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.

Cloud Lace

I am getting better at knitting lace! Cloud has a 36 row repeat lace trim around the bottom, and I spent at least a week weeping over my first attempts at it. So, how do you get better and faster at knitting lace?

The thing about lace (like most knitting) is that if you are in the right place and you do the right stitch, then it all works. If (like me) you are a bit slap dash and frequently get one stitch in a row wrong, then all is lost! You have to know where you are, and you have to know exactly what goes next.

The first essential is to know where you are. I tried several systems - from charts to writing out the lace pattern stitch by stitch, and what works best for me at this stage, is a 'lace book' written out on a document set up for labels in the word processor. When I lived in Japan, you could buy study aids which were pieces of card on a keyring - they would have been perfect for a lace book, because you could turn each row over when you've finished, but British stationers have never heard of such a device and it's a long way to go for a study aid, so I've settled for printing out the labels and pushing a coin onto each label when I've finished knitting the row. I've written out the instructions for each row, and also added the number of stitches I should have at the end of each row, as a quick way of checking accuracy. I've also found a fairly plain row, and that one I'll knit in a red lifeline each time I come to it.

The next thing that makes a huge difference is good tools. I always thought the saying 'a bad workman blames his tools' was promoted by a stingy boss! What about the skill of the people who produce fine tools? They deserve kudos and deep thanks. Addi needles must have had thousands of hours of skilled design and manufacturing spent upon them. I don't like long needles, so I started using my Addi double pointed needles, which were just the right length, but the ends are too blunt. My ordinary Addi needles are too long (80 cm) and also the tips, while fine for most knitting, just don't dig in to K2togs made into yarn overs the way they need to - so I switched to 60 cm Addi lace needles. Utter perfection! The cord is short enough not to get in the way, even working on a tiny lace strip. Long, tapered tips slide under the twisted K2togs and make them a breeze. There are other brands of lace needle as well - and I mean to try them all eventually, but I wouldn't even consider tackling a lace pattern without proper lace needles from now on.

And the third thing is knitting lace Continental style instead of English. Once I'd got the right needles and a tracking system in place, I felt confident enough to switch the yarn from my right hand (throwing it) over to my left hand (picking it) and what a difference in speed that makes! I estimate that I can knit at least three times faster when I use Continental style knitting. I'm so glad I stuck with it. It took me a good few months to learn - the purl stitch especially was tricky at first. I had to use my finger to coax the yarn around the needle, but now I have the knack of just catching the yarn with the needle tip and it's real easy to do.

I found the perfect quote to describe me and my knitting today. Winston Churchill said: 'Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.'