Category: Franklin Habit

The Adventure of the Fallen Flowers: Part Two

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

 

It probably speaks volumes about me that even my freeform crochet adventure had to start with some kind of plan.

Attitude Adjustment

The more I thought it over, the more the idea of creating a delicate fabric of scattered blossoms appealed to me. It was, for one thing, the opposite of the crochet I’d known growing up. That crochet came in two flavors: the zigzag afghan and the daisy place mat.

It may be that you recall zigzag afghans and daisy place mats with a fond smile. I’m sorry that I do not.

I recall the former as being worked always in three or more colors of stiff yarn so plastic it smelled like Tupperware. My memory kicks in around 1976, the American Bicentennial; so zigzags in red, white, and blue were the home accessory du jour along with colonial style console televisions and floor lamps in the of shape butter churns. My mother, never a slave to fashion, made our afghan in a range of rusts and browns that didn’t show dirt because they already looked like dirt.

The daisy placemats in vivid white, yellow, and orange thread may sound cheerful; but these were not the sunny, nodding, butterfly-kissed daisies of the open field. These scratchy daisies marched in regimental rows across the Formica dinette with all the charm of an invading army. Their pinched faces and lurid coloring make me think now of women I met years later while living in an unspeakable Boston suburb: identical dead eyes, fake tans, and secret fears that somewhere in Middlesex County someone might be having a good time.

What both specimens had in common, I now realize, is that they were textiles you wouldn’t want to touch. They looked nasty and felt nastier. All they had going for them, really, was that they were easy to clean. You could just throw them in the wash. Hell, you could lay them in the driveway and hose them down. They were impossible to destroy.

I thought for years that this must be the nature of crochet: to be, in a word, unpleasant.

It wasn’t until the very recent past that the work of designers like Cécile Balladino, Sophie Digard, Jenny King, and Kathy Merrick (this is but a partial list) began to open my mind.

That is absolutely crochet, yet it positively begs to be touched. The color mix is masterful. It’s beautiful.

So at last I had learned a funny thing about crochet: if you work it tightly in ugly yarn, it comes out tight and ugly. If you don’t–it doesn’t. Just like knitting.

Loosen Up

If I wanted my carpet of flowers to drape, the experts I spoke with all gave pretty much the same advice.

1. Choose yarn that drapes well.

2. Work it at a gentle gauge.

3. Keep your individual freeform units on the small side.

I’d already chosen my yarns–Schoppel Wolle Zauberball® and Hikoo® Tiara–before thinking much about that first point. They seemed drapey enough.

As to numbers two and three, I was only too happy to work with a light touch and a small motif. A small motif, it seemed to me, offered fewer opportunities to screw up. On a quiet afternoon not long ago I set off into the heart of a baroque nineteenth century hexagon full of picots and doubles and half-doubles and double-doubles and double-trebles and layovers and whoopee-doos; and got so lost I had to be airlifted to safety.

The Motif

I turned to Edie Eckman’s Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs,

which I mentioned in the last column and which had by now become my guidebook for this project.

Edie’s larger motifs are often matched with tiny “fillers” that act as decorative joins. It was one of these–a four-petaled flower–that caught my eye. Cute, simple, and contained no stitches I didn’t already know how to do. Winner!

For those who’d like to play along, Edie has graciously allowed me to share the pattern with you here:

Begin with sliding loop.

Rnd 1. Ch 1, 8 sc in ring, join with slip st to first sc.

Rnd 2. Ch 1, Block Stitch in same st, skip 1 sc, *Block Stitch (see below) in next sc, skip 1 st; rep from * around, join with slip st to first sc.

Fasten off.

Block Stitch: Sc in st or space indicated, ch 3, 3 dc inside of sc just made.

Two rounds and done. I can handle that.

Now, some folks will say that if I’m only using one motif, even if I’m attaching pieces at will and changing both colors and yarns, I’m not really creating freeform crochet. To those folks I can only say

The Rules of the Game

With yarn, hooks, sketch, and motif all in order, I still couldn’t jump in.

This was becoming embarrassing.

So I fell back on a tool in my knitting kit that I’ve used almost as much as my tape measure. Here it is.

When I’m at a crossroads in a piece of work and just can’t make a decision, I like to give it up to chance. To make it into a game.

Here are the rules of my game:

Roll 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5: Work the blossom with Zauberball®.

 

Roll 6: Work the blossom with Tiara.

 

A new blossom may be attached to any part of the fabric any number of times.

I stacked the odds heavily in favor of Zauberball® since I wanted the Tiara to be an accent sprinkled around the fabric. So, provided my die wasn’t loaded, only 1 in every 6 blossoms would be purple.

Now I was ready.

See you in two weeks…

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman (Storey Publishing)

Schoppel Wolle Zauberball® (75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon), 420m/100g ball. Color: 1993 (Chocolate Cream)

Hikoo® Tiara (10% Kid Mohair, 5% Wool, 49% Acrylic, 22% Nylon, 10% Bead, 4% Sequin), 188 yd/100g hank. Color: 74 (Amethyst)

addi® Olive Wood Crochet Hooks

Six-sided die from, I dunno, must have fallen out of an old Yahtzee set or something

The Adventure of the Fallen Flowers: Part One

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

When I was drawing I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book, my friend and frequent collaborator John Mullarkey visited the studio and asked to watch as I worked over a piece from rough sketch to finished art.

