Deb Gemmell: Top Down, Gauge Free and more

Shawl wedges

In my search for a better fitting shawl I have found that I like long tails. The triangle shawl I like then is no longer a true triangle. With long tails I can wrap it around my neck and have two long tails hanging down. This gives me styling options which if you knew me you would be laughing right now, style, ha!! Ahem, to continue, I could leave the tails hanging (I’m sure this vertical makes me look taller, at least 5’1″). I could also tie the tails under my chin to keep my neck nice and snug.

So long tails … here the standard triangle shawl which starts at the top and has a spine down the centre with increases.

triangle shawl

You can make the tails longer by working increases every row along the top edge. That’s the shawl I was knitting as a sample for our Cabin Fever Retreat in October where we are diving into 3 different shawl shapes, the triangle being one of these.

long tail triangle shawl

Then, just as I was getting into it, I had a thought (this is not always good). Here is my thought. What if I put short row wedges in the shawl. Wouldn’t that make it wider than it is tall and produce longer tails?

triangle shawl w wedges.png

I think this is what is going to happen to the shawl I’m knitting.

triangle with wedges

Here is the first wedge knit in purple. The wedge is only 2 rows deep near the spine of increases and 4 rows deep at the outside. It seems to be rounding the top edge already.

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So I tried a couple more.

The second wedge was shorted rows over 6 rows and the third was over 8 rows. Obviously more rows would make more of a difference.

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I think there is something I could do with this idea. More wedges or just wider wedges? What do you think? Wider wedges would allow space for some patterning which would be cool don’t you think?

I was also definitely sorry I didn’t work the Shawl Tip. Next time.

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It works. I knit it in 100g of worsted weight wool by Twist and Shout Fiber Arts and 75g of Patons Classic Wool.

Thanks for reading,

Deb

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Carry Yarn for stripes

Stripes, don’t you love them? They can be spontaneous and playful. There is no need to plan too far ahead. In fact they are an excellent vehicle for adding variety to a longer project. Use up some of those bits in your stash, bonus.

It is usually necessary to carry the yarn not in use along one edge for stripes. This can cause a tightness along the carry edge. We want to avoid this in a shawl which will be blocked and stretched slightly. I used a really simple method of carrying the yarn along the top edge in this Magic Symmetry Shawl. 20190627_100021_015 - Copy

On the Right Side Row I knit the first stitch with both colours, in this case the grey and the navy. 20190613_131629

Then I picked out the colour I needed to work the row (just drop the other colour) and worked across. On the next row, I worked to the last stitch and knit the two colours together as one stitch. It’s simple. It works. It gives you little blips of colour at the top edge. You can safely carry several colours along an edge this way. 20190627_100216 - Copy

I like the ease of execution.

I found myself still excited to knit one more Magic Symmetry Shawl (#3). Because I felt I was nearing the end of this particular obsession I dug into my stash for something a little thicker. I spent a lovely hour looking at all the possibilities. Decisions, decisions. I chose 2 100g balls of Estelle Worsted. The turquoise was a project that wasn’t working which I took apart. The navy was an single skein. I have no idea what I bought it for but I’m sure it was a good idea at the time. The small ball of grey was left over from some work socks. I thought it might come in handy. magic shawl

I worked the Ditch Magic Rows.

I was not scientific about when to add in the stripes. I just felt like changing it up so I did. Who’s the boss of this shawl anyway? Me, me, me.

I worked 2 row stripes and ditches at the same time. It turned out that one ditch was grey and the next ditch was one of the blues. That was unexpected. I’m going to pretend that it was intentional and that I totally planned to do that the whole time, really I did, aren’t I clever, ha, ha?!

This Magic Symmetry Shawl is going to keep me warm while reading in the evening all winter.

Are you shawl knitting? Aren’t they the perfect summer knitting project? They must be because I just cast on another one with a new idea.

Deb

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Double increase with YO

Where do your “oops” happen? When I make mistakes it’s almost always at the end of the row. The longer the row, the more chance there is that I will completely loose the plot. I spend a lot of time unpicking stitches at the ends of rows to redo what I should have done as I approached the end, frustrating.

That is the explanation for the increase I used on the Magic Symmetry Shawl pattern. I thought it best to do a 2-stitch increase right at the beginning when it’s fresh, instead of a single increase at the beginning and end of the row. Then you can work all those knit stitches with no worries, letting your mind drift to wherever it wants to go.

