Idiot Lace

This post is going to be about yarn overs. Yarn overs are the easiest part of learning to knit lace. You simply wrap the yarn over the needle.

I've been doing this in a counterclockwise direction and am aware that eventually some lady will tell me straight from her Midwestern hip that I've been doing them wrong all this time. It seems that sensible people would wrap yarn in a clockwise direction, but, since I find knitting to be mostly counter-intuitive, I'm sort of enjoying working out my anxieties in a physical way.

So, every time I wrap the yarn around the needle I wrap it in a counterclockwise direction. And I snicker about that. So many metaphors for Life could come out of this: "turning back time", "counterclockwise", "ass backwards" and "just the plain old wrong way to do it, stupid." And sometimes I wonder if Australian and Brazilian knitters wrap their yarn clockwise just because they live below the Equator. I've heard that toilets naturally flush in the opposite direction, why can't Yarnovers swirl in parallel with the movement of gravitational vortices as well? Hmm, I wonder if Norah Gaughan considers this in her designs?

So a yarn-over makes a hole that's not an accident. It adds a stitch for the next row. That's useful for removing stitches down the needle.

An intentional hole. Imagine that. Not a mistake. I told you that yarn-overs are easy. Problem is, the mistakes then seem to show up in the designs for which yarnovers are used.

Yarnovers make lace lacy along with gathered stitches elsewhere in the fabric. Some knitters can make beautiful patterns that are a combination of 40 weird stitches wide going in both directions and up and down in rows as well. When finished, these are called "Museum Pieces." Well, knitters, humble anonymous women that they generally are, simply call them "Heirloom Pieces" which they want to pass down to their children and to their children's children and on and on.

Point is, if you can pay attention to what hole you're on, you're able to concentrate really well and you'd probably test right off a psychology chart that rates IQ. Also, probably nothing else stressful is going on in your life because when something goes wrong in the knitting, trying to fix it is like trying to put together a Rubic's Cube. I wonder if statistically more professional Mathematicians own "Heirloom" pieces that have been passed down to them by their brilliant, humble and repressed Grandmothers who had no where else to go with their high IQs.

What I'm going to say about Yarnovers now is anti-social. I wonder if maybe Mathematicians are naturally handicapped in their lack of understanding about good design. Truth is, they make clothes that are impossible to wear. The holes show through to one's skin and underwear. Yarn overs in clothes offer the x-ray vision to see what's underneath those skirts that men always crave in the movies. Right now, I'm looking at an advertisement by a yarn/pattern company that's selling a lace top that's totally exquisite. Not only in a lace pattern full of yarnovers draped right over the model's perky 19 year old breast, but a string of beads is criss-crossing over the breast as well so your eye goes straight to the yarn-overs. And, I swear to God, the spot where her nipple would be is photoshopped in white. Those white holes are all I could pretty much see after I picked up the magazine from my mailbox today. I can't help it, I keep looking for something taboo and I keep realizing that this is probably an effective way to get a date. If a girl walks around in stilletos and high heels, she's asking for it. But this girl is more likely to get raped, in my opinion. The hooker in the heels probably has a can of mace or a knife to defend herself. Lace girl has no place to hide anything, a perfect victim.

Lace pattern? Talent and IQ of knitter? Hours of hard work and years of experience? Beautiful drape? It's all lost on me as I try to keep staring into the wearer's eyes while concentrating on figuring out why she would wear such a thing in public? What did she do with her nipple?

So there, that's my idea about yarn overs. They are holes, people should intentionally put them in places where people can concentrate on how lovely they are, like on a shawl or around an ankle.

Designers should also offer alternative stitches for those of us who need filler, or caulking, as it were. They could sell more patterns that way.

Increases and Decreases Tutorial

Through the help of Ravelry I've found a great Tutorial for learning how to do Increases and Decreases and also for explaining the difference between the different types of Increases and Decreases. Patterns often don't explain which ones to use because I guess this is redundant information for people who already know how to knit. It's been a source of great confusion for me. The Tutorial shows a picture of a sampler with matching sets of Increases and Decreases. I've already made the one that was included in the first edition of the Knitting for Dummies book. It wasn't included in the 2d edition.

http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/increases

Will have to check for a similar tutorial that explains which type of Selvedge edge to use where.