I’ve seldom had someone spy on that process, which usually starts with a very light and wobbly sketch in pencil…

…followed by increasingly bold lines made by repeated goes with the pencil and a great deal of erasing…

…followed, with luck, by the slow process of inking the lines to make them permanent and printable.

John was struck by how many layers lay under what (I hope) appears to be a polished, unified final image.

Not everyone who draws follows that path, but I always have. Every finished drawing is the sum of a dozen unfinished drawings, one atop the other. To be terribly honest–honesty being a goal of these columns–one of the things that always drives me nuts about knitting is that it doesn’t usually lend itself to that multi-layered process.

Yes, you can swatch for knitting. And yes, I do. I also sketch and I plan–as I did for Rosamund’s sweater in our last adventure.

But when the sketches and swatches give way to the final piece you move from start to finish in a mostly linear fashion. You can rip back. And yes, I do. Boy, do I. Usually about a dozen times. For a hat.

But once a knitting project reaches an advanced stage, you can’t decide casually that it would be sweet to toss in a little cable action at the shoulders or move that stripe up four inches or narrow the color motif by two stitches without re-knitting the dang thing.

Please Feel Free

That’s one reason I love trying my hand at different fiber arts. Sometimes the nature and structure of knitting are precisely what I crave. Sometimes not. Sometimes I feel like messing around, changing directions, experimenting, reserving the right to go back and edit, add, and elaborate without a ton of ripping.

With that in mind I started checking out the freeform work that is the passion of artists like Australia’s Prudence Mapstone, whose designs are known internationally as the vanguard of the field.

Freeform pieces don’t follow a pattern in the commonly accepted sense of the word. You may have a template or a sketch; but aside from that, you just…go. One improvised motif or fragment or what-have-you (Prudence evocatively calls it a “scrumble”) of knitting or crochet leads to the next, and to the next, and the fabric grows as it will. Or rather, as you wish it to, bit by bit.

Prudence works in both knitting and crochet (often combined, as in the piece above). As I had just finished a mess of knitting I felt the pendulum in my brain swing from needles to hooks.

Inspiration from Edie Eckman

Then, at this summer’s edition of Stitches Midwest, I ran into Edie Eckman at the Makers’ Mercantile booth in the Marketplace. Edie was one of my first needlework teachers, back when I decided to try taking classes after a lifetime of learning on my own. Now we’re friends and colleagues, which I find both miraculous and humbling.

She was there to sign her crochet books–which are excellent, numerous, and famous (everyone who crochets should have The Crochet Answer Book)–and I decided to pick up a copy of Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs.

I had admired the book since the year it came out, when Edie appeared at Stitches Midwest wearing this remarkable  one-skein snowflake shawl from the patterns section.

I was tempted to mug her and run away with it, since at the time my crochet skills weren’t up to making one myself. Now, having got granny squares under my belt, it might be possible to try something that complex on my own.

In Connect the Shapes, Edie dwells briefly on the topic of working
freeform. I wondered if I might select an
hors d’oeuvres from her extensive buffet of motifs, then multiply and vary it to make an improvised fabric.

“Do you think I could do it?” I asked Edie.

“You can do it,” said Edie firmly. “And if you have questions, call me.”

Yarns, Hooks, and Plans

The more I thought about the idea of freeform, the more excited I got. My first impulse was to reach for Schoppel Wolle Zauberball, color 1993 (Chocolate Cream) – a series of slow shifts from warm black through cream by way of milky cocoa and tan.

Then I realized that nothing prevented me from mixing not only a different color, but an entirely different yarn. It could be a different fiber, a different weight, a different texture. Maybe all three?

This skein of Hikoo Tiara in color 74 (Amethyst) had been sitting here staring at me for ages.

This yarn is quirky. It blends kid mohair, wool, acrylic, and nylon with beads and sequins. I liked it as an art object, but couldn’t figure out what the heck to do with it. Frankly, I’m not a fellow who goes in for sparkle and fuzz. It might be useful, though, as a striking change of pace from the quiet rusticity of the Zauberball.

Should I? Beads? Sequins? Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound.

As to hooks, I will admit without hesitation that one of the reasons I chose to make this a crochet adventure was the chance to work again with the addi® Olive Wood hooks that I mentioned in the last column.

They’re pretty to look at and dreamy to handle. Can you blame me?

So I put everything on the worktable, poured myself a cup of tea…and froze.

Could I really charge forward without any kind of plan at all?

As much as I would love to make this a truly out-on-a-limb adventure, in which I crochet the day away without a second thought as to what I’m doing, I am not that person. I never have been that person. At my age, it is unlikely that anything short of being sucked onto a flying saucer in which long-fingered green aliens neatly switch my brain with that of Indiana Jones (or Prudence Mapstone) will turn me into that person.

