October Events

Fall is definitely in the air as we fast approach the middle of October, and I have a few things to catch you up on.

First, let me congratulate and thank The Island (PEI) Knitters Club on a terrific seminar a couple of weeks ago.  This year's presenter was Diana Sullivan (link in the sidebar), and it was wonderful to meet her in person and get a great refresher on many useful techniques.  The seminar was very well attended, and it was also nice to see many familiar faces, as well as meet new people, and as always come home inspired.  Here are some random pictures from the weekend.

Next year's seminar will be hosted jointly by the Annapolis Valley Machine Knitting Guild and the Metro Machine Knitters.  Here is a note from the president of the Annapolis Valley group:

The two Nova Scotia groups, Annapolis Valley Machine Knitters and Metro Machine Knitters, will host a knitting weekend similar to the one we hosted in 2016. It will again be held at the Lions Club Hall in Wolfville. The dates are Friday, September 27 and Saturday, September 28, 2019. Lunch will be served by the Lions on both days. Our first knitting weekend proved to be a fun time. We all got to knit and learn new techniques and be refreshed in old techniques. Our membership numbers are quite low and a seminar with a presenter just isn't within our monetary range anymore. We found our knitting weekend less stressful to host.

In the coming months you will be receiving updates on registration costs, etc. We would appreciate input from you on what you might like to do and any ideas that you may have. I hope you will consider attending as there seems to be more inter-connecting among attendees at a function such as this.

I heard that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the PEI Seminar and Diana Sullivan. I am very sorry that I could not attend. Looking forward to seeing you in Wolfville, N.S. in September 2019.

Linda Wood-Carey

We have two events coming up on Saturday, October 27, both in Musquodoboit Harbour.  The first is our next library get-together.  Here is a word from Lynne about that:

On October 27 from 10am until 5pm The Eastern Shore Gang will be hosting an MK Workshop at the Musquodoboit Library.

The PEI seminar with Diana Sullivan has inspired all of us who attended to dig out our garter bars, dust them off, and work our way through the exercises in the seminar booklet.

I will also circulate a simple toque pattern that you can make on your machine with a garter bar or by using waste yarn.

The library can accommodate ten Knitters in the multi purpose room with tables and chairs provided. There is also a kitchen to heat up lunches or to make a cup of tea or coffee (you bring supplies).

Here is what you need to bring;

A machine and appropriate garter bar. MK tools, weights, etc., yarn appropriate to your machine, a mix of light colours is a good idea, and lunch (we’ll take a break at 12:30 and there is a bakery and a few food outlets close by).

It will be a day of sharing what we learned at the seminar, and asking for help when our memories fail us.

Please let me know if you plan to attend so we can let the library know how many people to expect and to have extra tables set up if needed.

I’m looking forward to using my garter bar that I have neglected for far too long.

Hope to see you!

Lynne

Please let us know if you are able to come by emailing Lynne or leaving a comment below.

And on the same day, there will be a Fibre Festival at the Old School Community Gathering Place.  Here is information on that:

I have been busy imagining and planning my new studio in our new house, currently under construction, so although I am separated from my machines and most of my yarn and other "stuff" that is in storage, I am the luckiest person in the world to have this opportunity to create a whole new, spacious space in which to create.  Here is a sneak peak at this work in progress.

Until next time,

Nancy

Random Links

I've been saving up some links to some blogs that I follow that I thought I would share.

The first is an interesting post about making pleated fabric here, and something I would like to experiment with once my machine is out of storage.

The second is about importing images into DAK using the Paint program, here, that might be of interest to those of you with DAK.  The example is using Zentangles, but I would think the principles would apply to almost any image.  Again, something I'm bookmarking to try later.

The third link is a little bit of eye candy here - some Australian makers doing some innovative work with knitting machines.  Enjoy!

The fourth, and last link, is Susan Guagliumi's most recent blog post about converting a hand knit pattern to machine knitting, here. 

Lots of inspiration here.  If you know of any others that you'd like to share drop the link in the comments  Have a lovely long weekend!

Nancy

What's Up?

In a blur, it seems, here we are at the beginning of the last week of August, the best laid plans laying at the feet of good intentions.  And even though technically we have almost another month of summer, and even though I have long been out of school, my children are grown, and my grandchildren are not yet old enough for school, I still think of September as the beginning of a "new year".