I wish there would be a book available some day which has tutorials like this. It's great to be able to physically practice the stitches while comparing them. The book would be especially cool if examples of real sweaters are used. Some of the Increases that are used in sweaters and shawls are very ornate and beautiful and can make a garment a zillion times more attractive.

There are other great Tutorials in the 1st Ed. of Knitting for Dummies. There is a Short Row tutorial in Maggie Righetti's book called Knitting in Plain English. I believe she also includes a tutorial for making a child's sweater with all the basic techniques that are used. I've found great tutorials in a book called The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee. It might be more fulfilling to make a child's sweater than the ugly tube thing that's offered in this book but since I haven't tried either I don't really have an opinion about this. There's even a whole Tutorial on making bobbles.

Why Men Don't Knit

If you're going to knit you must be able to ask for help. Men are said to not be able to ask for Directions while driving. This might be because men can not ask for help, but I think it might be because men are dyslexic and can't read directions. I think I'm in the category with the men and I am going to have to learn to compensate for what is presumably a huge neurological defect in either my brain or my soul or my will. Once I start going all I can think about is getting there. I don't want to stop and figure out why I'm not there yet.

The last 3 projects that I've completed are basically unwearable because, although I could see that something didn't look right, I was on turbo charge about wanting to get the thing done and couldn't stop to re-read the directions. If the thing you are knitting looks wrong, then something is wrong. Stop. Re-read. Go for a walk. Re-read. No, really, stop, and figure out what is wrong. The ladies in the yarn stores can pick up a stitch 5 rows down but they can't go back and re-knit "30 every other row that should have been purled when it was knitted." And you're making all of womankind look bad when you keep doing this. We might as well be men if we can't re-read and fix our mistakes.

First direction that I didn't follow is to use the yarn that is called for in the pattern. These yarns are always too expensive or not available. I will spend weeks shopping for a substitute yarn. This takes twice as long as it takes for mail order if the yarn stores don't have what I need. I will also spend weeks and much gas traveling to all yarn stores in order to find the substitute yarn. I will get mad at all the Yarn Store ladies who won't let me just look because they need to interrupt my decision making abilities with their need to help me. And if I asked for yarn they would find me a decent yarn. It would be yarn that suits their tastes and not mine. They would at least be friendly with me when I leave the store.

So I made the Norah Gaughan Jyri scarf from her Berroco Book I. This is a project that was very advanced for me but I persevered and made it with only a few mistakes which I still can't see. Boy, was I proud. I wore it for 2 days. I chose a yarn that was half Alpaca, though, when the yarn called for was pure Merino, merino with a special twist that holds the stitch form while lightly not pulling it down into a misshapen mess. The Alpaca is beautiful, much more beautiful than the Merino (and it was on sale and much cheaper) but is too heavy and the scarf curls into a tube. Oops.

Before that I made a Beret which was offered for free from BlueGarter's webside Bluegarter.org. It's called the Columbia Beret. It turned out really cute. It fits, it slouches, I made it my own by designing a bobble thingee for the back. All along I noticed an odd jog in the stitches between where the garter stitch band was and where the yarn-overs started in the main body. All I could think at the time was "Hmm, that's odd." That's the only thought I gave to it because I was on turbo charge to finish the beret.

So I finish the Beret. I'm wearing it. I'm sort of showing off. Then I start looking at those weird stitches. A week down the line I realize that I must have knit the headband, set the thing down, and when I came back to pick it up and knit the main part of the hat I started knitting in the wrong direction. Garter Stitch doesn't have a right or a wrong side. I knew that but who would have thought he/she/it could have made such a stupid mistake?

So, like Jaws, I continue to troll the free patterns on the Internet looking for more awesomely cute patterns to screw up. The last one was the Mary Jane Slippers offered at the Purl Bee. There's nothing more awesome than these. There's no written directions more hand-holding than this pattern.

I made the Slippers with sale yarn from Michael's. Lion Brand Cotton Ease. Pink and Orange. Cute. If I use cheap yarn then I won't have performance anxiety and will be able to think straight. Right?

