WIP: Pi Shawl — Hibernating Since 2008…

July 16, 2010| Lindy| 0 Comments | 2:13 pm

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In the Knitter’s Almanac, Elizabeth Zimmerman suggests doing a Pi Shawl during the month of July as a perfect knitting project to take along with you on your summer travels. Well, I started a Pi Shawl following her instructions in the Knitter’s Almanac in July of 2008. Umm, yeah. July 2008. I took this project with me during that summer on various trips, including a trip to Spain in September. But then, for some reason I don’t fully remember, I set it aside — and left it sitting until July 2010.

As you can see from the above photo, I had made quite a bit of progress on this shawl. In fact, I had made it all the way to the last set of increases, with 576 stitches on the needles. If you are not familiar with the concept of the Pi Shawl — it is simply this: you start out with a small number of stitches (9 in this case) and double the number of stitches every so many rows. The number of rows between increases grows by 3’s or thereabouts and you end up with a circular shawl made up of a whole lot of stitches. (EZ writes that you can keep increasing as long as you wish — but she stops at 576 as it seems to be enough. I think I agree.)

So — after I figured out where I had left off, I started knitting away on those 576 stitches using the lace patterns given in the Knitter’s Almanac. When I started this shawl, my plan was to knit it per EZ’s instructions. Knitting the lace patterns required knitting 42 rounds and I decided to knit an additional 2 rounds after that. Here’s what it looks like at this point:

Here a two additional views. The first is looking down at the center of the shawl with the circular needle underneath and the other is looking down with the circular needles on top.

It looks like a big lacey bag at this point. And it is really difficult to tell exactly how large this shawl actually is. I’m estimating that it is somewhere around 60″ in diameter, but I really won’t know until I get it off the needles and get it blocked.

Now, getting the shawl off the needles is going to take some time. This is because I am knitting on a lace border and using up the edge stitches as I go. I am using the lace border pattern on page 82 of the Knitter’s Almanac. Now, this was a bit tricky to get started — because it doesn’t really tell you how to incorporate knitting off stitches when you knit the lace pattern. EZ does describe the basic process earlier in the chapter — but the specific directions are not given with the lace border pattern itself.

It took me a little while to figure things out — and since I don’t want to have an issue with dropping any of those 576 stitches, I started by putting in a lifeline. From this point forward, I am using the right needle of my circular needle and a dpn to knit the border, so I put a point protector on the left needle to prevent stitches from sliding off and cast on 11 stitches for the border:

The lace border pattern consists of 4 rows, and you K2Tog each time you knit back toward the shawl’s edge stitches, incorporating 1 edge stitch into the border. This means you use up 2 stitches every 4 rows of border. (Yeah…it’s gonna take awhile.) Here’s the start of the border after 20 rows:

I like the border… Only 566 stitches to go. I hope to finish this before the end of July. I will post pictures of the finished shawl when I get it blocked.

Here’s a link to Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac

1 thought on “WIP: Pi Shawl — Hibernating Since 2008…”

Amanda says:

July 16, 2010 at 3:52 pm

Wow. That is going to be really gorgeous. I haven’t seen you in ages at the knitting nights. I can’t wait to see this finished!

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FO: My Traveling Woman ShawlFO: My Traveling Woman Shawl

I started this shawl the end of October and finished it in December. For me, this is a fairly quick knit in a lace pattern. The pattern is free on Ravelry and is quite popular. The shawl is knit in a triangle, starting at the center neck and grows as you knit it. It has a fagotted edging along the neckline. You knit the shawl in stockinette stitch to a selected number of stitches and then begin the feather and fan lace pattern. You are given an option to increase the number of pattern repeats you do so that your shawl will be longer and then you follow the second lace pattern to make the edging.

I knit this using Forsell Superwash Wool, 3 ply yarn and size 4 needles. This yarn is closer to a lace weight yarn than a fingering weight yarn and is actually a machine knitting yarn. If I were to do this shawl again, I would definitely go with a heavier yarn as I think the lace pattern would be better in at least a fingering weight yarn. I also would use a stretchy bind-off, rather than the one given in the pattern as my bound off edge was not as stretchy as I would have liked it to be and did not scallop like I thought it should when I blocked it.

The pattern itself is a very nice one, easy to follow. The finished shawl measured 19.5 inches by 56 inches, so it is more of a scarf than a shawl.

See details on my Ravelry Projects page.

In honor of EZ’s Brithday: Baby Surprise Jacket KALIn honor of EZ’s Brithday: Baby Surprise Jacket KAL

Elizabeth Zimmerman’s 100th birthday was August 9. One of our expert knitters in the Nebraska Knit & Crochet Guild (NKCG) started a knit-a-long (KAL) of the “Baby Surprise Jacket” in honor of EZ’s birthday. I had never done this baby sweater pattern, so I joined in the KAL.