It's been a lovely summer - too hot for my taste, and for much knitting, but I do now have a new stock of hand knit dish cloths to replace my worn and fraying ones, since that was about the only thing I could bear to knit in the humidity that gripped us for much of the summer.  And I have gone from having about 60% of my "stuff" packed away in storage to 90% as we moved out of our home at the end of June and into an apartment while our new house is being built.  That is a big change, an exciting one, and a situation that gives cause to reflect on the amount of "stuff" one accumulates in this life.  But that is a post for another day.

To escape the unfamiliar confines of a hot apartment away from the ocean breezes with which we were blessed for almost 30 years, I managed to take in a number of the events that I let you know about first here.

First, I attended the first annual Truro Fibre Frolic.  Many great vendors and demonstrations, including our very own Leslie Hauck, owner of the Spinner's Loft here on the Eastern Shore.

The following weekend I attended the opening of the Women's Heritage Celebration at Memory Lane.  Here are some pictures of these talented ladies and their beautiful work.

Below - Lynne Pascoe, Sheep's Clothing, demonstrating the circular sock machine, and a display of their products.

At left, Jan Foley, Salty Hag Studio, and her beautiful needle felted animals.

Photo on the right and below - Gail Lambert, Hook Me Up Rug Supplies, and a display of her stunning work.

 Photo on the right - a display of Leslie's work (Spinner's Loft mentioned above).
















Alas I missed the Cole Harbour Fibre Frolic, but I hear it was a great success.  If anyone has any pictures and/or feedback let me know!

And neither last nor least, Woolstock in Tatamagouche, which I managed to get to yesterday for the fibre market, which was held on the final day of the 8 day event.

So still ahead on the calendar of fibre-y goodness - beginning September 11, and every Tuesday from 1 to 3:30, at the Old School Community Gathering Place, there will be a Fibre Arts Drop In Studio.  The cost is a flat $15, which covers September through December weekly drop in dates.  Whatever your talent, bring your projects, questions, and expertise along for a relaxing afternoon of good conversation and inspiration.

At the end of September, I am very excited for the Maritime Machine Knitter's Seminar, this year in Charlottetown, and featuring Diana Sullivan.  In October there is Celtic Colours in Cape Breton, the Nova Scotia Fibre Arts Festival in Amherst, and finally the brand new Fibre on the Shore Festival on October 27 here in Musquodoboit Harbour.  Stay tuned here for more information on that event.

I hope that you have all had a summer filled with the things that you love to do and the people that you love to do them with, as well as time for reflection and recharging, as we begin a "new year".

Nancy

What's Hot! - UPDATE

UPDATE - See bold item below.

What's hot?  Well definitely the weather - stay cool and don't forget to hydrate!  But really I'm posting a reminder of some hot (or cool) fibre-related events going on that you may want to check out.

First off, this coming weekend (July 6 and 7, 9 to 4 each day) is the Truro Fibre Frolic at the Farm Equipment Museum in Truro.   Check out their Facebook page for more information and a list of vendors.

From Friday, July 13 to Sunday, July 15, at Memory Lane - 1940's Heritage Village Museum, share in the Women's Heritage Celebration with exhibits, workshops by local artists, demonstrations, and old fashioned tea social.  This year's theme is wooly!

On Saturday, July 28, from 10 to 4 PM, is the Cole Harbour Fibre Frolic at the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum.  You can check out the Facebook page for this event for more details.

From August 18 to the 25th, Sisterhood Fibres is also hosting "Woolstock - 8 days of fleece & sisterhood" in conjunction with Tata Fest in Tatamagouche.  Details are still being finalized so check the links and Facebook event pages often for updates.

For more information on other events happening in the area in the near future, check out my April blog post.   And please let me know if I've missed an event.

Also hot (off the press), Susan Guagliumi has a new book out entitled Open Spaces and I absolutely did order a copy as soon as she announced it, and plan to post a review in the near future.  If you have it and have tried, or plan to try, any of the techniques or projects, let us know in the comments!

Also in the comments, let us know what you're working on this summer.  Or what you'd like to learn, do or see.  Or maybe we'll run into each other at one of the events, even better!

