I don’t have time for a lengthy blog entry today because I am busy with my lovely houseguests, the Knitgirllls. They arrived a bit before noon yesterday and we had a great day of knitting and fun.

Lala is battling with the Angry Birds on my iPad.

Leslie is photographing said battle.

And Lucy is so delighted to have extra peeps to play with she doesn’t know what to do.

We are getting a little knitting done too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have a day of fun planned. time to get started!

This is a shawl design I am working up. I started by casting on 4 stitches and am working  increases to make my work grow. The increases are done in the plain garter stitch body of the shawl, and I am knitting a sideways edging as I go.

There are a couple of advantages to working a shawl in this way. One is that you can use up all your yarn without fear of running out. Before you start, weigh your yarn. Then simply work the shawl, increasing as directed, until you have used up half of your yarn — this will be the center point of the triangular shawl. Now you knit the second half, working decreases to match the increases you did on the first half.

The other advantage is that you don’t have hugely long rows to knit like you do towards the end as you knit a triangular shawl from the top down.

My yarn is Madelintosh Pashmina in the “Posy” colorway. It’s a merino/cashmere/silk blend and has 360 yards per skein and it is a gorgeous yarn! I am using a U.S. size 7 (4.5mm) needle.

And I am working on Wispy as my “at home” project.

There were a couple of questions about my three-needle bind-off, including how to do it. If you do a google search on “three-needle bind-off” you will find all sorts of websites and videos that demonstrate this technique. Here is a list of videos I got from a google search.

Aside: Pretty much every knitting technique that people email me about, asking how to do it, has a how-to video somewhere on the internet. My responses to these emails invariably starts “A quick google search gave me the following resources . . . “  Therefore, I respectfully request that before emailing me to ask me to explain a technique via email, you google it for yourself. Thanks!

I am plugging away on my ribbing portion — think I am slightly less than halfway done with it right now. After I bind-off the portion of the ribbing that gets bound off, I’ll post a photo of the back of Wispy so you can see my three-needle bind-off clearly.

Alrighty! Here in the U.S. we have a three-day weekend coming up: Labor Day weekend, the un-official end of summer. I am off work tomorrow so I can prepare for my weekend houseguests. I’ll pop back in during my weekend fun on Sunday to post Part Five, the last part of the Shetland Pi pattern. See you then!

Lucy sez:

“I’m resting up so I can help Momma tomorrow.”

In a fit of knitting productivity, I got a lot accomplished last night.

I completed the second half of the shrug portion of the Wispy Cardi, steam-blocked both pieces, joined them via a three-needle bind-off, seamed the sleeves, and picked up the stitches around the piece for the ribbing.

Phew!

After steam-blocking the pieces, I am so happy with the knitted fabric for this. The yarn blocked out like a dream and the piece is beautifully soft and drapy. No wonder Lucy loves it.

I successfully mattress-stitched the sleeve seams.

And I did a very careful pick-up of stitches and knit one row of ribbing.

But that’s not all . . .

I did wind up a skein of yarn and started a new commuter project.

Details tomorrow!

Lucy sez:

“The suspense is killing me!”

I am plugging away on the second half of the “shrug” portion of the Wispy Cardi. I’m hoping to finish this half tonight, so I can join the two halves and get going on picking up the stitches for the ribbed portion.

Or I may wind yarn for another project. You never know.

It seems as though I will have plenty of yarn left over after completing Wispy, so Lucy will get something knitted from it. I’m leaning towards knitting her a toy from it, something around the size of her beloved fuzzy rat that she can carry around. A little blanket is a nice idea, but I have my doubts that she would actually use it.

Knitgirllls on the Road!

Those of you in the DC area, a heads up. Leslie and Laura, the Knitgirllls are coming to visit me this weekend. I can’t wait! We have lots of fun stuff planned, and they will likely record a video cast while they are with me. Lucy will be the special guest star.

And on Monday, Labor Day, we plan to hang out for a spell at fibre space in Old Town Alexandria. We will likely get there late morning and be there til early afternoon. Leslie and Laura are going home Monday evening, so we need to leave in time for me to take them to the airport.

So if you want to meet the Knitgirllls and hang out and knit, stop by!

Lucy can’t wait til this weekend — more people to cater to her every whim!

My pi took just about 1400 yards of fingering weight yarn. Unblocked it measured 50″ across and after blocking it grew to a whopping 72″ across. I actually could have blocked it out a little bigger if I had the floor space. As it was, I had to move some furniture to block it to 72″.