Double Increase with YO: work [K1, YO, K1] all in the same stitch – increase of 2 stitches. Here is an excellent video by Suzanne Bryan on How to work KYOK.

It makes little consistent holes along the edge.

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This is my favourite of the three Magic Symmetry Shawls I knit.

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I dove into my stash and collected these bits. The greeny-blue ball on the left was left-over from a cowl. The middle and right balls are small balls of sock yarn (I have small feet so have lots of these little balls). They together weighed 117g. Perfect for a scarf.

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Greeny-blue background with Striped Magic Rows in the darker colourful wool.

magic shawl (2) - Copy

When I ran out of the one greeny-blue I just started with the next one. You might be able to catch where the change is.

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Then I thought it could be a little longer so dove into my odd ball stash again and found a tiny sock ball with a little of that same green in it along with those little black and white blips. You know the kind of sock yarn I mean? The blips add a certain something to the outside edge. I ran out of greeny-blue so finished up with the last of the variegated and had only a couple feet of yarn left, that’s all. Whoohoo.

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Thanks for reading. Hope you’re having fun shawl-knitting,

Deb

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Stashbust a Shawl

Every conversation I have with knitters seems to include the word Stashbusting. You, too? Maybe it’s you who gets that conversation started. It usually comes up around opportunities for buying more yarn. Who can resist? But what can you do with some of the stash you already have?

I’m on the same mission. All those odd 50g balls, single 100g skeins, left-over sock bits need to become something wearable.

I had 2 partial skeins of Durasport by Briggs and Little in natural. This one I dyed with food colouring and the other one with tea.

dye guild (2)

Then onto the needles to knit a shawl with both colours. But not just any shawl, I have specific criteria for shawls.

I like my triangular shawls to be wider than they are deep.
I like my shawls to have long tails (equal or close in length) so they are easy to wrap around my neck and stay in place. I’m trying to stifle the urge to staple shawls to my clothes.
I need it to be easy to knit so I can carry it around. Garter stitch is perfect for knitting a stitch or two wherever I am.

The Magic Symmetry Shawl starts at one point and works like many shawls do by adding one stitch to the shawl every 2 rows. Nothing new there. To get the tails to be of similar length so you don’t need a shawl pin (or staples), takes some magic.

To make it easy to know when to knit these Magic Rows they need to be different than the other rows. So I made the Magic Rows in the second colour.

I knit most of the rows in the beige tea wool with the Magic rows in turquoise until the beige ball got small then I switched it up using the turquoise as the main and stripes in beige until I ran out of yarn.

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Any gauge will work for this new pattern Magic Symmetry Shawl. This is the first one I knit. I have a couple more shawls to show you since how can you knit just one?

Cheers and happy summer knitting,

Deb

Any Gauge patterns by Deb

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A New Knit for Little People

Want to try something new, maybe experiment a little (otherwise known as designing)? Why not try it on a little person sweater first. They’re quick and little people are generally not too fussy as long as you choose the right colour.

Karen asked me about adding a stitch pattern to the raglan lines since she wanted to try it herself. I dug around in my UFO pile of experiments and found something I had started. I don’t even know when. Not finished, imagine that!

And now it is. It’s in two colours because I didn’t have any more of the original colour dye lot (shh, don’t tell).

20190629_121942 - Copy — Railroad Top Down on ravelry

The garter stitch raglan lines go down the sides of the Body on the Front …

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and the Back.

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With all this extra patterning, the body knit up in a flash. I’ve added it to the Cabin Fever ravelry store.

Enjoy and Happy Canada Day,

Deb

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Where to Widen Raglan Lines

So I took a chance and decided to Add A Pattern to the Raglan Lines. It looks amazing. The pattern on the raglan lines are perfect. I’m at the bottom of the yoke. After this row it’s really going to look like a sweater and I’m excited. Then it happens, as I put my sleeve stitches on spare yarn I realize my lovely raglan line pattern is half on the sleeve and half on the body and not what I intended. My raglan line pattern is ruined!

Yes, it’s happened to me too. The first time it’s hard to envision the entire process. A little time thinking ahead would have saved me some grief.