Have a wonderful summer,

Nancy

The Baby Surprise Jacket

Once again, thanks are due to Judie for a new project inspiration!  This time I turn my attention to Elizabeth Zimmerman's hand knit pattern called the Baby Surprise Jacket, and the machine knit adaptation credited to Alethea Robinson which can be found here.

If you are a hand knitter, you likely are familiar with Elizabeth Zimmerman's work, but if you're not I would encourage you to look her up!  Her main design philosophy is one of understanding your knitting and not "blindly following" a pattern, which is certainly what we have been working on in this blog!  Some of her patterns are very traditional, but the ones I admire the most are the ones that employ unique construction techniques (like the Baby Surprise Jacket, hereafter in this post to be referred to as the BSJ) or instructions that are guidelines and learning opportunities, not necessarily row-by-row instructions.

As an example of this, one of the first Zimmerman designs I tackled, many years ago, was her Pi Shawl.  It is still one of my top ten fun projects that I have ever knit, because you can decide as you go what you want to do.  Interweave published a great article a few years ago on it that you may want to check out here. 

Another example of her unique construction techniques is her pattern for her Sideways Mystery Mittens.  Even if you find them a bit odd looking, the construction is fascinating and opens the door (and mind) to other non-traditional construction techniques which could also be adapted to machine knitting.  I have the Schoolhouse Press DVDs "Knitting Workshop" and "A Knitting Glossary" and if you can get your hands on either or both of those through the library, a friend, or the website I highly recommend them.  In one of those she talks about the inspiration behind her pattern for the Bog Jacket, and why its construction method is of specific interest to weavers because of the minimal waste of any fabric as it comes off the loom.  For a little history on the bog jackets in general you can go to this link.

As I was looking into trying to find the hand knitting pattern for the BSJ, I saw that Zimmerman's grandson has published a book entitled The Complete Surprise which expands on the BSJ to include information on how to make many modifications, including custom sizing to make an Adult Surprise jacket, or using the mitering technique to construct other types of garments including a bolero, a scarf, a bonnet, and a baby snuggle suit, to name a few.

So here is my first kick at the can, using Premiere Yarns "Candy Shop", a self striping 100% acrylic yarn.

This takes no time at all to knit up, and the fun starts in deciding how to finish it - what type of ribbing to add to the bottom and cuffs (if any), and what to do around the neck and front opening, etc.  The body of the sweater itself employs short rowing as you can see by the triangle cutouts in the schematic above.  Everything else is up to you - yarn, gauge, how to cast on, how to cast off, and how to embellish.  I encourage you to check out the Ravelry group devoted to this project, the Wiki they have created that has a wealth of information, and also Roberta Rose Kelley's YouTube video on the BSJ. 

The ingenuity of Elizabeth Zimmerman was extraordinary and her patterns and construction methods are timeless.

Nancy

Spring Cleaning

I have a two new events to add to my list from my previous post "What's Going On" (thank you to Lynne and Margaret for the information!).  Knitters' Day, will be held on Saturday, June 9, at the Hooked Rug Museum of North America.  You can visit their website for more information.  June 9th is World Wide Knit in Public Day so celebrate the craft by letting your knitting flag fly! 

Spring Clean Your Knitting Machine will be happening at the Musquodoboit Harbour Public Library on Thursday, April 26, from 5 to 8 PM.   Here is the description from Lynne:

We plan to start at 5pm and finish at 8pm but if you are interested but can’t make it that early just come when you can.

We will show you how to take the needles and sponge bar out of your machine, what supplies you need and how to clean and lubricate the machine, and how to put it back together again.

We’ll bring a vacuum cleaner, brush, fine steel wool, paper towels, and machine oil (I have a small amount of oil for sale if you don’t have any - but  I need to know well in advance if you need to purchase this). 

You need to bring your machine; two wide mouth jars suitable for holding 100 needles each  (pickle jars work great); soft rags (t-shirts are perfect); an old toothbrush; a small container of oil (usually comes with your machine); and two bottles of rubbing alcohol (available at most Dollar Stores).

We need you to pre-register (just send me a quick e-mail) so we know what supplies to bring and how many tables to set up. And we’ll have a Toonie Jar to help cover supplies.

We promise your knitting machine will sing when you take it home.

Leave a comment below if you are interested in attending, or check out the Sheep's Clothing Facebook page to find the event.

