The Princess Diaries

Pick up, Knit up: Maybe It Doesn’t Matter?

Hi K.,

I heard back from Sharon about what she means by “pick up”, and no, she does not use the term interchangeably with “knit up”, as some do. (And just to be clear, I was not saying she did; I was wondering if she might, and wanted to know.) "Pick up", for her (and me, and lots of other people), means to put a strand of the fabric on the needle. (I’d like to see, up close, how she does that with yarn this fine. How does she know which piece of a stitch to hang on the needle?)

Having given it some thought, I don't know it matters whether you knit up the stitches or pick them up. I think the important thing is making sure that the row count is correct.

So the instructions are to pick up 865 stitches, then knit 4 rows, then the break row, then 4 rows. That means there are 9 rows of stitches hanging off the needle (4 + 1 + 4).  Since I knitted up the stitches, I worked only 3 rows before the break row, and have the same row count. (1 + 3+ 1 + 4)

You won’t believe how long it takes to knit across 865 stitches.

And Aarlene, it's really isn't that bad. Once you get your head around having that many stitches on the needle, it just sort of becomes normal. I think the largest number of stitches I've handled was around 1300, though, so maybe I'm partly innoculated or something. That said, Margaret Stove once told me she was working on a shawl that had 1857 stitches in the row, and I had to read that number about 4 times, just to make sure I really understood what she had written.

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.

Enough with the needles, already!

Hi, Ted,

So.

Well.

Needles.

So.

At this point, my Princess will probably have to go on hold for a couple of weeks until I manage to turn up a needle onto which I can pick up the stitches to start the next section.  Oh, I'm not looking for a super extra long needle or anything, I took Jean's words to heart.  But I've worked the edging on a really short circular, and knew that no matter what, I'd have to get another needle for the next part.

And I figured, no problem, the Not So Local Yarn Shop (in the town next door, about a thirty to forty minute drive away, depending on traffic) carries Inoxes in the required size (2.25 mm), and in lengths more suitable to what I need (100cm, 120 cm).

Theoretically, they carry them.  They were out of 2.25 mm in anything but short circulars.  And they'd just got an order of needles in, so even if I ordered one, I'd have to wait until the next time they needed to order needles, which wouldn't be a while, as they'd just got an order in.

So Princess will have to wait until I can get into The Big City -- I'll be at the Downtown Knit Collective's Spring Frolic to take a workshop in a couple of weeks, so that may be it, as it will be difficult to find time to drive into Toronto before then.

I was, actually, really looking forward to picking up all those stitches and working a few plain rows.

Sigh.

Knitting in My Sleep

Hi K.,

Have you had nights when you wake up and hear yourself planning a knitting project?

Last night, I awakened 4 times, and each time I was running the math of doing the knit-up rate along the edging. As you know, I don’t intend to do this according to the pattern (when do I ever follow patterns?): I had earlier planned to work 10 fewer repeats of the edging, and to add an extra repeat at each end for going around the corner.  Jean and Mar both challenged my sanity; I’ve thought about what they wrote and will work 4 fewer repeats and add the extra 1 at each end.

But this has changed the math for the knit-up rate, and as I am just going ‘round the corner into the home stretch on the edging (I’ll do repeats 77 and 78 tonight), I can only guess that my unconscious decided last night to recalculate the math for me while I slept.

I’ve always marveled at people who claim that they can “program” themselves to have a dream in which they solve a problem. I’m even more fascinated by people who say that they solve problems while knitting, or those who say they find knitting to be meditative (obviously they’re not working the Princess edging), or those who proclaim knitting to be The New Yoga – I need to do yoga after I’ve been knitting to get the kinks out! I rarely ever remember dreams, so having a problem solved in one would seem to be wasted effort. (And the last dream I remember had me cleaning the bathroom: what was that about!?)

At first I was very pleased that I was finally running with this "in crowd". The problem with this is that there was a different knit-up rate in each dream, and in thinking about it today, I see that all 4 were incorrect. None would give me the required number of stitches.

In any case, I hope to be finished the edging this week and will get stitches knitted up. Provided there are no spanners thrown into the works at the job, this should be do-able. Maybe I’ll even get back to the gym.