And so we come full circle this week–back to my paper and pencils. I started scribbling and found my head was full of flowers. Maybe it was because fall has arrived here in Chicago, where I know I won’t see anything in bloom except mildew for about the next nine months.

I remembered a passage by legendary gardener Gertrude Jekyll, describing how with the aid of teams of housemaids she gathered thousands of roses to make potpourri. I remembered watching purple jacaranda petals fall and cover the sidewalks during my childhood in Hawaii. I thought of showers of white Mountain Laurel near my grandmother’s house in Pennsylvania, and pink cherry blossoms drifting across a Japanese scroll in my collection.

A carpet of scattered flowers.That’s what I wanted to make. To be used as…

To be used as…as…uh…

Well, I don’t know what it will be used as. I’m not even sure how I’m going to make it. Let’s talk more about that in two weeks.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book by Franklin Habit (Soho Publishing)

Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman (Storey Publishing)

Schoppel Wolle Zauberball (75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon), 420m/100g ball. Color: 1993 (Chocolate Cream)

Hikoo Tiara (10% Kid Mohair, 5% Wool, 49% Acrylic, 22% Nylon, 10% Bead, 4% Sequin), 188 yd/100g hank. Color: 74 (Amethyst)

addi® Olive Wood Crochet Hooks

The Adventure of the Warm Puppy: Part One

 

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

 

 

Meet Rosamund

I must begin this adventure by making introductions.

I would like you, please, to meet my dear companion, Rosamund Adelaide.

When Rosamund arrived, she was only eighteen months old; yet she had already suffered a life, as Lady Bracknell put it in The Importance of Being Earnest, “crowded with incident.”

Born into an “accidental” (read “irresponsible”) litter in downstate Illinois, she was taken from her mother far too soon and sold via Craigslist to an abusive brute.

When the authorities arrived to remove the brute’s wife and child to a safe place, they begged that the dog also be taken away, as he would likely kill her by way of revenge. She was emaciated, so much so that she was nearly dead already.

She was dropped at a shelter where, because of her breed (she is a bluenose pit bull), she was marked for swift euthanasia. In the nick of time, a rescue society claimed her and brought her back to health. A foster home cared for her until the happy day she left all that to be with me. She was re-christened, rather grandiosely, after a fictional duchess and an actual queen. In casual settings, she answers* to Roz.

In spite of all she suffered, she loves everyone–men, women, children, other dogs, even cats. She is polite, endlessly playful, and touchingly affectionate. Her sole aversions are pigeons and rats–a distaste we share.

It has only been three months. I can’t imagine life without her.

Winter Is Coming

She took up residence here in Chicago just as warm weather arrived. Our summer, though hot, is at best fleeting. Winter lasts for about nine months and is famously brutal.

One look at Rosamund’s short, sleek coat and nearly bare tummy told me that she would require a sweater. No. Many sweaters.

You can buy dog sweaters, of course. Quite nice ones, if you are prepared to pay handsomely. But for this tiny girl, I wanted only the very best–and if possible, I wanted to make it with my own hands.

Solid as a Rock

Way back when I first attended a knitting circle, there was a woman in the group whose specialty was knitting rock covers. By which I mean that she enjoyed knitting covers for rocks. She would trawl the lake shore or construction sites or public parks looking for odd-shaped hunks of stone about the size of her first, then knit little stockinette cozies that grew and shrank to snugly enclose each one.

What she did with them after that, I have no idea. Perhaps she hurled them through the windows of journalists who wrote things like, “Knitting–it isn’t just for grandmothers any more.”

I wasn’t tempted to try knitting for rocks myself, but when confronted with the wriggling bundle of compact, muscular curves that is Rosamund, I thought of it. The Rock Knitter had told me a bit about her method–measuring the difference between two points, making simple calculations, and doing some guesswork.

Rosamund, when stubborn, is very much like a rock with bewitchingly soulful eyes. Perhaps the same calculating and guessing could guide me to a sweater that would make both of us happy on a snowy day.

The Measure of the Mutt

Mind you, I’d never knit a dog sweater before. Not from a pattern, not at all. So I set out knowing that this first attempt might go cockeyed. In fact, it probably wouldn’t end in a wearable garment.

But that’s not unusual in made-to-measure, is it? A fine suit or gown requires multiple fittings. A couture design begins with a test garment called a toile–also called a muslin–that’s meant only to serve as a guide for making the real thing.

This first go would be my toile. Once the basic shape was established, I could vary it to my heart’s content.

I needed measurements. Lots of them.

Happily, Rosamund was wonderfully docile–even amused–during our little gavotte with the tape measure. She gave it a nibble, found it didn’t taste good, and decided to indulge me and my odd fancies.

She has all kinds of angles I’d never considered until I started trying to map her topography. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d need, so I might have gone slightly overboard. Better too much information than too little.