All this talk of knitting and spring and cleaning inspired me to pull out a new-to-me machine that I bought about a year ago and give it a good cleaning and inspection.  The machine is a Singer MK70, purchased so that I can have a machine that is portable for just these types of events.  If you're not familiar with this machine, it's a 6.0 mm punch card machine that folds up to about the size of a portable sewing machine.  Here is what it looks like in its case.

One of the side buckles that holds the case to the bottom of the machine bed is broken, hence the patriotic luggage strap on the left side.  Here is what it looks like with the cover off.

Pretty nifty isn't it?  The two ends of the bed fold down and slide/click in place.  The clear plastic "bucket" holds accessories and tools, and the carriage sinker plate folds down and locks into place.  The yarn tension mast unfolds.  If you're interested here is a YouTube video from the Woolen Diva showing the unpacking of this machine.

Since I bought this knitting machine specifically so that I would have a portable option for group get-togethers, I decided that it would be quite helpful to purchase a small hand truck as well that could hold yarn, projects, books and more accessories as well as carry the machine easily for me.  Here is what I purchased - all I need is another luggage strap to secure the machine to the handle and I'm fully mobile!

Back to the cleaning, however.  I assembled my supplies as pictured below.

More supplies than necessary as it turned out, but here's the list:

1. Coffee
2. foam tipped cleaning swabs, and smaller foam tipped cosmetic applicators
3. Lori-Lin knitting machine lube spray (apparently no longer available?)
4. Unique sewing machine oil
5. mason jar
6. isopropyl alcohol
7. dollar store plastic table cloth in a fashionable floral print
8. paper towel
9. shark hand held vacuum
10. soft rags/cloths

I have to say, when I unpacked this machine I was surprised at how clean it was already.  I don't think it was ever used much.

No yarn entwined under the brushes, everything moving that should be and not moving if it shouldn't.  So really all the carriage required was a wipe off and fresh application of oil.

Another thing worth noting about this machine is that there is no sponge bar (presumably because the bed folds), so instead there are little plastic pieces in the needle track that serve to tension the needles as they move back and forth.  

So I proceeded to remove and inspect the needles and set them up for a good day's soak in the mason jar in a bath of isopropyl alcohol and a few drops of sewing machine oil, like so:

It's hard to see in the picture above, but the alcohol mixture is a couple of inches deep, so the needles aren't fully immersed, but every time I walked by the jar throughout the day I gave it a shake and a roll.  After a day in the bath, the grime was evident in the alcohol solution so I knew it was doing its job!

I used the foam tipped swabs to clean out the needle channels and other hard to get places on the machine bed and carriage, and my cloth rag to give everything a good all over wipe down.

And that's really all that needed to be done.  I'm looking forward to using this machine and learning about knitting with a punch card - I've never done that before.

Hopefully you're able to take in the machine cleaning event on the 26th!  And at least some of the other events listed in the last post.

Nancy

What's Going On

UPDATED AUGUST 30, 2018 - SEE BELOW

As promised, here is a list of fibre-related events happening in the Maritime provinces this year that I know of, but please let me know if there are more!  In date order:

April 6, 7 and 8, Maritime Fibre Arts Retreat, Atlantica Oak Island Resort & Conference Centre.  As you can see this is happening tomorrow and I believe is fully booked, but keep it in mind for the future.  No website that I can find but they do have a Facebook page.

April 14, Fundy Fibre Artisans Spring Fling, Picadilly, NB.  A one day event hosted by the Fundy Fibre Arisans.

July 6 and 7, Truro Fibre Frolic, Farm Equipment Museum, Truro, NS.  For more information check out the Truro Fibre Frolic Facebook page.

July 13, 14, and 15, Salty Socks Workshop, Hooked Rug Museum of North America, Hubbards, NS.  This is a cranking and machine knitting workshop/retreat sponsored by Shirley Baxter Knits.   For more information go to Shirley's website or the Salty Socks Workshop event page on Facebook.

September 28 - 29, 2018 Maritime Machine Knitters Seminar, Rodd Royalty Inn, Charlottetown, PEI.  This year's seminar is being hosted by the Island Knitters Club and Diana Sullivan is this year's demonstrator.  For more information go to Glen Valley Custom Knits website and for more information on Diana Sullivan you can visit her website and YouTube channel - links are in the sidebar of this page.

