Decreases in K2 P2 Rib

TA DA! The actual knitting took about 20 minutes. Figuring out what to knit about three weeks. It took me nearly 40 attempts to get this right. There are people who say that dyslexia is an excuse, but I'm sure my head doesn't work like other peoples! This pattern has one star for easy in the Rowan book, and lots of people said it was a 'straightforward knit.' I seem to have spent months struggling and getting stuck in various places. With reversing the shaping for the right side of the front, despite help from Ravelry, I was making several classic errors.
I wasn't considering all the data:
1. If you decrease a single stitch in a double rib, you must end up with an odd stitch - does it matter if that stitch is before or after the decrease? Yes it does. Could it possibly be different depending which side of the fabric you are working? Oh yes, it certainly could. Should you therefore write down whether you work a stitch and then the decrease or the other way round? Absolutely. So that was one learning point.
2. Does that pattern suggest that you start a new set of ribs up the side of the armhole? Oh yes, if you follow the instructions for the sleeve and back, that's exactly what you get.
3. Have you modified your own knitting in any way that might conflict with normal instructions? Taken up Lucy Neatby's alternative purl, for example? Because my knitting was very uneven, I sent off for one of Lucy Neatby's DVDs that promised to examine the 'mysterious 2-row gully'. (That's the effect that makes the back of stocking stitch look like a ploughed field and the front like a half-trained monkey knit it.) She explains why it happens, and shows you how to solve it. I think this may be what some people call combination knitting, but you form the purl stitch differently so that the yarn doesn't travel so far and it doesn't get a chance to pull loose. On the DVD, Lucy shows how you make your decreases differently to allow for the fact that your purl stitch is now seated differently on the needle. I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THIS VITAL FACT. I didn't even try to work out what I should do. I simply reseated the stitches that were about to be decreased.

The buttonholes deserve mention - they are Lucy Neatby's buttonhole for k2 p2 rib, and they are much, much nicer than even Maggie Richetti's Neatest Buttonhole Ever which I used in Cloud one and mashed up the rib somewhat.

I sewed the side seams last night, and knew a moment's panic when it looked as if it wasn't going to fit, but adding sleeves changes it a lot, so I think I'll go ahead and set them in. I might pull back the shoulders and short row them - because the rib is uneven - some lines of four or one at the top and there's a different number of stitches, I thought it might be easier to sew the shoulders, but it looks so messy.

Cloud and Butterfly

My knitting is very poetic this week! This is the back view of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket. She does call it a jacket, not a shrug or bolero. Odd little beast, isn't it?

Cloud is causing me grief. Even with help from the Internet I'm lost in the thicket of reversing P2tog Tbl and so on. Decreases in K2 p2 rib are hard. I had a look back through my scribbles and I've done it at least 30 times. I got it exactly right last night, then smoothed out the left and right fronts for a final check and DOH! You guessed it - two left fronts. At the moment I've got the front right and the arm wrong. I might have one more go. I must be able to do this. The same way I must be able to parallel park a car with a caravan attached behind it? Maybe it's not going to happen. There's something about reversing anything that makes my head spin wildly.

No Cable Needles were Harmed in the Making of this Swatch

Actually, it wasn't meant to be a swatch, it was meant to be my third attempt at the cabled Aran shrug, but I was concentrating so hard on knitting backwards and cabling without a needle that I got one stitch out somewhere and I couldn't get the next panel straight. I've been playing with it while waiting to hear back about Cloud 3, and now I have help with those pesky decreases, it's time to go back to Cloud anyway. So I cast it off, called it a swatch and threw it in the washer with yesterday's muddy gaiters to see how the yarn would stand it. That large cone was 50p. Two strands held together make a good Aran weight yarn. From the cone, the yarn is a bit stiff and smells faintly of machine oil. Washed it softens nicely and smells only of washing powder. It doesn't smell of wool, burns brightly and leaves a blobby residue rather than ash, so I think it must be mostly artificial fibre. However it's very flexible when wet and has felted slightly, so it might have a bit of wool in it. When I make the shrug, I'll hand wash it, I think, to be on the safe side.

I've just about got the hang of cabling without a needle now - the trick is to drop the stitches off the needle, freeze, and then stop breathing until the cable is done and the stitches are safely back on the needle. Or in other words, keep everything as still as possible while working. Knitting, or rather purling backwards to do the bobbles is hard. My poor head goes into meltdown at the very idea. At the moment it takes three times longer because I have to turn the work around, see where the yarn and needles should be for each step of the process, then turn the work back and have a bash. Then I realise I've got it all wrong. Undo it. Start again. Just once or twice have I managed to purl the last stitch of the three bobble stitches backwards, but by the time I've knitted three I've forgotten again. Never mind. It'll come. It's not that I'm planning to knit that many bobbles, but think how useful knitting backwards will be for knitted-on edges.

Butterfly Wings

Look what a difference needle size makes. These are the arm openings on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket. I'm putting I-Cord around the openings and also using the three-needle I-cord cast off across the shoulders. (As the name implies, that's having live stitches on two needles and using the third needle to work I-cord - tricky, but not impossible.) I didn't want the trim to look baggy and ethnic, so I overcompensated with 3.5 mm needles for the I-cord. It did look neat, but it pulled in the armhole too much. This could be a useful trick to remember if I ever make a sleeveless vest with baggy armholes. I frogged it, steamed the yarn to get out the kinks because I didn't want a knot and finished the garment using 4.5 mm needles. It actually fits me! And there are no major errors in it!! Definitely time to do that modest but triumphant jig. Do I like it, though? Ah, yes, slight problem there. It's an odd little beast, this butterfly jacket. I'll get Andy to take some pictures of the back and you'll see what I mean. It's quite cute, but the 'wings' leave a very open bit on the back - it might work in summer, but leaves an odd draughty spot in winter.