So I spent some time knitting on my Wispy Cardi. Here is half of the “shrug” portion of it.

Well, try to picture what it looks like. You may recall that I have reported about Lucy’s love for this yarn. Clearly, she is still enamored.

Rather than do the whole thing in one piece as the pattern directs, I left the first half on a needle and cast on again for the second half. I’ll join them using a three-needle bind-off. One of my issues with designs that are knit sideways is that one cuff edge is cast-on and the other one is bound-off, and they will look a little different. And of course on one side the knitting goes up and the other side it goes down.

Lucy sez:

“That green thing is for me, right?”

ETA: I uploaded a revised pattern as of 3:30pm on Sunday — there was an error in the written out instructions. The chart was correct. This is why I prefer writing patterns with charts only!

This is a really, really big helping of Pi: on the first round you increase to 576 stitches, and then work 51 rounds (48 of them in the lace pattern).

If you think you may run out of yarn, you can do 1 or 2 fewer repeats in this section. Each pattern repeat is 8 rounds.

There is a funky little maneuver in this pattern: in Round 5 you decrease 2 stitches in each of the 9-stitch pattern repeats, so you number of stitches changes in that round. But on Round 6 of each repeat you increase 2 stitches by knitting in the front and back of the 2 yarn-overs you worked in Round 5, so you will go back to the “normal” stitch count then.

Several of you have asked me why I am calling this a “Shetland” shawl. It is because most of the stitch patterns I am using are either traditional Shetland lace or based on traditional Shetland lace. I say “based on” because I didn’t look any of these up in a stitch dictionary before charting them. I just did it out of my head, depending on my memory. So some of them might be slightly different from a traditional Shetland stitch pattern.

And a couple of you have expressed concern that you might not be keeping up with the group with your knitting. Worry not — there is no time limit on this KAL, you can start it any time and finish it any time you like. As it happens, I have finished my pi apart from the bind-off, but of course I’ve had access to all the parts before you did. I wanted to be a little ahead so I could troubleshoot any problems.

Thanks for all your good wishes on the completion of my manuscript. I’ll talk again about this project when it is a bit further along in the process of turning it into a book. At this time I do not have a publication date but based on past experience, I’d say about a year from now.

And I did celebrate in the right order — I purchased these shoes before I had a margarita.

These are Mephisto shoes, the style is called “Raika.” I love Mephisto shoes — they are one of a very few brands that don’t hurt my feet. I got them from Zappos.com, my favorite shoe source.

Several of you thought I needed a new purse, but I just got one at the beginning of the month.

Lucy sez:

“What the heck are you watching?”

This, of course, makes it unsuitable as a commuter project. I just finished a stealth project I have been working on, so needed to cast on for a new commuter project. I did so this morning before leaving for work.

This is the start of the Wispy Cardi by Hannah Fettig. The yarn is Tempted Lovely Grrl, in the “Renewal” colorway.

This is the yarn that Lucy helped herself to last week. I noticed this morning that she is still loving it. As I was casting on before I left for work this morning, she was rubbing up against and loving on the ball of yarn. At one point she tried to pick it up and carry it off, but it was fortunately too heavy for her to manage.

But I can see I’m going to have to put this project away when I am not working on it. No leaving it lying around on the couch, unguarded. I am thinking Miss Lucy needs a toy knit from the leftovers, though.

The pattern calls for a size 6 needle. I got gauge with a size 5, not surprisingly, because I’m using a heavier yarn. My cardi won’t be quite as wispy, but that’s fine with me.

Back to Pi

Your next serving of Pi, Part Four, will be available on Sunday. And it is a huge honking slice of pi, let me tell you! See you all then.

Lucy can’t hardly wait!

And here is the highlight of my day today:

Done and sent to my publisher. I think I deserve a celebratory margarita. Or possibly a celebratory pair of shoes.

Part five is the edging pattern and it can be easily modifed to add or subtract rounds depending on how your yarn is holding out. But as written, there are 20 rounds of lace. At the point I started Part five, I was well into my third skein of Madelinetosh Merino Light — like three-quarters the way through the skein. I will be dipping into my fourth skein.

This yarn has 440 yards per skein, so 1320 yards in three skeins. I estimated 1400 yards for the fingering weight version of the pi so I am right on track here.

If you have less than 1400 yards of fingering weight yarn, don’t worry.  You can do one less repeat of Part Four, and fewer rounds in Part five and you’ll be just fine and the shawl will be plenty big.