September 30, Follow the Yellow Balloons Creative Event Tour, Eastern Shore, NS.  Open studio tour of the Eastern Shore.  For more information check their website and Facebook page.  Event cancelled.

October 5 - 13, Celtic Colours International Festival, Cape Breton Island, NS.  I'm not even going to try to describe this.  Go to the website - it's an amazing festival of everything - music, dance, art and craft.

October 9 - 13, Nova Scotia Fibre Arts Festival, Amherst, NS.  Check out their web page and Facebook page for more information.

October 27,  Fibre Art Retreat, The Old School Community Gathering Place, Musquodoboit Harbour, NS.  Watch the website for more information as this event is still in the planning and organizing stages.

Nancy

Loose Ends

I just couldn't leave it undone - it was a loose end, a job half done, a "noncompletion" as the online thesaurus suggested.   So I made the Kohi Shawl, and I'm very pleased with it, and with myself, truth be told, for tending to that final loose end of the Shawl in a Ball series.   Here it is!

I still have to block this (and literally weave in a couple of loose ends as you can see), but you might be able to get a sense of the unblocked size from the red rocking chair rocker peaking into my shot in the top left hand corner.  As with hand knit lace, once a piece is blocked it can grow quite a bit, but even if it's only a bit I'm quite happy with the size.  In case you're interested, the cast on was 12 stitches, so the narrow point to the left of this photo, the straight edge is the top edge, the increase edge is the bottom diagonal edge, and the cast off is the edge to the right on the photo.  The colour on this one is called "Soothing Blue".   Here's an "in progress" picture to give you an idea.

I think the purl side of this lace is just as pretty as the knit side.  And yes, that is a chart (done on Excel) in the background, but honestly once I got a rhythm going I really didn't need to look at it. 

It is so gratifying to be able to take a hand knit pattern and convert it to machine knit and pick up new skills along the way, and it is great fun to share the progress on this blog.  If you try it yourself please leave a comment or question in the comments below, or send me a photo to share in a future blog post.  I'm happy to help or just to cheer you on.

And speaking of sharing (and inspiration, and cheering), I'm gathering an already impressive list of fibre and machine knitting related events in the Maritimes this summer and fall which I will detail in my next blog post, so watch for that in the next few days and get ready to save some dates!

Nancy

Shawl in a Ball LIVE Round Up

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to newly and awesomely renovated Musquodoboit Harbour Public Library for our Shawl in a Ball LIVE workshop.  We had familiar faces along with new faces, and we also had library patrons wander in to see what we were up to!  I always find it inspiring to spend time with such a creative group of people.

We'd love to have a few of these workshops scattered throughout the year, so watch this space regularly, and let us know in the comments below if you have any ideas for things we could cover in a future get together.

And speaking of workshops, The Island (PEI) Knitters Club has announced the 2018 Maritime Machine Knitters Seminar.  This year's seminar will be held at the Rodd Royalty Inn in Charlottetown on the 28th and 29th of September.  Diana Sullivan of Austin, Texas, will be this year's demonstrator.  If you are not familiar with Diana, there is a link to her blog, Diana Natters On About Machine Knitting to the right on our blog page.  She has a very extensive collection of videos on her YouTube channel that I highly recommend.  For more information on the seminar and how to register, please visit the information page on the Glen Valley Knits website.

Finally, a little "Knitting in the News" - for those of you who might be fans of Marvel Comics, the recent blockbuster movie "Black Panther" has the knitting world buzzing.  Check out "Nakia's Infinity Scarf" on Ravely, a free pattern in both machine and hand knit made available by the costume designer himself, Jeff Gillies, and also check out this BuzzFeed article on the movie and the shawl.

Nancy

#experiknitting

One of the blogs that I follow, here, has a recent discussion on the process of designing a knit fabric, and they use the term "experiknitting".  I think that is a clever word mashup that definitely applies to what we're doing here.  I've also been playing around with Instagram lately and so I decided to see if that is a hashtag being used there and indeed it is (that and #experiknit, and many more!).  If you're on Instagram check it out - there's a lot of knitting going on over there.