These are the measurements I took, in no particular order:

A. Neck (with collar): 21 inches

B. Collar to end of ribs, measured along chest: 13 inches

C. Chest circumference: 27 inches

D. Waist circumference: 21.5 inches

E. Space between forelegs (across chest): 4 inches

F. Neck (at collar) to shoulder: 5 inches

G. Chest to waist: 10 inches

H. Circumference of leg: 9 inches

I. Outside width of leg: 5.5 inches

Raw Ingredients

I hedged my bets with my choice of yarn.

HiKoo® Simpliworsted is a workhorse–soft, reasonably priced, and resilient; with wool for warmth, nylon for strength, and acrylic to keep its shape. It’s easily washable, too. So if the coat did come out well, it’d withstand the abuse Rosamund would inflict upon it. If it didn’t come out well, I wouldn’t have broken the bank and could try again.

This variegated colorway seemed a good choice, too. I didn’t plan any stylish details in this prototype, but the gentle color changes of the yarn itself would offer interest even in plain stockinette.

And Of Course…

I swatched.

This was more fun than you might expect, because I was using my first addi® Olive Wood circular needle. These needles are absolutely delicious, by the way: strong, smooth, and beautiful, with a nice, sharp tip. Soft in the hand. Isn’t the grain lovely?

I knit up a generous swatch to test the drape and density of the fabric, to decide between 2/2 and 1/1 ribbing, and to check my stitch and row gauge.

Many knitters only pay lip service to swatching for gauge, but for the kind of knitting I intended it was absolutely vital. Without accurate measurements, I’d be lost before I began.

I know it’s common to say, cynically, that swatches lie. I’ve said it myself. But even the most deceitful swatch tells you more then no swatch at all.

After all this, at last we come to calculating the cast on and getting down to knitting.

So much more about that in two weeks.

*Especially if you are holding cheese.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Simpliworsted by HiKoo® (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yds per 100g skein). Color: 611, Earth and Sky.

addi® Olive Wood circular needles size US 4, 16 inch (40 cm)

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His newest book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book was brought out by Soho Publishing in May 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, Squam Arts Workshops, the Taos Wool Festival, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection/Makers’ Mercantile. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet (presently on hiatus).

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

Follow Franklin online via Twitter (@franklinhabit), Instagram (@franklin.habit), his Web site (franklinhabit.com) or his Facebook page.

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first installment of this series, click here.

The design process is, at bottom, a series of questions. The more honest your answers, the better your design.

Most of the questions are Am I happy with this?

Facing the Swatch

This sixteen patch Ohio Star block is probably the largest single swatch I’ve ever knit for a project.

As I wrote in Part Two, I liked it well enough to begin an entire quilt-inspired blanket. But an even, good swatch suggests what you might do better.

I wanted a few changes.

First: more color. There’s not a shade of Kenzie I don’t like–it’s been a favorite of mine since it was introduced. The blue and grey are perfectly handsome, but too quiet for my current mood. This blanket is going to take a lot of time to knit, so I want it to make a statement. A bold statement. A really bold statement. If I could make it dance the hippy hippy shake while singing “Ain’t We Got Fun?” I would.

Second: more heft. The Kenzie fabric is soft, drapey, and sweet to cuddle. However, I live in Chicago, in a Victorian apartment house, and I don’t use blankets as decorative accents. Come February, I use them for survival. Heavier is better.

Kenzington Calling

The Hikoo line offers a yarn I think of as Kenzie’s bigger, fancier cousin: Kenzington. The two share similar fiber blends– both have New Zealand merino, nylon, alpaca, and silk noils.* Kenzington is thicker, though; and rather than being twisted, it’s held together by what the industry calls “chainette” construction. Look at it closely, and you’ll see the strand is, indeed, a teeny weeny little chain.

When I first wrote about this yarn, someone asked me if it’s as soft as it looks. I told her it feels like an extremely stylish angel kissing you on the cheek.

Am I happy with this?

Oh, you bet I am.

The Unnatural Colorist

Now, which colors of Kenzington to use?

There was a time when this question would have sent me straight under the bed to shiver among the dust bunnies. I am not what you would call a natural-born colorist.

I lay this partly at the feet of my mother, who had a remarkable aversion to color. Our house and most things in it were a low-key mélange of brown, tan, ecru, beige, and rust. When she was in a carnival mood, she’d throw in a dash of hunter green.

How, you might ask, could such a person be a quilter? Well…in her all-too-brief lifetime she turned out a heap of beautifully made quilts in brown, tan, ecru, beige, and rust (with an occasional bit of hunter green). Such was her taste.

What’s more, as an American boy I was conditioned to limit myself to the so-called “masculine” palette of black, grey, blue, and khaki with a touch of moss green. Unless it was a color you could find on a battleship or a rotting log, I wasn’t allowed to wear it.

I overcame this to become a knitter who is in middle age perhaps almost too fond of mixing colors together in my work. In fact, these days I teach other knitters how to do it. It’s not–as I used to think–an arcane talent with which one must be born. You can learn, if you apply yourself a little and mess around a lot.

Coloring the Block

Here’s how I did it for this project.

I started with a color I really liked: Color 1015 Boysenberry, the purple.

I chose it for no other reason than that: I liked it. I figured I would enjoy knitting with it.

