The Princess Diaries

Technical Dfficulties: Please Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Hi, K.,

Your work looks really good; better than I recall mine looks.

As that statement suggests, I’m having a little bit of a problem with Princess. When I stopped working on it – just before my vacation last year - I wrapped up the shawl and pattern and put it Somewhere. However, I’m not remembering where Somewhere is. It’s not in the obvious places where I think I would have put it, which means that a complete tearing down of my wool room may be required. Or, if could be in my Hope Chest, which is covered in books because when I disposed of a bookcase last month, the books had to be piled somewhere. I mean, it will turn up. I think. I hope.

Anyway, about ending the row. It took me a while to get used to dealing with those last 70 stitches, but like you - and as Lone noted in the comment to your post – it eventually became kinda automatic. I think that ultimately I just worked along the row til I had about 6 stitches remaining, then looked at it and decided what to do. Or, I consulted the beginning of the row to see what was done there, since the ends are just mirror images. Give that a try.

And after Row 180. Em…not having the pattern in front of me, I’m at disadvantage, but I think you’re talking about what Sharon calls the “sprout” motif? That spot where on 1 side of the shawl it points to the left and on the other side it points to the right? I remember looking at that but I don’t recall I came to any definitive conclusion about how to handle the chart. I think I toyed with the idea of scanning the relevant section of the pattern and then doing a left-right flip of the image using the image editing software on my computer.

And thanks to Lone for the alert about the chart being slightly off. Will make a note to watch out for that when I get to row 180.

Will close. I need to go buy a book case.

Progress (finally) and some thoughts on charts

Hi, Ted,

Voilà!

And spread out just a bit:

Yes, I'm slow -- that's eleven rows done, and I started the twelfth this morning.  It's going to take a Very Long Time to knit this -- I pretty much spent all my knitting time on it in the last week, and now I've got to get back to some other things, so I'll only work on it at the rate of a couple of rows a week, I think, until I can clear some other things out of the way.

But at least it's progress.  I am very pleased with it.

I did want to ask how you were dealing with the chart, specifically the last repeat of 70 sts -- and I'd be interested in hearing from others working on Princess as well.  I know there are a goodly number of folks getting excited about the possible re-release of the pattern at the end of this year, and I think it might prove useful to document what I've come to think of as a few quirks of the chart.

You've already written about the single overs/double overs and substituting the chart from page 162 of "Heirloom Knitting".  I'm also looking ahead to what happens after row 180 -- I'm wondering why their aren't two charts for that part, where you have to orient the motifs to point left and right.  I can already see that I'm going to end up charting them myself, as I'm not the kind of knitter (not at this point, anyway) that can work it out in my head and just do it.

And I'm recharting the end of the last repeat as I go along -- this isn't a big thing, it's just that as it's charted, one must be mindful of the fact that one can't always work that final edge as written -- if one wants to keep the stitch count of the final repeat even at 70 sts, then sometimes a yarn over isn't worked, or a 3 to 1 decrease is worked simply as a k2tog.  Do you know the bit I mean?  Did you do it automatically?

I had to think about it.  It's not every row, so when I hit the first instance of it, I realized I had to work out the decreases and increases and make sure they matched, and then make sure I had the right number of stitches at the end.  It threw me for a loop the first time, but now I'm automatically thinking ahead at the end of that repeat.

And because there are, quite possibly, a few knitters out there like me, I mention it here as something to be mindful of as one works the shawl.  This is one of those patterns where it doesn't pay to be a blind follower, which is the type of knitter I tend to be.  I actually like following the pattern.  I know you prefer to see if you can improve on things, or find a technique to make things more efficient or more elegant.  That's not me, generally, but working on Princess, I can see the value of that approach. 

At the very least, I can see that the effort to understand how lace works is one of the most useful skills I learned. 

The Distance Knitter

Hi, Ted,

I don't remember if I ever told you this, but once upon a time I used to be a runner.  10K races mostly, but I used to put in my time every day, rain or shine, winter or summer.

Yeah, it was a *very* long time ago.  I stopped running the races when I started having hip problems (can you say bad training regime?  I know that now.  Heck, I knew it then, but then I was a crazy runner).  I stopped running completely about five years ago, when it hurt more afterwards than I was happy with.  Probably still the bad training habits, but age wasn't in my favour, either.

However, I never, ever stopped dreaming of running a marathon.  I ran with people who did it -- Boston, New York, Paris, London.  I thought that maybe, one day, I'd have the drive, the ambition, the patience, and the common sense to do it.  And oddly enough, when I sat down to make My List of things I wanted to do with the rest of my life, running the Paris marathon went on it.

So did finishing Princess.

But I didn't realize until yesterday how closely related those two dreams were.

