1 cable cross with a decrease in the same pattern. I’ve since come to realize that it could also be called a 3-to-2 decrease; just a different kind.
I’ve recently had reason to use it again in something else I’m designing, and I thought I’d share the method here. There are multiple permutations and so I’m going to spread them over a couple weeks.
If you know of a name for this class of techniques, please comment or let me know on Ravelry or social media.
Continue reading on 3-to-2 cable/decrease hybrids, part 1
