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

Shawl in a Ball LIVE

Join us on Saturday, March 10, from 10 AM to 5 PM at the Musquodoboit Harbour Public Library to knit your very own shawl!

We are just about at capacity so let us know soon if you would like to attend so that you can be added to the email list to get the full details.  If you're not sure, read up on the project in my previous posts here and here.

Some of the things that we will cover as we work through the shawl will be increasing and decreasing methods, using a garter bar, tension, embellishing, and other ways of modifying and customizing the project.

In the meantime, I'm working on translating the hand knit lace pattern of the Kohi Shawl, by Pineapple Bird Knits, to machine knit, also using the Shawl in a Ball yarn, and I have encountered some very unexpected challenges that have made this project a very valuable learning opportunity.  I hope to be able to post about it soon, and to also talk about it during our workshop at the library.  At the very least there will be lots of samples to show and tell!

Nancy