Joining Yarn

Linda M. commented:

I was wondering how you are going to join your yarn.  I am using the same yarn and am not sure what to do since it is single ply and superwash.

What I do — and did for this yarn — is to hold both the old and new yarn together for a few stitches and knit them with both yarns. It works great and is not noticeable after you knit those double-yarn stitches. And you don’t have to worry about your join coming undone.

Lucy is resting up for another attack on her fuzzy rat.

Also, something else I keep forgetting to mention is this:

This is Toe-Up Socks in a Box: Essential Sock Techniques and 20 Toe-Up Patterns from Wendy Knits and will be available on November 2, 2010. Just in time for holiday gift-giving.

It’s a box of 20 sock patterns, taken from my two sock books. The patterns are printed on cards so that you can easily slip a card in your knitting bag. There are also cards with step-by-step instructions for techniques.

I’ve got something else knitting-related coming down the pike (she said mysteriously), the manuscript for which is due to my publisher at the end of this month, so this is a very busy week for me, as I plan to get it off my desk by the end of the week. What is it? All will be revealed in the fullness of time!

The Pi at Hand

Debbie asked in the comments if a 39″ needle will be long enough to accommodate all the stitches of the pi after the last increase. The answer is yes, it will. I have all my stitches fairly comfortably on a 32″ needle, and did so for the last pi I knit.

Karen asked:

If you were to do extra repeats in any given section, how many would you do to make it uniform to the other sections?

I’d say you could do a couple extra repeats in any section and keep the uniformity of the design.

Here is Lucy, spending quality time with her fuzzy rat.

Debbie asked:

My question now is how do you decide when to move it to the circular needles?

This depends on the weight of the yarn you are using, needle size, and what length circular needle you are using. That’s helpful, isn’t it?

I moved my pi to a 16″ circular when I had 144 stitches, and to a 32″ circular when I had 288 stitches.

Hannah asked:

I hate to ask this, but I must. What do you do when you discover you have made a mistake or two? For example, I discovered a couple of times that I was short a stitch (probably a YO). I also discovered a couple of times that I had one stitch too many. When I got to the even rounds (all knits), I simply corrected the number of stitches I was supposed to have. Is this OK? Or are you supposed to unknit and reknit? I am wondering if you just make the correction by adding or subtracting a stitch here or there that the pattern may not look right when you are done with the entire project. I hope you tell me to just keep going and not worry!

Keep going and don’t worry!

I think they way you dealt with your anomalies is a good way. Now, if you had a huge honking glaring error that jumped out at you, screaming, you might want to frog.

Barbara commented a little later:

I, like Hannah, have had a character mark or 2 and did not frog to correct since it was merely a stitch or 2 but did run into a boo-boo that was not easily fixable as I began part row 3 of the lace/part 2 so was a big girl and frogged to the start.

Yep, that’s the way to go.

And Pattie said:

Twice on row 7 of chart B I forgot a YO, didn’t find it until row 9 when I didn’t have enough sts. I dropped the sts down and knitted back up just the sections where I flubbed. I used a smaller needle and now I can’t see where the problems were.

I normally count on the plain row to be sure I have the right #-much easier to pick up the YO on the subsequent row than to do it 2-3 rows later.

For part 3 I’m using markers every 18 sts so they don’t drive me nuts!

Counting on the plain rows will keep you sane. and it’s easy to do if you are using stitch markers. Like Pattie, I am using stitch markers every 18 stitches and it is no problem to count along as I knit the plain rounds.

Jeremy said:

Usually when a stitch count is off the problem is a missed yarn over. When I come to that spot on the next round I pick up the yarn right below where the yo is supposed to be and knit it. There is a slight variation in size but not that noticeable and a lot better than frogging all the way back to the mistake.

I do this too. I do miss doing a yarn over from time to time, and it is very easy to just lift it up on the next round.

Dorothy asked:

With stitches growing in numbers and trying to keep it all straight My eyes want to give out. Where in the design is a good place to stop when you need to take a break?

I think you can take a break on any plain round. Make sure you know exactly which round you are on before putting it down.

Mary said:

I have read that superwash does not hold its shape after being blocked but bounces back to whatever it was beforehand and so is not a good choice for lace. Madeline Tosh Light is a superwash, so I am assuming that may not be true when choosing yarn for a shawl.

This is not my experience. I’ve made many shawls from superwash wool and they have all kept their shape beautifully after blocking. My swatch that I knit from the Madelinetosh Light Fingering has not changed at all in the almost two weeks since I blocked it.

Lucy is still keeping an eye on her fuzzy rat.