The Purl Bee website is an awesome thing. If they call out in their pattern to "pick up stitches" they show in photos how to do it. They give tutorials for all the techniques listed in the pattern. So I now know how to do attached i-cord and kitchener stitch. (Well, I'm working on Kitchener Stitch, mine looks a little knotty and splitty). But, what's the use of learning new techniques if you're still performing old tricks?

I get the slippers finished except for the strap on top and finally question why the upper parts of the shoes don't look quite right. I've been noticing this all along. And although I re-read the pattern I didn't re-read it correctly until everything was all bound off. All bound off! While knitting the uppers you're supposed to knit a decrease row and purl the entire next row. No matter how much I read the pattern I didn't see the line that said "repeat the last two rows." I read it as keep knitting decrease rows. I knew that was wrong. It looked wrong. I've knit hats and I know that there's a decrease row followed by a 2d plain row. And the slippers fit funny. But, still, I had to wait to see that one squirrely little line until after everything was all bound off. Done. (Well done considering what knots my Kitchener Stitches ended up being.) Those Directions could not be better or more clearly written too. I can literally mess up anything.

So, I now have 3 funny looking projects completed. A grey scarf, a white hat, and some sherbet colored slippers. And I have to tell people all about a fictitious 11 year old niece who makes these things for me.

Yardage

It takes less yards of fat yarn to make a similar thing in a thin yarn.

Books that have projects for one skein of yarn are a great place to study this phenomenon.

There are 3 books in the series called One Skein Wonders by Judith Durant. The books are divided into Chapters by yarn thickness. The projects are made with different types of yarns. One can get a great sense of how much of what it takes to make what. I spent probably a month going through the first book in this series to match project with yarn thickness with yardage with needle size. I never made anything out of the book yet although the directions look really great for beginners (techniques explained).

I have started but not completed two projects in Leigh Radford's book called One Skein. That's where I found the garter stitch fingerless mitts with the dropped stitch detail. I also tried to make the Baby Bolero which would have turned out super cute (needs two skeins of the yarn I used, Mission Falls Cotton, awesome, but less yardage per skein than the yarn recommended) if I had known how to sew pieces together. The book isn't really set up for beginners and doesn't explain a lot of techniques. Turns out when you seam knitted clothing that's made out of thick yarns you either use thinner yarn or you split the yarn (if it's splittable). The seams were too bulky to even think of forcing a baby to shove his arm through. I used the bulky yarn to sew together little 8" sleeves and then I sewed them together using a whip stitch. The seams would have competed with the baby's arms for space. Needless to say, the baby didn't get his bolero.

Another great book for studying yardage is called The Field Guide to Knitting by Jackie Pawlowski. This is a tiny, thick book that gives all kinds of information about different stitch patterns in the same way that Birders learn about Birds out in the field or Insecters learn about Insects. It's a great format for those of us who spent our childhoods reading Encyclopedias. I remember being awestruck by a sales clerk at one of the first stores I went into who told me that cables take up a lot more yarn than stockinette. Ever since then these differences of yarn hogginess have fascinated me. Stockinette takes up slightly less yarn than Garter Stitch. It's all in here along with more than a hundred other alternatives.

Losing Control - More On How To Hold The Yarn

There's a very nice video at Philosopherswool.com on how to knit Fair Isle Knitting style which someone mentioned on Ravelry. Fair Isle is where you knit with two colors at once. I love this style of knitting. At any rate, if you have to knit with both fingers at once doing what are considered two different styles of knitting at once I guess you learn pretty quickly which way keeps the tension and which way loses the slack.

For one, the woman in the video held the yarn over her index fingers way down on her finger (index finger), past the first knuckle in the middle joint. I tend to hold it over the nail bed.

She also talks about keeping the finger close to the needle. A lady in a yarn store was showing me how to do that. I tend to hold my fingers out. No wonder I lose control of the yarn.

I suspect that there is something to know about the angles that needles are best held at in relation to each other but I still haven't heard anyone talk about this.

Stitch Markers and Row Counters

One of the less attractive features of learning how to knit is having to learn how to count. There is incessant counting. Casting on.Checking for dropped stitches. Recounting to check that the first count was accurate. Recounting again because the first two counts don't agree. Counting out cables and stitch patterns and lace patterns. Counting to match two of anything. Refusing to count is how sweaters are made with mismatched sleeves.