My most recent experiknit is the waves of wheat lace used in the Kohi Shawl, which I have written about in several previous posts.  When I left you last, I had finally figured out how to translate that lace pattern from hand to machine knit, and decided that I would forego the triangular shape for a rectangle.  Here it is:

I cast on 69 stitches, and was able to get 290 rows out of the ball, which translated into a wrap that measures about 56" long by 16" wide.  I absolutely love this colourway (Restful Rainbow).  If you look closely at the picture though, at the bottom you may notice that there are a few rows of orange that aren't where they belong.  This is my third ball with this yarn, and the first one that had a knot, where a colour completely out of sequence was tied on.  Lynne has experienced this with several balls and was able to exchange them at Michael's.  Since this one was at the end I will probably just take out those rows and cast off before the yarn break.

So here's a close up of the lace pattern:

If you want to do this project, it is a lot of hand manipulation of course, but to me it was worth it, and still much faster than hand knitting it.  I think the lace pattern works really well with the colours, and you can get into a pretty good rhythm that carries you across the row in no time.  I decided not to do any edging at all for two reasons - the first being that I didn't want to do anything that would fight against the natural zig and zag of the edge.  Secondly, whatever edging I might have picked would pretty much have to be done "as you go" in order to ensure that the edging was the same colour as the body of the wrap.  Doing something after the fact would, in my mind, interrupt the gradual flow of the colours from one to the other.

A fringe at the top and bottom would be nice, but fringe takes a fair bit of yarn and would certainly shorten the body of the wrap, although you could argue it adds at least that much length (or maybe more) visually.  But thinking of the colour again, in my opinion the best way to fringe it would be to save enough yarn at the beginning of the ball so that you can fringe the cast on edge with yarn of the same colour, and then stop short in time to save enough yarn at the end of the ball to fringe the bound off edge.  I didn't come up with that thought until I was about half way through the wrap, so it was too late to save fringing yarn at the beginning of the ball.

I still have a couple of balls of the yarn, and I may try this lace again in a triangular shawl closer to the original Kohi pattern.  If I do of course I will post about it.  In the meantime, don't forget about our Shawl in a Ball LIVE workshop at the library this coming Saturday, March 10, 2018.  Let us know if you plan to attend.  And even if you can't, if you're working on a shawl on your own, or another project that you'd like to share, let us know in the comments!

And lastly, congratulations to the Metro Machine Knitting Guild on their new meeting space at Michael's in Dartmouth Crossing.  Their next meeting is this coming Thursday, March 8, from 10 AM to 2 PM.

Nancy

Check Your Bias

Did you figure out what I did wrong?

The question was this:  why did my machine knit swatches not look like the lace in the pattern when I followed the chart?  In my previous post I said that I knit the machine knit and the hand knit swatches using the exact same chart provided in the Kohi Shawl pattern.  For sure I did, but when I did the machine knit swatch I started the repeating pattern as I had highlighted it in the chart below on the left.

I did this so that I could pair up the decreases and increases so that when I made the first eyelet I would have a matching decrease (columns 14 and 11 in the photo) for the transfer to the right.  A conscious decision, but not fully thought through as you will see.

When I did the hand knit swatch, I didn't "cherry pick" the start of the lace repeat, and instead just started at the bottom of the chart as you would.  Here's an image of more of the chart, on the right, and the highlighted area on the bottom right of the image is the repeat I knit from.  I had a theory now that changing the start point was what went wrong, so I went back and did one more hand knit swatch knitted from the top part of the chart and lo and behold, the bias is gone just like it was for the first two machine knit swatches.

The fact that the first eyelet has no matching decrease on the right, and the last decrease has no matching eyelet increase on the left, is the key to making the lace "wave", or bias.  It does match up over the course of the row - the increases and decreases cancel each other out and you have the same number of stitches in work.  But over the course of the first ten pattern rows (even-numbered rows are knit plain) the fabric biases one stitch to the right five times.  Then on the next ten row repeat where you start with an orphaned decrease instead of increase, it biases in the opposite direction five times (or stitches) to keep everything balanced overall.  On a knitting needle, you have the same number of stitches per row every row, and you happily work away.  On the knitting machine, the actual needles in work on the bed have shifted over by five stitches to the right, and then in the next section five stitches to the left, and you're more likely to notice, and in my case, think something is perhaps wrong, because not only is the texture of the fabric "undulating", but so is your actual work space on the bed of the machine.

