stitches | From the Purl Side

This was my Audrey last Saturday:

A weeks worth of holiday knitting. Not too bad. I was really motoring along in downtime and enjoying it.

Gudrun‘s Audrey is a really quick – easy and satisfying. Another recommend. The lace would be a perfect beginner lace project -so simple to produce and yet so pretty.
Two micro-mods only. No waist shaping and I decided to change the seam from a purl stitch to garter to test out how a single garter stripe looks after seeing a beautiful jumper which is being knit in a stitch that alternates these rows with stockinette (in German called Säumchen…not sure what it is called in English), and I wanted to try it out!

Very pretty, no? I will definitely use this in future for texture as it is so easy and subtly pretty.

I got a little bogged down on the shape of the short row sleeve caps. I was given a bit of a kindly heads up from the secret benefactor who gifted me the jumper (thank you again!) that the caps were a bit sharp.

So before attempting my first knit down sleeves with short row shaping thought I would do a bit of research. What I kept seeing the projects were bumpy shoulders like the one below in the promo shot:

One person had modified her rows to be less steep and had given brief project notes on her mods , but I just couldn’t figure it out. I hadn’t done the technique before, myself, so was not sure of what she meant! Poo! So I took a bit of time and used the handy free charting programme Sconcho to work it out.

This is what the pattern short rows looked like, visually, at the top. My simple mod is below. (aren’t the little charts pretty?)

In the images you can easily see how the arc of the shoulder is rounder in the second with my stitch modifications. This seems to have done the trick for this yarn. In future I might try a little wider yet on the top row, starting with 12 sts and working down.

For those who prefer text instructions:

Row 1: knit 5 sts past shoulder marker, w&t
Row 2: purl across stitches just worked and 5 sts past the stitch marker on other side, w&T
Rows 3-11: repeat rows 1&2, working 2 stitches past the w&t on each row, w&t (3 sts past including the w&t)
Rows 12-: drop down to only 1 sts past w&t until all but underarm sts have been worked.

You can get Sconcho at SourceForge for your own charting needs. I find it very useful for charting out stitch patterns that have been supplied in text only and getting a visual on what is going on.

Oh. And did I mention it is free? ;-D
(I’m not affiliated with SourceForge, by the way! Just very grateful.)

I have just run across the cable stitch I am using in my Toasty. I initially plucked it out of a vintage knitting pattern I found at a charity shop on the Isle of Wight this summer, but didn’t know what it was called.

Get this – it is called ‘Little Pearl’! What a coincidence!

I am referring to the singular cable, for all I know, multiples might have another name,yet!

It is a super simple cable:
Row 1 lt, rt (left twist, right twist)
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: rt, lt (right twist, left twist)
Row 4: Purl

Here is something kind of interesting…if you do it on a purl ground (or with a purl before the cable, as I am above) it is also sometimes called the ‘Raised Circle’ cable. Wonder if this was just someone in the past naming it as a new stitch, without realising it had already been named?

Here is the difference:

Little Pearl/Raised Circle below

Click on Johnny Vasquez’s image above to view a video from New Stitch a Day demonstrating the stitch (breathe deeply through all the ads!).

Here it is butt up against each other, with no spacing in between, which causes a honeycombe effect and called ‘Ray of Honey’:

There are some great stitches and video demos on this site where these last 3 images are from. Definitely check it out! There are some great interviews with designers, as well.

I am definitely turning into a stitch nerd. It is so fascinating being able to deconstruct stitches and figure out how they are made…and contemplate how you could do something different with them.

Nerd-o-rama.