Rowan haven't replied re my reversing shaping query on Cloud. Maybe my email went astray. Maybe the knitting guru is on leave. Maybe they are not speaking to me because I haven't bought the yarn yet. I suddenly remembered how nice knitters on Ravelry were and fired off an email to a knitter who'd finished a beautiful Cloud. I had an answer the same day. How cool is that? I'm going to try the left front again tonight.

Incidentally, I drove myself nuts last night trying to post some photographs on Ravelry. They use Flickr, and Blogger use another system. I once managed to log in and create a Flickr account, but it wouldn't let me back in. It wants me to use my Yahoo ID, but my computer will only show a dialogue box with my broadband ID showing. I did link the relevant post to each garment. Until Ravelry add a bit that lets you upload easily from your computer, that will have to do.

Butterfly or Sea Creature?

This is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket - I hope! The two fronts have just been united and I'm knitting up the back. I'm not keen on the yarn - it's a big ball of Robin I bought from the market when I first started knitting. I prefer vintage thrift shop finds to cheap acrylic, and don't buy new acrylic now but it doesn't matter. Some deep pessimism tells me that this is going to be a test garment rather than something I'll actually wear, so it won't matter any more than it mattered that I knit a 50's 'Ladies Jacket' in vile green Robin double knit yarn. It would have been unwearable whatever it was knitted in.

Shrugging off Defeat

I tried on the red shrug again this weekend. It's too small, there's no way around it. Incidentally, I was cross with Andy because when I said that I needed someone smaller than me to give it too, he mentioned a group of 'ladies' that I interact with but he's never met and said would any of them like it. 'Oh no,' says I. 'They are all large ladies. They say things like 'How do you stay so lovely and slim.' And Andy snorted into his dinner. Snorted! I'm not a skinny little smoker any more, but I'm not a size that warranted that snort!

Well, the hunt for a small shrug wearer continues, and I just might have to knit one more. The small size so far as arm length goes, because that's just right, but the large size for width.

Death of a Butterfly

I knitted Portuguese last night. The plan was to knit Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket to practise the Portuguese method. The purl stitch is easier, so I planned to do one jacket in purl and one in knit and be proficient by the end of making both garments. In fact, I only got to the end of the third set of short rows, then I stopped to look at my knitting. Ugh! Nasty. Lumpy, wobbly, beginner's knitting. And then I put my brain into gear. I've been mad to try Portuguese or Arabic or 'thumb as a shuttle, yarn around the neck knitting' since I read Maggie Richetti's 'Knitting in Plain English.' A wonderful book, by the way, but in it she states clearly that Portuguese knitting is faster than Continental knitting. 'It's the fastest of all,' she states. She was wrong. She has to be - even for the purl stitch, you have to insert the needle into the stitch to be worked and then move your thumb to bring the yarn ready to be worked (that's how the yarn is fed onto the needle by the way, the flick of the thumb has to be strong enough to pull up a section of yarn), then you dip and dive your other needle and make the stitch. That's three movements. Continental is two. The Portuguese knit is even slower, because you have to put in your needle, twist your needle up to compensate for the fact that the yarn is in front not the back, and then move your thumb and make the stitch. That's four movements. Continental is two. So, as of this moment, I am putting Portuguese knitting back on the shelf. I'm glad I tried it, because I'd hate to find out at the end of my knitting life that there was a faster method and I'd missed out on it, but it is not worth putting in the several month's practice it would take to produce nice even knitting.

If you have never learned Continental and want a second method to knit with a colour in each hand or whatever, I think Portuguese might be worth considering because so far as physically holding the needles and yarn goes, it was much easier to learn than Continental. I did not like having the yarn behind my neck, and although the pin is good, it makes holes when you pin it to your shoulder, so you can only use it if you have old clothes on so that's something else to think about. I also think it would be easier to knit without looking in Portuguese knitting because the yarn feeds from the front, so anyone with vision problems or a serious TV habit might find it useful. Finally, it was easier on the hands because the neck or the pin take the strain of tensioning the yarn rather than the fingers, so anyone with hand problems might find it worth trying out - but for good old simple speed, Continental wins the day.

Andy was deep in Match of the Day on the new TV but he very heroically got out the stopwatch function on his phone, and over 34 stitches, here's what we found:
Portuguese (purl - the fastest stitch) 1 minute 12 seconds. English knit (throwing) 1 minute 3 seconds. Continental knit (picking) 53.5 seconds.
I am not practised in Portuguese, so if I stuck at it, I'd guess it would probably end up at around the same speed as English style knitting, which I've done for a long time. I was surprised that the improved speed difference of Continental wasn't greater - but observation (between goals and good bits of football) by Andy solved the mystery: It takes three times longer to settle the yarn in the left hand than to settle the yarn in the right hand ready to work with the other two methods. That's interesting. For short row of stitches, it would probably work out the same speed to use the English style because the slower stitch formation would be balanced out by the faster yarn settling. While working in Continental, it would definitely be worth learning to knit backwards for bobbles and edging strips. And as we all know, once you have the yarn set up and get going - a sweater in the round, for example, Continental stitches just fly.

So, the Portuguese Butterfly goes to the bin. I started one in Continental, and although it looks much neater, when it is put on top of the Portuguese butterfly see how much smaller the Continental sample is? I need bigger needles to get the right size.