I had an idea that this would be the dominant color in the star; but I didn’t want it to stand alone. I wanted a second, closely related color, and reached for Color 1027 Takahe, the blue.

The two are similar enough (cool, dark in value, containing blue) that a star made of both would (or should) still read as a single unit of design.

For the background, I needed something that less intense that wouldn’t draw attention to itself. Grey had worked well in the Kenzie swatch block, so it was easy to choose a similar grey, Color 1018 Seal, in Kenzington.

If the star has two colors, why not have the background in two colors as well? Kenzington offers a pale tan, Color 1000 Pavlova, that is similar in value (very light) to the grey, and so should read well as a continuation of the background.

This is where, once upon a time, I would have stopped. All these colors sit nicely next to one another. Nothing jars. I have learned, though, that therein lies a problem. If everything goes together too well, the mix is inclined to be quiet. That can be soothing; but just as often can be dowdy or boring. I needed a jolt energy, and that comes from adding something very different.

So into the cool mix I dropped Color 1005 Bayberry, an orange-red. This would be primarily for the diamonds between the blue-and-purple stars. There would be less of it, and so I didn’t need to worry about it overwhelming the blanket–I hoped. You never know, do you?

Am I happy with this?

Indeed I am.

Seeing Stars

Before knitting the new patches I drew a sketch of the block, so I would know how many of each patch I’d need.

As the patches were finished, I laid them out to watch the blocks shape up.

When I had finished the first block, I was happy enough with it to knit the second. Then the fun really started.

My original plan was these two blocks, repeated.

Cute, right? I mean, fine. Yeah.

Am I happy with this?

Kinda. I mean, it was…fine. It wasn’t bad. It would work.

But as long as the squares were all laid out, I figured I’d not try some other arrangements. Like this.

Or this.

Or even set aside the Ohio Star entirely and try something else. Why not?

And suddenly, in my head and stomach, the happy little vibrations that tell me, “That’s it. That’s the answer,** right there.”

Am I happy with this?

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Never. Stop. Playing.

I have a whole lot of knitting and sewing to do. And I think we are going to need a border to finish this thing.

See you in two weeks.

*Kenzie also includes a touch of angora.

**The answer for me. Your answer may differ, and that’s as it should be.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Kenzie by Hikoo® (50% New Zealand Merino, 25% Nylon, 10% Angora, 10% Alpaca, 5% Silk Noils; 160 yds per 50g skein). Colors 1002 (Grey Salt) and 1013 (Tekapo).

Kenzington by Hikoo (60% Merino, 25% Nylon, 10% Alpaca, 5% Silk Noils; 208 yds per 100g skein). Colores

addi® Click Turbo Interchangeable Needles

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His newest book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book was brought out by Soho Publishing in May 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, Squam Arts Workshops, the Taos Wool Festival, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection/Makers’ Mercantile. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet (presently on hiatus).

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

Follow Franklin online via Twitter (@franklinhabit), Instagram (@franklin.habit), his Web site (franklinhabit.com) or his Facebook page.

 

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first installment of this series, click here.

Today, as we continue the quilt-inspired blanket, I’m going to talk an awful lot about the S word. Sewing.

Don’t make that face at me. I wish I had a ball of Cashmere Queen for every knitter who has said, “Oh, I hate sewing,” after she has tried it once, for about half an armhole, then got frustrated and stuffed the project into a bag and shoved the bag into a closet and then moved to a new house without opening the closet again.

I’m not saying you have to love sewing. I’m not promising you ever will love sewing. I do believe that if you give basic sewing a fair shake, you’ll be glad to have it in your arsenal when a simple seam will get you the results that you want.

Why Sew?

You might well ask why a knitted blanket must involve sewing at all. Many of you have asked. More than a few have asked indignantly, suggesting in heated terms that alternate methods (from join-as-you-go squares to garter stitch intarsia) would allow me to work the whole project in a single piece and avoid…shudder…sewing.

Those alternate methods all have merit, and the question is a fair one. So here’s my answer.

If I try to work a blanket this size in one piece, I know I will never finish it.

This isn’t going to be a bedspread, just a little lap blanket; but even a lap blanket becomes a chore to haul around once you’re about a third finished. You can’t tuck it into a pouch or a pocket. You either knit it at home, stationary, confined to what I hope is a comfortable chair. Or you find a bag big enough to encompass it (along with the long, long needles and enough yarn to see you through the long, long rows) and you drag the bag from pillar to post until your shoulders give out.

If I can work on this only when I’m at home and at rest, I’ll never finish. I have to nibble away at it, square by square, wherever I happen to be–for example, in a taxi on the way to the airport–

or on the back porch–

until I’ve got enough squares to amount to something. Since the basic square is so simple, light, and small, it makes a perfect traveling project.

The sixteen I made to test this idea were worked at home, on the subway, in a few taxicabs, in four airports, in three hotels, on six airplanes, in the car, in a clutch of restaurants, and in seven states.

That’s why it’s a stealth blanket. If I’m going to knit it, I have to knit it almost without realizing I’m knitting it. If that means sewing–okay, fine. I’ll sew.