Don’t get surprised when you do the Great Divide (separating the Sleeves and Body). Look ahead to the bottom of the Yoke. Where do you want the pattern you’ve added to the raglan lines to end up? Maybe you do want half of it on the Body and half of it on the sleeve. Or do you want the pattern to continue down the sides of the Body?

That’s what I decided to do this time. I wanted to widen the raglan lines so that when I reached the bottom of the yoke and put my sleeve stitches on spare yarn, I would have the raglan patterned stitches on the Fronts and Back.

To do this, at the top of the yoke arrange the raglan lines placing a new raglan marker the number of stitches for the pattern away from the stitches for the sleeve, towards the Front and Back of the yoke.

move raglan lines

The dark lines are where the original Raglan Markers are. Then place a second marker at each raglan line towards the Front and Back, in this case moved over by 5 stitches.

When I place my sleeve stitches on spare yarn at the bottom of the yoke my raglan patterned stitches will remain with the Body.

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Now I can continue down the Body with a nice little pattern down the sides. This is a child-sized sweater so there are no underarm cast on stitches to consider.

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If this was an adult size there would be underarm stitches separating the two sets of garter stitch patterns. More thinking might be required. I’ll leave that to you. Now I need to get going to finish the Body.

Cheers,

Deb

Any Gauge Patterns by Deb Gemmell

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Tunisian, something new to me

In the summer there is lots of time for learning new things so I started with something I’ve been thinking about for some time, Tunisian Crochet. Julia, one of the YarnOverSleepOver retreat teachers, is so enthusiastic about Tunisian crochet that I had to give it a try. She does beautiful tunisian colour work but I jumped in with lace work right away. Do you do this too, jump right in that is?

I started with a complicated shawl pattern which was frustrating and didn’t work the 5 times I tried to get it started. OK, enough of that. Back to the internet to find something simpler that I could actually do. This project was the one that caught my eye. The Chevron Cowl by Sheryl Thies from the Free Tunisian Crochet patterns by Interweave. An excellent first project and ta, da, here it is done in Noro from my stash and a 6.0mm hook (tunisian crochet hooks are crochet hooks with a very long handle).

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tunisian crochet hook

I learned the Tunisian YO and a double decrease working 3 sts together. It’s fairly straight forward once I looked up a couple of videos. There are several out there.

Now on to the Lace. I’m working the Pax shawlette by Aoibhe Ni in fingering weight wool. You can check out her videos too.

Pax tunisian crochet

It starts with a long strip with short rows. Another technique learned. Working the strip is really good practice.

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Now I’m working the lace edge which runs along the bottom. It’s really interesting with YO’s and decreases and short rows.

These are the charts. Aren’t they fascinating?

I know, weird eh? That’s what really got me hooked (pun intended). I love charts and these are most intriguing. I’m not sure I’m doing it exactly right since my lace does not look exactly like the photo but I’m close. Maybe once I block it the holes will be more prominent. It’s a very long strip of lace to work but very, very interesting.

Have you learned something new lately? What is it? Leave me a comment.

Deb

Adding a Pattern to Raglan Lines

K. asked if it was possible to add a pattern in the raglan lines just as I did with the underarm stitches in What to Do with All That Stockinette. She had knit a sweater with patterned raglan lines but didn’t feel she could do it on her own.

Of course you could. Start with something simple and not too wide. I dug around my UFO projects and found one I had started.

Here’s how. Cast On at the top according to the pattern. Stop at the Marker Round (in the round where you are going to place the raglan markers). Do Not knit this round yet. Count across the stitches on your needle and with removable markers, place the markers as the pattern specifies. In the original pattern the marker for the raglan line would have been set up to be worked like this:

The set up would be to have one knit stitch before the marker and one knit stitch after the marker. The increases would be worked on either side of these 2 knit stitches. The Increase Row would read: Knit to 1 stitch before Raglan Marker, YO, K1, slip Raglan Marker, K1, YO.

Now get 4 more markers and move the markers so there will be more stitches at the raglan lines. I like to keep these knit stitches, YO, K1, marker, … extra sts…, marker, K1, YO in place since it makes reading the pattern easier to follow.

Decide how wide you want the new raglan lines to be. My Raglan Markers are 5 sts apart.

