A Milestone Reached!

Hi K.,

So what did you do yesterday afternoon? I knitted up 865 stitches.

It was a bright and beautiful day yesterday, and I thought “Time to bite the bullet and get these knitted up.”  So I sat in the chair and poked my needle into the edging at the appropriate place and pulled up a stitch. Then I poised to poke for the second stitch, and that’s when it hit me: this is very fine yarn.

I cannot explain why I had not figured that out previously. I mean, sure I knew it was fine yarn, but somehow, with the knitting of 83 edging repeats I hadn’t realized how fine it is. And how hard it is to see what is going on in the knitting. Of course I’d had to pick up dropped stitches and tear back some rows and remount the stitches on the needle. But somehow, it hadn’t hit me, and I hadn’t grasped that knitting up 865 stitches was going to be A Task. I would need A Plan.

The first thing I did was to make some loop markers. I take a length of fine cotton about 3 inches long and tie the ends with an overhand knot. (I think the cotton is called “KnitCroSheen”; I get a ball of it about every 4 years. It’s at Walmart – my LYS – which is interesting because they carry neither crochet hooks nor knitting needles small enough to work the thread.) They’re cheap, reusable, biodegradable. You can put them on the needle, or knit them together with a stitch, whatever you need them to do. If you make them much longer, they’re great when working in garter stitch because they get trapped in the fabric. If you take the stitches off the needle, the marker stays put unless you pull it out. Very useful.

(Actually, the first thing I did was walk the 5k round trip into the city to mail letters, get some fresh air and enjoy the sunshine. It was a breezy cool day, very spring-like and very nice to see the buds on the trees swelling, croci in bloom and grass starting to green up. Marq1 has already planted pansies, but we’re still several weeks from that.)

After some thinking, I decided not to put the edging stitches on a holder. Using waste yarn, I knitted 3 rows, then cast off. The stitches are secure, and when I need them, I'll just tear out the waste yarn and remount the stitches.

I got paper and pencil together, and made a stroke on the paper each time I’d knitted up along 1 edging repeat. I counted how many stitches I’d knitted up, just to be sure. After I’d worked along 5 or 6 edging repeats, I put a marker on the needle and counted the number of stitches between markers, just to be sure. (Since I had a chart showing how I was going to knitting up stitches - a variant of this table – I kept the tally on it.)

Because I have the attention span of a gnat, I reduced distractions. I tuned off the ringer on the phone, and no music or radio.

Since there was no point having a spec of dandruff or a smear on the lens of my glasses blurring the fabric, I cleaned my glasses.

I took breaks through the process, to give my eyes a rest and to do some stretching and move around.

All in all, it took a couple of hours to get the stitches knitted up, excluding breaks. I worked 1 row back to confirm the stitch count, repositioning the markers every 50th stitch. 865 stitches. And they all fitted on the needle, as Jean said they would.

I remain astonished that Jean was able to knit up all those stitches after eye surgery.

 

Something I’m Wondering About, While Catching My Breath

If you read the pattern, Sharon has you “pick up” the 865 stitches, then work 4 rows plain, then the break row, then 4 rows plain.

Perhaps I am worrying about nothing (likely), but, K., have you noticed that there are 3 knitting terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, but which aren’t the same?

We have: “pick up”, “knit up”, and “pick up and knit”.

“Pick up” means to put a strand of the fabric onto a needle. You could knit that strand, or sew something to it. A very common use of "pick up" is when you are using Zimmermann’s Applied I-Cord: you knit the last stitch of the cord together with a picked-up strand, allowing you at attach a length of I-cord all over the surface of something knitted.

“Knit up” means that you insert your needle (usually the one in your right hand) through the fabric, wrap the working yarn and pull through a stitch.

“Pick up and knit” means you pick up a strand and knit it.

I am assuming that Sharon means to “knit up” when she writes “pick up”, but I’ve emailed her for clarification. (The difference between pick up and knit up is 1 row of stitches. Given the gauge we’re working at, and the reversibility of the fabric, this likely isn’t a concern, but I thought I’d ask anyway.)

Meanwhile, the Rosebud Shawl needs its edging worked, so I’ll be spending more time on that to get it finished up.

And I have a few loop markers I could drop in the mail to you. Do let me know if you’d like them.

Comments

[k]

Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah!

Golly, it looks wonderful. For the record, I will be finished 85 repeats today -- after setting it aside most of the week, I've been plowing through the last couple of repeats today.

I was just wondering what I was going to use for markers. I'm like you, I just use cotton, but usually heavier. This project is too fine. I have some Knit-Cro-Sheen, but in white, so not terribly useful. I'd probably better get some in a colour, especially as I've got Wedding Ring lined up after Princess (mind you, that'll be, what, two years from now?).

That's a good point about the terms. I'd assumed "knit up" for "pick up" as well, so I'll be interested to hear what Sharon says.

As for me, I baked a mango crisp and went out to Wellington Fibres for the open house for the new mill -- great fun!

[Jean]

There's a picture in Amedro's book of a needle simply being slipped through the stitches on the flat side of an edging strip -- clearly no "knitting up" involved. So that's what I do.

Thanks for your concern -- in fact, I can see much better after eye surgery than before, right away: but I've lost forever the nearsighted person's trick of taking the specs off and holding whatever-it-is up to one's nose and REALLY being able to see it, magnified. I still, after many months, find myself trying to do that.

Cheers. Jean

[Wannietta]

It looks wonderful!!

[Aarlene]

865 stitches? All in one row...::faint:::