But First, I Block

My childhood needlework teacher, my late grandmother Pauline, beat it into me* that successful sewing owes much to proper preparation. We have here many small squares that we hope to join into one large square.

 

To get the best results those small squares really need to be square and equal. That means blocking them all to the same size and shape.

I prefer wet blocking, so all the squares went into a nice bath of warm water with a touch of gentle baby shampoo and sat there for about forty minutes.

While they relaxed, I set up an impromptu blocking frame. This idea isn’t original. In fact it’s been parroted so many times I finally gave up on trying to find the originator. Whoever you are, I salute you.

You need, first, a base of something firm but penetrable–it might be a couple layers of thick corrugated cardboard, a Styrofoam block, or–in my case–a piece of insulating foam left over from a home improvement project.

On this base, use a good straightedge (mine was one of Mom’s quilting rulers) to mark out a square the size that your finished knit squares need to be. Keep in mind that we are blocking gently–don’t expect to stretch a five-inch square to seven inches unless you’re knitting lace.

Then get yourself eight metal (and rust-proof!) double-pointed knitting needles a few sizes smaller than the needles you used to knit your squares. (Mine are eight-inch addi® double-pointed aluminum needles.)

Insert the needles into the base, as perpendicular** as you can get them: one at each corner of the square, and one in the center of each side.

After a thorough rinse, retrieve your squares from the bath and gently press out the excess water. They should still be damp, but not sopping.
One by one, stretch them over your uprights and slide them down to the base. Soon you will have a stack of clean squares blocked to match. The sight is immensely satisfying. Take a moment to enjoy it.

The downside of this method is that the stack can take a long time*** to dry. To hurry it up a bit, I a) blow a fan on it and b) peel off the topmost squares as they finish drying.

Next, We Plan

In assembling the squares for a blanket, we would do well to follow the wise example of quilters everywhere, including my own, dear mother.

Step One. Squares are sewn together into strips.

Step Two. Strips are sewn together into blocks.

Here’s the plan for sewing our block, which mimics the traditional pattern many quilters call Ohio Star.****

The arrows in the top row indicate that we first sew the four squares into a strip.

Then we sew the squares in the three rows below into three strips.

Then we sew the strips together to form the block.

This orderly approach keeps us from making grave mistakes, and also means each piece of the blanket is handled as little as possible–handling can lead to stretching, which leads to un-square squares.

Clever people, those quilters.

Then, We Prepare

Sewing isn’t knitting, even when you’re sewing two pieces of knitting together. It has a few special requirements; and if you’ll just take care to meet those you’ll be well on your way to success.

Light. Sewing needs a lot of light–in general, more than you need to knit. You can feel your way along a row of knitting, even in a dim lecture hall or a dark theatre. In sewing, you must be able to see clearly where the next stitch is to be taken. The usual table lamp in the living room may be insufficient. Work in good daylight, or under the very best artificial lighting you can muster. This is especially vital when working with dark colors.

Surface. Most of us knit with the work–even when it’s large–in our laps. Very small bits of sewing might be that portable; but you’ll do best to sew a blanket with the aid of a work surface. Do what you can to clear a level, stable area of table or desk to hold your supplies and the piece in progress. As you begin to sew the strips together into the finished block, the table will support the fabric and keep it from stretching. You’ll be able to focus on your stitches, not managing the bulk.

Length. Don’t reel off 50 inches of yarn to sew a 40-inch seam. The maximum length of yarn or thread to work with is somewhere between 20 and 22 inches. Longer than that, and you will suffer snarls, knots, and kinks sufficient to make you wish you had never been born. What’s more, long strands of knitting yarn may well weaken or wear through from repeated pulling through the fabric, and your seam will break.

Now, We Whip

I like to sew yarn to yarn with yarn–in this case, the blue (Color 1013, Tekapo) of my two-color pairing of Kenzie. My needle is the same I use for weaving in ends.

The stitch is whip stitch. It has many virtues. It is quick, easy, strong, flexible, and the same on both sides. Pattern writers from the great flourishing of knitted counterpanes in the nineteenth century usually called for blocks to be whipped together, and they knew what they were about.

Read these notes first.

General Notes. You will work your seam from right to left–unless you are left handed, in which case you may prefer to work left to right.

If you knit your squares according to the recipe in the previous column, you’ll find you have created slipped-stitch edges that look like elongated stitches. I chose this edge in part because it will help you see where to sew. When you take your stitches, always take them under both legs of that slipped edge stitch.

Don’t make your stitches too tight or too loose. You want an even tension that brings adjoining squares together with a firm but supple seam. Tight stitches will make the fabric pucker and stiffen. Loose stitches flop around shamelessly and leave gaps in the work. If after you work a seam you find your tension isn’t quite right, use the tip of your sewing needle to adjust the stitches. Nobody else needs to know.

Now, we sew.

Step One. Align your two pieces with wrong sides facing, and hold them in your non-dominant hand like a little sandwich. I work whip stitch while looking at the right sides, so I can really see what I’m doing.