Now the Increase Row at each raglan line will read as: Knit to 1 stitch before first Raglan Marker, YO, K1, slip marker, Knit 5 stitches, slip Second Raglan Marker, K1, YO. The increase set up is still the same. The only change is now there are several stitches between the 2 increase stitches at each raglan line.

You can put any number of stitches here depending on how many stitches you have in the Front, sleeve, Back sleeve and Front.

This is a really simple example and I’m sure you can improve on it.

Here is an excellent example of another simple idea where just making the raglan lines wider and staying with stockinette stitch still makes the Sunshine Coast pullover by Heidi Kirrmaier look fantastic.

Top Down Sunshine Coast Heidi Kirrmaier

Are you going to give this a try?

Deb

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Rejuvenate

Does washing sweaters make you antsy? It does that to me. Apparently hovering over the top of a sweater laid out to dry doesn’t help. I’m trying it right now and so far, it’s not any drier than it was 5 minutes ago.

That’s one project mostly done (ends to sew in so not quite finished). What I’m really trying to do is distract myself from the let down I feel once a big project is over. Does finishing a sweater give you this feeling? For me the drying sweater isn’t it, that’s just one sweater in a long line of sweaters and I’m probably going to cast on a new one soon.

The big project I set myself over the last winter was to teach more classes than I ever have before. Sometimes that was 4 knitting classes a week. I’m almost done for the season now, only one more day of teaching to go and I’m almost out of gas.

Teaching is my passion. I love to see knitters try a new technique or knit a sweater that fits but it also takes a lot of energy and I found that quite often there was no time in between to fill up the tank. That’s something I have to take a good look at for next year. I’m taking some time now to fill up by reading (and hovering over a wet sweater) so very little knitting got done this week. I want to be in good shape for my last day of classes on Saturday at Kawartha Yarn and Fibre Festival. There will be a Cabin Fever booth there too.

Since knitting is my job, I turn to reading. I gave myself the luxury of a week of reading and over the weekend I sat in the sun and read all day. Five mystery books, a romance novel and a couple of non-fiction books seem to have done the trick.

Is knitting your go-to to relax and rejuvenate? What kind of projects work the best?

I hope your knitting is filling you up with lots of wonderful energy to tackle the week. Happy knitting and reading,

Deb

Any Gauge patterns by Deb

Cabin Fever patterns and books

Neckband Fix

Yes, the neck openings for the Any Gauge Raglans are BIG. That was the answer for my internet friend who has started on her raglan pullover and was just checking in to make sure she was doing OK. Thanks for the question. You’re on the right track. Later, the neckband is going to make the opening much smaller.

If you cast on loosely, like I do, the neck opening is going to seem very wide. It might even stretch wider as you knit down the yoke. I made the neck opening large so that if you are winging it with your gauge it’s still going to work out. If your gauge is a little tighter than you thought or if you cast on tightly that’s no problem because the neck opening will still be a good size. If you knit loosely or cast on loosely, working the neckband with a decrease round is going to give you the neckband size you want.

Here is my current prototype for a V-neck Raglan with a very large neck opening. With my loose cast on the back of neck causes it to sit way past my bra straps but I proceeded with the yoke knitting anyway.

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I suggested to my friend that she knit a couple of inches on the yoke and then with another ball of yarn pick up the stitches around the neck opening with a needle around 2 sizes smaller than the body-sized needle and work a decrease round as needed. So that’s what I did here even though I’m not finished knitting my sleeves.

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Ahh, I think that’s a big improvement don’t you? It needs blocking but the neckband is good, around 7″ across the back of neck.

This is what I did.

I picked up a stitch for every cast on stitch all the way around the neck with a 3.25mm/US3 circular needle (body-size needle is 4.0mm/US6). Oops you might notice that the pick up needle is 3 needle sizes smaller. I knew I had to bring it in a lot. For this V-neck I worked a 1×1 rib up the front edge, worked a 20% decrease from the centre of one shoulder, across the back of neck to the centre of the other shoulder [K2tog, P1, K1, P1] repeat, and then worked the ribbing as usual to the end of the row. Work the ribbing as set for the desired depth of neckband and Cast Off, Done.

I’m excited to get this finished now I have the neckband done. It makes it seem so much closer to being finished even though I still have more sleeve knitting to do.

Thanks for reading,

Deb

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