What that also means for the machine knitter is that you have to take into consideration this 5 stitch movement back and forth, and so for a 150-needle bed, as mine is, my maximum work space for this lace would be 145 needles.

Because there is quite a lot of hand manipulation involved in this pattern, and because it will be travelling back and forth five stitches on the machine bed, and finally because I don't like to over-complicate things (I see you rolling your eyes and laughing), I've decided that this shawl will be a wide rectangle.  I've also decided that I'm going to try it on 69 stitches (9 stitch repeat 7 times, plus three edge stitches on each side).   I decided on that by looking at the cast off edge on the first two shawls, which I know is almost 150 stitches wide, and that about half that would be a nice overall width.   I haven't quite decided on the edging, so if anyone has any suggestions please leave them below in the comments. 

In the meantime, I am reminded of Bob Ross, and his wise and liberating advice, to feel free in our creative pursuits to put a little tree here and a little stream there, where ever we feel like it.

Nancy

The Undulation Conundrum

Or:  The Curious Case of the Missing Curves

I have run into a very unexpected challenge in converting the Kohi Shawl's lace pattern from hand knit to machine knit, one that perhaps a more experienced machine knitter might have anticipated and have an immediate solution for, or perhaps not.  I can tell you, though, it nearly broke my brain.  So let me lay out for you this curious problem.

First, have a good look at the picture of the shawl (link above).  It is a very nice and basic eyelet lace with a vertical wave, and the lace pattern is actually called "waves of wheat" (or "wheat waves", or "waves of grain", depending on your source).  The chart for it is as so (highlight added by me to show the repeat):

Not bad, right?  The three-pronged transfer tool should do the trick for the hand manipulation, with a single prong on the opposite end to deal with whether or not the decreases should be 2-step or 1-step (more on that later).

To test the lace pattern I used some scrap yarn and just made a small swatch like so:

Look at it carefully.  There's maybe a tiny bit of "wave" but nothing like in the picture that accompanies the Kohi pattern.  I wondered if perhaps my swatch was too small to show the effect, or maybe I wasn't translating the decreases properly?  So I made a second swatch on the machine, and did 2-step decreases to see if that would make any difference.  A 2-step decrease is where you move the fourth stitch over to the third stitch of the set of three you are moving and then move the set of three to the right or left to fill that empty needle left by the fourth stitch (depending on which direction you are going with the decrease).  The tan swatch below is the second of my machine knit swatches.

If anything this is even less wavy and I am left scratching my head.  I go back again to the swatch and the picture of the shawl in the pattern and the two swatches.  Could the chart be wrong maybe?  So I look up the "waves of wheat" pattern on the internet and find another link (given above) and study that chart and, no, it's essentially the same - longer vertical waves, but that's really the only difference.  And the picture of the swatch looks essentially like the Kohi shawl.  So now I'm really perplexed, but with more study I note that in my machine knit swatches, the eyelets are lining up vertically as they do in the chart, but in the hand knit version they are offset, and it's not just because of the pull of the fabric made by the decreases.  They seem to be actually offset even though they are not in the chart.  So I decide to pull out my hand knitting needles and make yet another swatch, here:

Wait, what?  There it is - the pattern effect I've been looking for, from the exact chart I've been using, but this time with my knitting needles instead of my knitting machine.  The universe is toying with me.

At this point in my story, I'm going to encourage you to try this yourself if you don't believe me, because I barely believed me.  I can happily report that I did finally figure out why the difference, and I made a successful machine knit swatch last night after modifying the chart to how a machine knitter would read it.  Here's my machine knit swatch and my new chart:

The "wave" part of the pattern in the machine knit swatch isn't quite as well defined as it is in the hand knit swatch, so I may swap the types of decreases by changing the "ssk" to a one-step and the "k2tog" to a two-step to see if that matters, but honestly I'm pretty happy with that little swatch and that I actually found the missing curves.

I'm going to leave you in suspense for a few days as to the full explanation of why it made a difference in the first place, and I'd love to hear from you in the comments if you've tried it and especially if it's no surprise to you at all.  I do love a good mystery, especially when I can find a solution and learn a whole lot in the process!

Nancy