Step Two. Insert your needle at the rightmost corner of the piece nearer to you, as shown. Pull the yarn through, leaving a five-inch tail hanging from the work.

Step Three. Insert the needle at the rightmost corner of the further piece, from the right side to the wrong side. In the same motion, bring the needle under the edge stitch immediately to the left of your first stitch in the nearer piece. Note that you are pointing the needle directly at yourself as you do this. Pull the yarn through until the selvages of your pieces just kiss one another. Mwah!

Step Four. Repeat Step Three, taking your next stitch in the further fabric under the edge stitch immediately to the left of your first sewing stitch. Proceed in this way to the end of the seam, taking one sewing stitch under every edge stitch your selvages.

Step Five. When you reach the end of the seam, cut the yarn leaving a five inch tail. Weave in both tails on the wrong side just as you weave in any loose ends on your knitting.

In Summary. *Insert needle from far side of work to near side under both slipped selvages and pull yarn through. Repeat from *, moving one slipped selvage stitch to the left to begin the next sewn stitch.

And At Last…

When the squares have become strips and the strips have been joined, we have a blanket.

Well, we have a blanket square. Fairly large–mine measures 21 x 21 inches. Nice for a big pillow cover, or a mat for the new baby to lie on while it does neonatal yoga.

I love the yarn. The design and construction have proven themselves worthy. But there’s one thing I’m not crazy about…the color. Rather, the lack thereof. This is fine. But I’m in a mood lately for lots of color. Not two colors, even two pretty colors like these.

I’m also thinking I’d like to try this in a slightly heavier yarn, to make the blanket really deluxe. But after sixteen squares, can I bear to start over?

Enter Kenzie’s beautiful big sister, Kenzington.

Yeah, baby. Yeahhhhh. See you in two weeks.

*But don’t get crazy. If you find yourself using a square, level, and plumb, you are overthinking it.

**Not an exaggeration. I have a dent on my head where the yardstick landed.

***Eternity.

***Names of quilt blocks are like names of knitting stitches. They abound, they vary, they contradict. You might well call this block by another name, or you might well know a different block as Ohio Star. What a world, my friends. What a world.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Kenzie by HiKoo® (50% New Zealand Merino, 25% Nylon, 10% Angora, 10% Alpaca, 5% Silk Noils; 160 yds per 50g skein). Colors 1002 (Grey Salt) and 1013 (Tekapo).

Kenzington by Hikoo® (60% Merino, 25% Nylon, 10% Alpaca, 5% Silk Noils; 208 yds per 100g skein).

addi® Click Interchangeable Circular Needles

addi® 8″ Aluminum Double Pointed Needles

About Franklin

 

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His newest book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book was brought out by Soho Publishing in May 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, Squam Arts Workshops, the Taos Wool Festival, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection/Makers’ Mercantile. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet (presently on hiatus).

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

Follow Franklin online via Twitter (@franklinhabit), Instagram (@franklin.habit), his Web site (franklinhabit.com) or his Facebook page.

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

I often wonder that more knitters do not keep Life Lists in the way that ardent bird watchers do.

A birder’s Life List is (as the name implies) a tally of all birds s/he has definitively spotted. But many Life Lists are also aspirational; they include all the species that might be spotted in a neighborhood, in a country, on a continent, or (for the extremely ambitious) around the world.

Completing that kind of Life List could require a trip fraught with expense and discomfort solely to check one little box. Behold, at last I have seen the Speckle-Breasted Willie Warmer. Check.

Me, I have a running tally–in the form of my Ravelry projects page. Yes, I have knit a square shawl, a triangular shawl, a circular shawl, cuff-down socks, toe-up socks…Check, check, check, check.

You probably have one, too. Ravelry project pages are common as corner houses. But what about a list of the things I haven’t knit? What’s missing? I started taking stock.

Would you believe it turns out I’ve never knit a blanket?

Again and Again and Again

I have knit bits of blanket. In other words, I have finished a piece here and there that, had I knit many more of that piece, and sewn them all together, I would have made a blanket.

My problem is that I am not by nature a knitter who thrives on repetition. I can finish a second sock, because my feet are small, my socks go quickly, and the idea of stopping after only one makes me feel abashed and ridiculous. But when I meet someone who tells me she’s making her eleventh shawl from the same pattern, all I can do is stand and blink. Eleven of the same thing? Eleven? How do you do that?

Mother Was a Quilter

My late mother, bless her memory, thrived on repetition. She often fixed early in the year on a single project–an electrified ceramic Christmas tree, a macramé hanging shelf, a suite of framed floral cross stitch miniatures–and would turn into a one-woman gift factory, turning out two dozen identical specimens for delivery to friends and relations well in time for December 25. She was always organized and she never sweated.

I did not inherit any of this from her.

Near the end of her life she discovered quilting and went into orbit. Precision! Repetition! Protocol! It was an art form she’d been born to explore. Sadly, after two years and a dozen perfect quilts, she was gone from us forever. Four uncompleted projects were still sitting, waiting, in her sewing room on the day she died. Along with her pin cushion, just as she’d left it.