It turned into on of those obsession driven projects. You know the ones — where you become so intrigued by how the pattern is unfolding that you simply.cannot.put.it.down. Yup, your fingers just itch to knit and your brain refuses to think about anything else — especially mundane things like laundry, cooking and other housework. That’s what this little project became.

You see, the BSJ is knit entirely of garter stitch and involves a series of increases, decreases and center double decreases to make your knitting go at right angles. It is knit in a single piece — and the fascinating thing is that it turns into a sweater without the normal sweater type shaping that you usually do. As I knit this project, I kept marveling at the ingenuity of the designer — how in the heck had she figured this out? It’s a combination of understanding geometry and the shaping required for a baby sweater — and EZ was someone who took theoretical concepts like right angles and turned them into pragmatic knitted garments. Perhaps a few pictures will help.

When you finish knitting the pattern — you end up with an oddly shaped piece of garter stitch fabric that looks like this:

As you can see, I knit this with two different yarns to create stripes. Now, when you fold the edges together, this striped fabric turns into this:

A jacket. That’s the surprise — it actually turns into a little sweater jacket with nifty right angle striping on the front and horizontal striping on the back. And — there are only two seams to sew! Just two — the sleeves at the top. The button band is done as part of the bottom of the knitted piece, so you just add buttons and you are finished. (I’m still looking for buttons, so I don’t have a photo of the finished jacket.)

Now, the written pattern is somewhat confusing at first. There are several resources available to help sort out the sketchy instructions given in both the Knitter’s Almanac and Knitting Workshop. However, the biggest question I had was “if I knit this at a gauge of 6 stitches per inch, what size is my jacket?” EZ just tells you it will fit an infant if you knit at that gauge and if you knit it at a gauge of 5 stitches per inch, you will get a bigger jacket that will fit a larger child about 1 year old. This is this question that seems to cause knitters the most problems.

I knit this BSJ using Dale of Norway Baby Ull, which is a fingering weight wool yarn and my gauge was 6 spi. The jacket measures 15.25 inches across the chest, just at the point where the underarm is. Looking at a standard body measurements chart for baby sizes, This jacket is a 0-3 months size.

Now this sizing issue really bugged me — so I had to figure out the sizing for different gauges and correlate them to actual baby sizes. (Yes, I am a geek.) After studying the pattern, I discovered that the chest measurement is at the point in the pattern where you are knitting 90 stitches. (90 divided by 6 equals 15). So, using this point of reference, I have calculated roughly what the corresponding size will be if the BSJ is knitted at gauges of 5.5 spi, 5 spi, & 4.5 spi. I put this into a table to help others who might be bugged by this question:

Gauge	Chest Measurement	Size
6 spi	15-16 in.	0-3 mos
5.5 spi	16-17 in.	3-6 mos
5 spi	18 in.	12 mos.
4.5 spi	20 in	18 mos.

References:
Pattern: Ez’s instructions for the Baby Surprise Jacket can be found in Knitter’s Almanac or Knitting Workshop and/or it can be purchased from Schoolhouse Press.

Row Counter: A handy tool for keeping track while knitting the BSJ can be found here: http://www.box.net/shared/eugvsfb3lt

Video: There is a six-part video series on the BSJ, here is the link to the First Episode.

Ravelry Knitters — there is also a Rav Group for the BSJ.

Knitted striped socks

I finished my striped socks yesterday morning. I am pleased with how they turned out. I used a self-striping yarn from Patons Yarns and it was fascinating to see the stripes evolve as the socks knit up.

I did not really use a pattern for these socks. There are literally thousands of free sock patterns available on the internet, but you really don’t need them if you understand the basics of knitting socks. I started with a gauge swatch and used my foot measurements to determine the number of stitches I needed. The “how to” of this seems to be enough for a separate post, so I will place that in my queue for future topics.

I choose to do a picot hem at the top of the cuff, a 3 by 1 rib for the cuff and instep, a slipped stitched heel flap with a square heel turn. My mentors for these socks were Nancy Bush – I consulted her book “Knitting on the Road” for advice on the square heel and Cat Bordhi, whose book “Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles” contains a wealth of information on how to knit socks.

Knitting socks on two circular needles

I used the two socks on two circular needles for this pair of socks. I prefer to knit socks two at a time, because when you’ve finished, you have a pair of socks and don’t have to go back and knit that second sock. You can knit socks two at a time using either two circulars – as shown here in my photo – Or you can use the magic loop technique. I started another pair of socks last night using this technique – so I’ll post about them later.