9/1/08 – How about Handspun, Odd-Balls and Garter Stitch?

A few days ago I showed off a simple scarf idea developed for my daughter, made with just the chain stitch in crochet.  But what if all you know is how to knit… meaning, just the knit stitch.  We all start that way.  Many of us (me! me!) like to have a simple garter project going, for those times when we just need to knit but don’t want to think (or want to be simultaneously talking, or watching something).  I call this my Little League knitting, but I digress…

It’s not all that hard to come up with garter stitch projects, actually.  My heroine, Elizabeth Zimmerman, taught us all the great versatility of this humble stitch.  But maybe you also have a lot of small random yarn leftovers stuffed in the nooks and crannies of your house… or perhaps you have an assortment of little bits of handspun, either beginner yarn, or those pesky sample skeins.  Did you get overly enthusiastic about sock knitting and have a gazillion skeins calling for size 2 needles?  Lets throw it all in pile and make something of it, shall we?

Start making piles by color, or by colors that go well together (check a favorite printed fabric for inspiration).  Don’t bother with the weight of the yarn, although do give some consideration to whether or not the fiber will wash/wear well together, and slip those poor bedraggled skeins of discount-store acrylic into the charity box while you’re at it.   When you’ve got a nice little pile of yarns that seem to go together, get out a big fat long circular needle and cast on.  I used a size 15, and cast of 100 stitches for a scarf and 150 for a shawl.  In both cases, I left a long tail on both edges, and changed yarn every row.  Yes, EVERY row.  You could plan a color progression, grab balls at random, or however you like.  I tried to frame bulky yarns with thinner ones so the bulky ones stood out, and I freely mixed handspun with commercial yarns.  You can double or triple yarns if you want, but the yarns on the different rows don’t have to be near the same thickness for the item to work – in fact, the different weights add visual interest.   Here is what resulted:

That’s a shawl – all animal fiber yarns, some handspun, and weights between lace and bulky.  Here’s the same idea done as a scarf:

As you can see, I tied groups of yarn ends together with an overhand knot to make the fringe.  Oh, and another trick to help stabilize the edges as I knitted it: on each row, I knit the second stitch from the edge first, then the first stitch.  You could also twist the first couple of stitches, or even up the tension in your edges and tie the fringe every few rows.  Combine yarns to your heart’s content, and people will think you used some fancy designer yarn instead of your old leftovers.

I made these a while back, but I though this would be a good day to share the idea.  Summer is Officially Over (though the equinox is still ahead) and as we all get back to school/work and pack away the swimming suits, it’s time to look ahead to winter, and the holidays.  Surely someone on your gift list would benefit from a scarf, shawl, lap blanket or afgan made it this technique?  And if you use up all those odd-balls in your stash, it will be easier to justify buying more yarn/spinning fiber for the new year.

Ak – did I say the words “new year” on Labor Day??

8/29/08 – Melissa the Scarf! (Stockinette Edge Treatments)

Another knitter/etsy seller has named a series of scarves after me!  How cool is that!  How it happened:  we are both in etsyFAST (Fiber Arts Street Team), a group of sellers who support and challenge one another to make our shops the best they can be.  This seller posted in our yahoogroup about trouble she was having with the edges of stockinette-based scarves rolling.  I posted a number of suggestions to fix the problem (which I will share with you below, with pictures).  The seller is iwunder, and here is the link to the first scarf in the series: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=14139850

Now, for those tips.  Stockinette by its nature will curl to the back on the sides, and up or down on the top and bottom.  Sometimes with wool you can block it so the effect goes away temporarily, but it’s inherent in the structure of the stitches.  One of the most common ways to make a piece of stockinette lie flat is to border it with a few stitches of a more stable stitch all around the edges.  Garter stitch, and garter-based patterns like seed stitch, are what is usually recommended.  It works great, because just as stockinette’s nature is to curl, garter stitch just naturally lies perfectly flat.  So when you border stockinette with garter stitch, it will lay flat like this:

You can get the same results with seed stitch, which may make an edge more to your liking:

Usually with garter or seed stitch, you use at least three stitches in that pattern at each end, and 4-5 rows at the beginning and end of the scarf/blanket or whatever you’re making.  You can make it wider if you want, but less than three stitches and you may still get curling.

Now, here are a couple of other ways that you can get stockinette to lay without uncontrolled curling.  The first way is to put an intentional ladder three stitches in from the edge.  Knit your stockinette, then before you cast off, drop the fourth stitch from each edge and let it run down the length of the knitting:

Once you’ve done that, the edge should look like this (front and back shown):

If you are using wool, mohair, or a fuzzy yarn so the stitches lock into one another, that’s all you need to do.  The ladder is decorative, and it should stay put.  However, if your yarn is at all slick, this ladder can fill in over time as the yarn shifts and stitches loosen.  So, before you use this edge, you should knit a swatch, wash it like you will the finished object, carry it around in your pocket for a few days and see if it will work with your particular yarn.  For those yarns that reabsorb the ladder, or to make sure your edge effect stays put, you need to do more. One solution that might work is to twist, or knit into the back of, the stitches on either side of the stitch that will be dropped, to stabilize it.  But another solution that I prefer is to do an eyelet edge.  Here is a picture:

 

In this edge treatment, the curl is confined to the three edge stitches, which are secured by a vertical row of eyelets, so it ain’t going nowhere!!  It’s easy to do:  on even numbered rows, you knit three stitches, do a yarn over then knit two together.  At the end of the row when five stitches remain, you knit two together, yarn over, knit three (reversing the shaping – you can use other decreases if you wish to exactly mirror the sides).  The three edge stitches curl, and then the curl stops.  Your edge gets a nice finish resembling I-cord, and the edge of eyelets are a nice decorative touch. This is a great edge treatment for stockinette-based lace patterns, and  the back looks good too:

Now, what if you really really want the edge of your stockinette item to look as much as possible like stockinette, and still lay flat?  Is there hope?  Well, yes, there is – our next contender, the slip stitch edge.  This is the dark horse – rarely mentioned, and a little more confusing, but the results are pretty nice:

Do you want to know how to do it?  Like the others, it’s worked on the three edge stitches, but this time over four rows:

Row 1: knit one stitch, slip next stitch to right needle without knitting, knit one stitch.  Knit rest of row to last three stitches, repeat k sl k.

Row 2: purl

Row 3: slip one stitch, knit one, slip one.  Knit to last three stitches, repeat

Row 4: purl

Repeat these four rows for your edges.  The slipped stitches get a little twist on the even numbered rows which helps hold the curl in check.  These edge stitches still curl around, but with an interesting effect, in that the edge gets a nice row of stitches.  Here’s how the back and side edges look:

You can do the slip stitch pattern for the first few rows and for several rows before casting off, just remember that the slipped stitches are off-set from one another on rows 1 and 3 (so row 1 is Sl, K, Sl, K, etc., and row 3 is K, Sl, K, Sl…).  This makes a particularly firm edge. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little edge tutorial!   Thanks, iwunder, for the inspiration to swatch it all up and write it all down!