Knit up, Knit up !

Hi K.,

As you know, I’ve been mumbling about changing the knit-up ratio for the border along the length of edging. It’s ended up being a bit more math than I was expecting, and here’s where I’m at with it.

Firstly, though, here’s why. Sharon has you knit up 865 stitches for the border along the 85 repeats of the edging. There are 20 rows in each repeat of the edging, so to get 865 sts you will knit up 1 stitch per 2 rows of edging, and find the other 15 sts somewhere along the way – as Sharon instructs.

The 1 to 2 knit-up ratio is pretty good for garter stitch. It’s simple to do because you knit up 1 stitch per ridge. The ratio of stitches to rows in garter stitch is pretty much usually universally 1 st per 2 rows, so things “fit”.

Well, usually. You know how it is when you lose some weight, and your trousers still fit, but they’re a bit slack around the waist? You cinch them in with a belt and it looks okay, but you think you should, maybe, get the pants taken in a bit?

So it can be when attaching an edging to the shawl border – or in our case, knitting up stitches along the straight edge of the edging. At the 1 border stitch per 2 edging rows ratio, it still fits, but sometimes you feel the edging would be better if it were a smidge shorter.

Some lace designers have been experimenting with the ratios. The 3 stitches per 4 rows ratio often works well: Hazel Carter used this for several of her published pieces, and Sharon uses it for one of her shawls. (There may be more than one; I can only speak for the “Spring Shawl, which I own the pattern for.) She uses a 4 stitches per 6 rows ratio for the “Wedding Ring Shawl”. Since the edging is shorter than it would be at the 1 stitch per 2 rows ratio, there are fewer repeats to work, and less yarn required.  (Perhaps a useful thing to remember if you are concerned about how much yarn you have to work with.)

Where these tighter ratios fail is when an edging is going around a corner. There you need more length: you need more “ease”. How much depends on several factors: the width of the edging; how deep the peak is; how open the lace is, and so on. Sometimes the 1 to 2 ratio allows enough ease, but it may not. A ratio of 1 to 4 (ie 1 stitch of border per 4 rows of edging) for a pair of repeats on either side of the corner frequently works very well.

I posed this matter to Sharon in an email, and while she assured me that the 1 to 2 ratio given in the Princess’ instructions will do fine both along the straight of the border and going around the corner, she did indicate that adjusting the ratios would be fine as well. So I will.

My original plan was to use 3 different knit-up ratios. Where the edging swings around the corner, I will knit up 1 stitch per 4 edging rows for 2 repeats. That should give lots of length and ease to go around the corner. Between those repeats, I had planned to knit up 3 stitches to 4 edging rows to get the required number of stitches for the border.

Between these 2 ratio sections, I wanted to insert an edging-repeat’s worth of stitches knitted up at 1 stitch per 2 edging rows. Perhaps I am concerned about nothing, but the switch from 3 stitches per 4 rows to 1 stitch per 4 rows seems a bit extreme. Likely it would be fine, but a short length at the 1 to 2 ratio near the corners will not hurt anything and it will add a very slight amount of ease.

So I did the arithmetic. My plans resulted in 61 repeats of the border -- a net reduction of 29 repeats from Sharon’s 85 repeats. I considered that this amounted to a loss of nearly ¼ the original length of the edging, and that this might be too much loss. Perhaps I’d made a math error? Mar kindly agreed to don her editor’s cap, and she went over the numbers.

Her reply was that the math worked, but 26 repeats seemed like an awful lot of length to lose. Yes, blocking or dressing would take care of some of that, but there’s a limit to how much length you can get with blocking. Back to the drawing board.

In the end, I decided to return half the 26 repeats –adjusted so I’d have an uneven number of repeats. I’d keep the 2 repeats at 1 to 4 ratio on the ends for going around the corner, and the single repeat at 1 to 2 ratio near the ends. This meant I had 69 repeats to knit up 825 stitches, at a ratio of either 11 or 12 sts per repeat. I end up with a total of 75 repeats: a net reduction of 12 repeats from Sharon’s 85. That should be fine.

Let’s see if a table will display correctly…

					Totals
Number of stitches knitted up	20	20	792	33	865
Knit up ratio	1 st per 4 rows	1 st per 2 rows	6 sts per 10 rows	11 sts per 20 rows	NA
Number of stitches knitted up per repeat of 20 rows	5 sts per repeat	10 sts per repeat	12 sts per repeat	11 sts per repeat	NA
Number of repeats	4	2	66	3	75 repeats
Maths	5 sts per repeat X 2 repeats at each end = 20 sts	10 sts per repeat X 1 repeats at each end = 20 sts	12 sts per repeat X 66 repeats = 792 sts	11 sts per repeat X 3 repeats = 33 sts	NA

I should mention that none of this has been confirmed in any way with sampling. Perhaps it is all entirely unnecessary, which I may never know. Perhaps I may find that I have made A Huge Mistake. So it’s a risk. But what’s life without risk, and it’s not like I’m bungee jumping or fire-walking or falling in love or sky-diving. I figure that by the time I’ve worked a few rows of the border, I should know whether this will work, and at worst I’ll just have to rip a bit and add some more repeats of the edging.

By the way, how are you keeping track of the number of repeats you've worked? I put a coil-less safety pin in every 10th repeat, so I'll only have to count to 7, and a bit.

Comments

[Jean]

Ted, I really really really think you should just go with the flow, and do it Sharon's way. That edging doesn't really go around any corners, anyway -- look at the picture, not the schematic.

I slipped the first stitch of every row, which gave me a neat edge of ten stitches to slide the needle through for every edging repeat, easier than worrying about garter ridges. With that many stitches, you're going to get it a bit wrong anyway, and have to make adjustments(at least I did.

And you've got four plain rows after you've picked up stitches. If you were hell-bent on having more stitches here and fewer there, you could pick up fewer and make the adjustments during those rows. As the immortal EZ said, knitting is forgiving stuff.

I agree about marking every tenth repeat of the edging. I marked the half-way point, when I achieved it. And count and count and count.

[Mar]

Mea culpa for not answering your last e-mail re: the new math. I've been busy writing and editing sample pieces for that prospective employer. However, I am in complete agreement with Jean on this one. I've been thinking to myself, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Your new numbers do work out mathematically but again, I'm concerned that you will not have enough length. I have a feeling that you are overthinking all of this and will just end up having to take off the edging because you haven't enough and be forced to knit the total number of motifs anyway.

[k]

But wouldn't you like to see him try and see what ends up (insert diabolical laughter here)?

:-)

I'm keeping track using old fashioned pencil and paper. I just put down my repeat number, then mark down the number of each row as I work it. Repeat as required for each repeat of the edging worked.

Clunky, but it works for me, and I always know where I am, which is the most important thing.

[k]

BTW, 73 repeats -- unless you've only taken away ten in the end (you wrote 75...)

[Ted]

Well, Eudora just crashed and somehow it took all my emails from the beginning of 2006.

K., it really is 75 repeats. Yes, 85 - 12 = 73, but remember I'm adding an extra repeat on either end for ease going around the corner-which-might-not-be-there. So it's 85 - 12 = 73, + 2 = 75.

[k]

Gotcha. Math was never my strong suit.

Shall I resend the email I sent you this morning?