It seems that someday counting will become more automatic. I've already noticed an easing of the counting stress which comes along with being able to hold the yarn automatically. And after dropping the needles becomes less automatic, and after the initial frustration of not believing that yarn will someday follow one's wishes.

The thing about Counting is that either you are a Counter or you are not a Counter. I happen to think that people count in order to fall asleep. Like counting sheep. Counting is like anesthesia. One elephant, two elephant, three elephant, four --- There's a man standing over her in a blue medical robe and mask -- she's out. But, in the case of knitting, her hands are still going for it, making a mess. If you space out for just one second, you are doomed to make a mistake which often means that you must Rip Your Stuff Out.

More to come about Ripping...

But, for Counting, there is help. A White Knight on a White Horse with a Gleaming White Grin. Not my type but if he can help to avoid ripping he must be an invaluable resource. Thing is, Knitters of the Past have devised solutions.

I didn't find out about these techniques until after I was convinced that I had completely lost my entire brain. But, an elderly lady in a yarn store eager to help and rich with wisdom listened to my traumatic tale of the dishcloth, an ugly thing meant only for practice which had a heart pattern. It took me probably 2 months. She showed me stitch markers, ugly plastic rings that were embedded all over the sweater she was knitting. These are kind of like Post-It Notes for knitting. You can place them every 20 stitches, you can keep track of all increases, descreases. They were so ugly I didn't think I could use them. Some open up and click close, some are simple rings. Companies make special brass safety pins that can be used. I love these because they are not plastic but they also don't fit on to all needles. A nice option is to tie scrap yarns into circles and use those. Beginner knitters don't really have a lot of scrap yarns, except for that one piece of dark blue yarn that shows up in the wash week after week. Clingy little bugger.

I also found a book called Knitting in Plain English by Maggie Riggetti which has a whole chapter on Counting. It really fascinates me that more books don't include this information.

The problem for me in the end is organization, and some sort of subconscious problem. I keep losing track of where I put the stitch marker box and so they are never around when I needed them. They get lost very very easily.

One teacher in a yarn store told me that the one most important piece of advice she gives to knitters is to learn how to read the knitting itself. Obviously this was great advice. Sounds so spiritual. Learn to read the Fire. Learn to read the Surf. Learn to find your dropped stitches before it's too late. If only this Teacher Genie were installed permanently in a bottle by my bed so that at 2am when I simply can't put the damn knitting down I could let her pop out and tell me how many rows are in the cable I made that looks suspiciously 3 rows longer than all the other cables. I knit almost an entire bag with 10 row cables on one side and 12 row cables on the other side. I swear to God I was counting. And I was "reading the knitting" -- like a true beginner. So, now I have two pillow covers because the two sides don't match.

Stitches aren't the only thing one must count. Stitch Markers are only for the horizontal count. The vertical count needs Row Counters. Stores sell row counters that look like tiny slot machines or abacuses, more plastic, that hang around one's neck, tie to one's knitting, fit on to the end of the needle. Problem is when you forget to change the number of the row when you reach it.

Knitter's have shown me how to tally the rows on a piece of paper which for them always seems to be at their side. This is better. This is like being the World War II Flying Ace who counts enemies shot down during combat. Counting = War, especially to a beginning knitter who can't really Read The Knitting.

Too Old To Learn

When you're only 8 years old, it's cute to make mistakes.

When you're twenty years old and learning to knit, it's ok that your stitches are uneven.

But, when you're approaching 50 and your stitches look like they just snapped out of Godzilla's dentures before he attacked Tokyo. And you accidentally dropped a stitch down there in that ruffle. And you somehow managed to turn your circular knitting around on the beret you just made and all the increase stitches show and the band looks weird. And you didn't notice any of this until you were blocking it. And the blocking apparently doesn't perform the magic for beginning 50 year old knitters that it does for everyone else because everything is still as crooked as Bernie Madoff's financial dealings.

And nobody really understands that your eyesight just doesn't really work anymore. Especially you.

Well, I guess that's just how it is. Good thing I live in a warm climate and haven't actually had to wear anything I've made. And if things ever do cool off I'll just have to invent a busy little relative who is just learning how to knit and gives me things. How sweet.