The Princess Diaries

I can knit for miles and miles...

Hi, Ted,

Jean is right when she suggests that it's a challenge to find interesting things to write when one is working on what is a seemingly endless bit of lace edging.  Let me resort to that old chestnut about a picture being worth a thousand words:

And the other one, where if one is good, two is better:

Those photos are from last week, at about the 32 repeat mark.  I'm within spitting distance of 40 today, which means I'm almost halfway there.

That sound you hear is all the air whooshing out of me as I deflate at the thought of doing the second half.  I know I lost some time during the two weeks after my accident, and I know that I've speeded up since I first started in January, but it has reached the point where it almost seems endless.

I'm rather glad that Jean has restarted hers, as it inspires me to keep going.

I was trying to explain this project to someone yesterday, and her comment was, "But don't you have days when you'd just rather be knitting on it and making some progress rather than writing about it?"

I had to confess that this was true, at least in the last week.  I took those photos, with the intention of posting them when I took them, but then thought, no, I should just go work a few more rows.

And I also have to confess that all of a sudden, I am so thoroughly bored with this edging.  I'm going to pay for that comment, I know it, I know that The Universe will exact some sort of karmic payback for that kind of thinking.

On a positive note, I think it is actually a good thing that I'm bored with the edging.  It means that with practice, I'm finding the edging easier to work.  I'm at the point where I can visualize what's happening when I look at the chart -- I've been wondering if other knitters do this -- I actually see an image, like a photograph, of the knitting in my mind, as I work the chart.  It means that I'm very quick to realize if I've become distracted and made a mistake (usually within a few stitches of making the mistake).

I keep telling myself that if I can just make it to 55 or 60 points, then I'll be facing the home stretch.  I suspect though, at the current rate I'm working, it will still be the end of April before I reach repeat number 85.

The Other thinks it would be amusing to figure out how many gnomes laid end to end would equal the length of the edging.  I'm not sure I actually own enough gnomes.  I never thought that knitting this shawl would have me thinking about adding to my collection.

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.

A Schematic

Hi K.,

Yesterday I thought it might be a good idea to post a schematic of the Princess, so anyone reading has an idea of how this thing is constructed. Since there isn’t a diagram in the instructions themselves, it might be useful for us, as well.

The project starts with the peaked Edging, which is cast on (or not) at A, and is worked as a long strip to A'. Then the Edging stitches are put on a holder of some kind until needed. Stitches to work the Border are knitted up along the Edging’s straight edge, and the Border is worked as indicated by the arrows, in a rectangular shape. The thick lines at the top of the Border, labeled B, represent a unique lace pattern which serves as a strong visual break, and also reduces the stitch count --  helping to shape the Border into the curved shape.

The triangular Centre is started at its lowest point, labeled C, and works up, increasing in size as it goes. It is also attached to the Border as it is worked. Then the Edging stitches are returned to the needle at A', and the Edging works across the top of the shawl. Finally, the Edging stitches are grafted to their cast-on stitches at A.

It should be noted that I created this diagram with the drawing tools in MSWord. My drawing skills are not wonderful; some of the geometry is not completely correct. However, it represents what we are making fairly well.

I see you're up to 20 repeats. I've done a bit of thinking about the knit-up ratio for the border, and after doing the math, sent the numbers off to Mar. She used to edit patterns, so I figure she's a good person to check the accuracy of the numbers. I haven't heard back from her as she's closing a job contract but I hope she'll get to it over the weekend.

Don't worry, we both have lots of edging repeats to knit yet!

Youth is Wasted on the Young

Hey, Ted,

Remember when I told you about the person who was working the Princess edging on the bus, and how I'd been, well, gobsmacked at the thought? 

I got thinking about the time I made a cobweb lace christening dress and shawl for my niece, and it struck me:  we were living in France at the time (we spent much of 1997 there), and we spent the weekends travelling, figuring we'd never get such an opportunity again.  And, because I had to have the shawl done for the actual christening date, I had to work on it steadily and constantly.

So I dragged it around with me everywhere.  Everywhere:

That's me, after hiking up a mountain near Annecy, taking a break and working on the christening robe.  I have other photos, on top of other mountains, in a wooden shoe in the Netherlands -- I think the only place I didn't knit this was on a bike.

That was almost ten years ago, and for the life of me, I couldn't do that today, and certainly not with Princess.  I've been mulling over why I could do it then.  The cobweb yarn is probably about as fine as the gossamer merino, but I was using a slightly larger needle size.  As well, Gladys Amedro's pattern alternates lace rows with plain knitting, so evidently having a break in working pattern helps.

But I don't think that's the whole story.  I don't know about you, but with the Princess edging, I really have to concentrate.  I can't watch television or listen to anything requiring my attention (as The Other will attest when I told him to go away and talk to me about the laundry later, as I was in the middle of a row).  I have to be awake, alert, fresh.  I've spent much of today ripping out knitting and reworking it, as I'm not in top form today.  I know I should just put it down.

[subliminal message to Ted:  work on something else for a while so I don't get too far behind you on the edging]

However, I think I've finally discovered what the problem really is.

I'm getting old.

Seriously.  I just read about a recent study, in which they've discovered that as we age, changes take place in our brains that make it more difficult to concentrate.  And this just gets worse as we get older.

According to the report's chief author, Dr. Cheryl Grady of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care:

"Older adults should try to reduce distractions in their environment and concentrate on one key attentional task at a time," Grady suggested. "It may be as easy as turning down the radio when reading, or staying off the cell phone when driving a car."

The good news?  Apparently challenging one's mind helps prevent the cognitive downslide.  So working on Princess is actually a good thing.

I'm just not going to be taking it on the bus.

Been there, Knit that, Got the T-Shirt

Hi, Ted,

Just for a little Saturday frivolity, I present to you the word cloud for The Princess Diaries:

(found chez Kay and Ann)