Knitting Patchwork

I got to thinking that I might like to make a patchwork-inspired blanket as an homage to Mom. I would knit it, but I’d take my design and construction cues from quilting.

One of the most common design units in quilting, often the first a new quilter is taught, is a square patch made of two identical triangles, like this:

I’ve sewn a lot of these. I’d never knit one, but I knew it wouldn’t be difficult. Just do up a square on the bias, changing yarns halfway across. It’s such a simple idea I know I can’t be the first person to try it. I’m probably not even the twentieth. But I didn’t rush off to Ravelry to check. When I do something like this, I’d rather find my own way if I possibly can. Do I reinvent the wheel sometimes? Sure I do. I also learn a heck of a lot more about how stuff works.

Square Recipe

I sat down with one of my favorite tweedy yarns – Hikoo® Kenzie, and a size US 6 (4mm) addi® Click needle that I guessed would give me (your gauge may vary) the kind of garter stitch I like: firm. You want the fabric in a blanket to drape, but not droop. Loose garter stitch tends to stretch in a frowsy fashion I find extremely unattractive.

As to the yarn choice, the Kenzie has what I consider to be an ideal fiber mix for a luxurious blanket. The merino and alpaca are both soft and warm. The nylon is durable and resists stretching out of shape. The angora gives a hint of halo without obscuring the stitches. And the silk noils, which take dye so differently than the other fibers, give the yarn a shimmer that adds depth without glitz.

After a few attempts, I’d refined my two-triangle square to give it equal amounts of both colors (oddly enough, by using slightly more of the second color), and four nice sharp corners.

Since I was working in garter stitch, for increasing I used Elizabeth Zimmerman’s make one: create a backward loop with the working yarn over the right needle. When you encounter this loop on the following row, knit it through the back.

It’s quick, it’s simple, and in garter stitch fabric it pretty much disappears.

Here’s my recipe for one 5.5 inch square.

Gauge: 4 sts / 8 rows = 1 inch

Yarn: Kenzie by Hikoo (50% New Zealand Merino, 25% Nylon, 10% Angora, 10% Alpaca, 5% Silk Noils; 160 yds per 50g skein). Color 1: 1002 (Grey Salt), Color 2: 1013 (Tekapo).

First Triangle

With C1, cast on 3 sts.

Row 1 (RS) Knit.

Row 2 (WS) Slip first stitch as if to purl with yarn in front, make 1, knit 1, make 1, knit 1. (2 stitches increased.)

Row 3 (RS), Slip first stitch as above. Knit across, knitting the increases from the previous row through the back.

Row 4 (WS). Slip first stitch as above, make 1, knit to last stitch, make 1, knit 1. (2 stitches increased.)

Repeat rows 3 and 4 until you complete the WS row that gives you 35 stitches.

Break C1, leaving 5-inch tail.

Transition Rows

NOTE: Do not slip the first stitches of these rows.

Row 1 (RS). Join C2. Knit across, knitting the increases from the previous row through the back.

Row 2 (WS). Knit across.

Second Triangle

NOTE: Your shaping rows will now be right side rows.

Row 1 (RS). Slip first stitch as above, slip-slip-knit, knit to last 3 sts, k2tog, k1. (2 stitches decreased.)

Row 2 (WS). Slip first stitch as above, knit across.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until you complete the WS row after decreasing to 5 sts.

End of Square

Row 1 (RS). Slip first stitch as above, slip 2 stitches together as if to knit, knit the next stitch, pass the slipped stitches over the knit stitch. Knit the final stitch. (2 stitches decreased; 3 stitches remain.)

Row 2 (WS). Bind off as follows: slip first stitch as above, knit the following stitch, pass slipped stitch over–2 stitches. Knit the next stitch, pass the previous stitch over–1 stitch. Break C2 and pull end through.

Block and weave in ends.

Play With Your Blocks

This patch is wildly versatile. It can be arranged in so many different ways that entire books have been devoted to it. I knit sixteen–which was, in itself, a milestone for me–and spent a pleasant afternoon arranging them in different ways.

These aren’t nearly all the possible combinations–just some I that I tried. I love a project that allows you experiment with changes in direction as you move along. The first thing you try out is so seldom the thing that works best.

Mind you, this is still not a blanket. It’s just a pile of squares. They need to be sewn together, and there needs to be more of them. Many more. Many, many more.

We’ll talk about that in two weeks.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Kenzie by Hikoo (50% New Zealand Merino, 25% Nylon, 10% Angora, 10% Alpaca, 5% Silk Noils; 160 yds per 50g skein). Colors 1002 (Grey Salt) and 1013 (Tekapo).

addi® Click Turbo Interchangeable Needle Set

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His newest book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book was brought out by Soho Publishing in May 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, Squam Arts Workshops, the Taos Wool Festival, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection/Makers’ Mercantile. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet (presently on hiatus).

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

Follow Franklin online via Twitter (@franklinhabit), Instagram (@franklin.habit), his Web site (franklinhabit.com) or his Facebook page.