Because knitting Princess is, I think, the knitter's equivalent of running a marathon.  Just as a marathon is the longest run a runner might ever undertake, so, too, is Princess one of the longest projects a knitter might contemplate.  Just like a marathon, which requires a sensible training regime, so, too, does Princess.  It's important to swatch (really.  I know, I know, I didn't, but I should have, and I'm going to hope I don't pay for that in the end).  It's important to knit practice pieces of some of the stitch elements (I did do that, with the edging pattern.  Does that count as a swatch?)

It's important to keep knitting, every day, steadily, but it's also important not to do too much, for fear of injury.  Both to yourself, and the knitting.  Recovery time is important, not only for your body, but for your mind.  I don't know about you, but I don't find Princess difficult  per se -- as you've said, it's all knits and purls and yarn overs, nothing we haven't done before -- but I do find it a bit tiring to work on.  Each row is currently taking me about two hours.  I find I have to watch the chart carefully, both for the row I'm working on, and to make sure that my pattern is lining up with what's come before it.  I'm not putting a lifeline in, because I'm concerned that it might actually cut the yarn, but I have put markers between the repeats.  That said, each repeat is 78 sts, and there's not much repetition or rhythm in them, at least for me.  Then I stop to count the stitches before I move on to the next repeat.

Before I knit a row, I knit a repeat "virtually" -- that is, I read the chart, I look at where things fall on my knitting, I count it out on the stitches before I start working them.  I'm doing this because I did, in fact, make a mistake at the beginning of the forth row, had to rip out the repeat, botched the ripping back, ripped back the end of the third row and reset everything.  It's just easier on me if I do it my way, and think it all through a little bit before I start knitting.

Sometimes, if I've knit a bit too much on it, I hit The Wall.  That's what happened last night, and why I should have stopped knitting after the third row.  I've learned my lesson now, and will set the knitting aside at the first sign of fatigue.

And just as some marathon runners use assistive devices  (to help with pacing and checking heart rate and whatnot), so, too, am I using a few little items to help me out:

First, there's the chart -- I took the one provided and had it enlarged.  It's huge, but I can clearly see it now.  What you can't see is that it's sitting on the back of one of my cookie sheets, which I grabbed from the cupboard Saturday night.  The yellow things are magnets that are just holding the chart steady.

The ruler is sitting above the row currently being worked.  I just don't like seeing the next row on, I find it distracting.

The pale yellow stuff is a transparent highlighting tape -- quilters use it to mark lines and shapes on rulers, and I wonder if it works better on that surface than on my chart.  It's advertised as "low-tack", but it's just a little too low-tack for my liking, and after three rows doesn't want to stick any more.  It's a little too expensive to use if it doesn't last longer than that, in my opinion, but I really do like it -- it's easy to apply, easy to use, not messy, highlights the line I'm working on quite nicely -- in fact, it highlights the row I'm working on as well as the previous one, which I rather like.  That makes it easier for me to watch that I'm lining things up properly.  I'll see how it goes though, because now that I'm on row 4, I'm constantly poking at the tape to stick it down, because the chart isn't clear through it unless it is.

Yes, I did write "Row 4".  I'm about half way along -- because of the weather today, I ended up at home this morning, so decided to push a little further ahead while the light was good and I was feeling fresh.  I don't know if I'll ever run the Paris marathon.  However, I can see now that I will finish the Princess marathon.

A long time from now, mind you.  But I'll get there.

do over

Hi, Ted,

I know.  I know.  First I said I'd start back on Princess January 1st, then I had a tantrum and said I was going to give up.  I don't know what it is about this pattern, but my brain freezes every time I look at it.

My original goal, way back at the beginning of 2006, was to knit Princess in a little over a year -- in time to have it to wear in Venice, where I was hoping to spend our tenth wedding anniversary.  2006, though, turned out to my my own annus horribilis. To paraphrase the Queen, 2006 "is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure".  Right down to the last two weeks, when I was felled by the dreaded lurgy.

Needless to say, given all that's happened in the last year, we are not going to Venice in March.

However, now that I'm liberated of the goal of knitting Princess before March, there should be no reason I just couldn't take my time and do a row here and there, right?  And it'll be done before I know it, right?

Right.

There is, however, still that little matter of the needle.  You know, the one I had a tantrum over last spring?  The one in which I tried many brands of needles.  In which we attached shrink wrap tape to a needle.  All to no avail, because the damned stitches still get caught on the join, and I have to lift them one by one by one by one by one (ad infinitum) over it.  It is a slow, laborious, and frustrating process, and if there's one thing I hate, it's when knitting doesn't flow smoothly.

I have a couple more solutions in mind.  First, though, I have to figure out how in the world one sets up the first row of the chart, because my fevered end of bad year brain refuses to see how the math works.

I've given myself a month to get over it or move on. 

Of course, you do realize that this probably means another tantrum towards the end of January, don't you?

I promise to try very hard not to send it to you in an email...

k