Errata -- get it while you can

And if you can't experience helps.

In October 2009, I knit a lace collar called Prudence from the book Knit One, Make One In Classic Knitted Cotton by Furze Hewitt.

The book has been mostly shelved ever since for the same reason that had me pass it up purchasing it the first time I encountered it -- too many projects and not enough reference.

But recently I found myself on a lace designing binge so any and every book loaded with lace came off the shelf and into the office for research/inspiration.

One of the projects I was poking at had me trying to figure out how to create period appropriate lace knitting (other than shawls) that might appeal to a modern knitter. Setting aside the shelf edgings, preserve covers and the like, I zeroed in on a sachet project called Lavender Showers.

Pretty much it is a doily that is stuffed with dried lavender before being cinched up and pimped up to look like a parasol/brolly/umbrella. The big draw for me in working the pattern was not just the increase method but also the atypical increase ratio.

It works, and it works well but it forms a circle by using what seems to be a variation on the radiant method with 16 increases per round, this pattern skips the 54 stitch round for an ten round interlude that alternates between 48 & 64 stitches before moving on to 80 stitches. That interlude shows some promise for incorporating a stitch pattern with more rows into a circular or half-circular shawl.

Somewhere around round 11 where the pattern instructs one to k1, p1 into the previous round's YO, I began to fall in love with a "duh" why didn't I think of that increase choice. Round 11 is also where the increase ratio interlude starts and, to my surprise, really does work without ruffle or scrunching.

By round 21, the k1, p1, k1 increase sealed the deal for me and I was seeing this pattern's growth as the start of something more ambitious (and way bigger). Then it all went sideways.

Sideways in that the published instructions just won't/don't work.

My first thought was that I'd knit it wrong, read it wrong or somehow just effed it up. After a few count. tink, reknit and rethink moments it was clear that it wasn't me. 28 rounds in with 96 stitches on the needle, a set of instructions that require seven stitches to complete is just not going to work evenly.

The book was published in 1990 in Australia and if there ever were corrections published they are nowhere to be found on the web today.

With no errata to guide me it comes down to the experience, analysis and how can I make this work?

The previous row was a six stitch repeat with increases flanking a left single decrease, single knit and a right single decrease.

The not working round also has increases flanking decreases and and knit stitch but this one leads with a right single decrease and a left double decrease -- and therein lies the problem.

So what to do? Some would go with the "oh you just need another increase to even things out and keep the stitch count even" well, um, er, no. An extra increase would balance the decreases but the instructions still require seven stitches to execute and 96 is not evenly divisible by seven.

Reading ahead the pattern's next row has left single decreases and increases in one row and increases and single right decreases in the next. So my best guess is that the double decrease in the problematic round is a typo. A single decrease brings the stitch count down to six and 16 repeats.

The moral of the story is that even without errata/corrections, sometimes a little experience and a bit of pattern analysis will put things to right.

Things hit a snag or oops

A not so funny thing happened. . .

It's a small alpaca shawl that I designed and knit before the fall.

It has been sitting in cold storage for some time waiting for the right publishing opportunity.

Recently a good possibility turned up.

In a best foot forward moment, I thought I'd give it a bath and block before sending it off.

While the alpaca got a nice long soak in the sink, I cleared a blocking board, covered it with the "I don't care if the dye bleeds" towel and dug out blocking wires and T pins (never enough T pins for some reason).

I managed to thread the blocking wires through half of the still sort of sopping shawl, pinned it out and was about to thread the second half when I saw this little surprise.

Initially I thought the break was in one of the lace motifs. Further examination told me that if that was the case I'd made a glaring knitting error and somehow managed to overlook it through repeated blockings -- unlikely but possible.

Once it was completely dry, I discovered that it was in a solid knitted part of the piece and not in a bit of lace. Further, I found another very short end hiding just next to the lace motif in the upper left part of the picture.

Two broken snippets that might measure 3/8 of an inch in length and an orphaned loop to work with in effecting a repair. Is it any wonder I let it sit a bit before dealing with it?

It doesn't look like critters and since it was in a solid area it probably wasn't a victim of aggressive blocking although alpaca is weaker when wet.

My current theory is that it snagged on something at some point and that weakened that particular bit of yarn just enough to snap -- sigh.

Extra sigh because I have no yarn to spare to repair it unless I want to unravel a "gosh gauge really does matter" test piece.

It got an inelegant but effective repair, another soak (eau de Eucalan) and is again on the blocking board with a combo of 300# fishing line (love that stuff), blocking wires and T-pins (seriously, never enough of these).

Thankfully I was just being paranoid/delusional/just seeing things when I thought I saw another unintentional hole in the piece. It really was just a previously woven in end that had worked its way loose.

Extreme short rows -- a tea time classic

Or sometimes lazy lace isn't all that lazy.

Some years back I went off on an exploration of making the holes that appear when you do short rows without wrapping work as a design element rather than a problem.

I designed a couple of great scarves, jackets, hats, bags etc. using the technique. All of the designs were tested, proven and crazy popular with everyone who saw them.

Well, everyone except the magazines I submitted the designs to -- pish. So I banked the design work and moved on to other design areas.

At the time I thought I had taken the design options as far as possible but when putting together a class proposal I realised that I'd overlooked the simplest version and since the class proposal was geared toward what I call the "if you can count and knit you can do this" crowd, I settled on the simplified version as the class project.

During the class I plan to discuss other more subdivided versions of the technique and show examples but not make the more challenging versions a class project. I have the original lazy lace pieces as well as some other examples to show/inspire but I think the simpler version is challenging enough for a class.

I was working on a practice safe jewelry pouch for a friend when it struck me that I could probably do a knitted tea cup for my guild's tea party challenge using the technique since the eight segment piece I was working on was already cupping nicely.

Being me, I thought I'd take it to the extreme and do the 10 subdivided sections in each panel version.

I'd love to report that it went swimmingly and that it was an easy knit, but I tend not to lie. Small needles, small thread, stitch markers and trying to knit each section in the same order each time so I wouldn't get lost too often. I got lost a lot. Often enough that when I decided to knit a companion saucer, I decided that the saucer would almost match. On the saucer front, I still have two failed efforts on needles to show just how much fun this can be to work.

While I am nuts, I am not nuts enough to knit the 10 subdivided sections 20 times or more to get a full, mostly flat circle to form the saucer. That one got a simpler treatment.

There are certain things that happen using this technique that cannot be done when knitting centre out or perimeter in. Whether that's worth the effort can be debated.

I was considering entering the pieces into a local small image show but I wasn't sure whether it would have juried in and I wasn't too keen on setting a price that would adequately reflect the time involved.

I'd like to put it and a few other pieces into a more textile and/or sculpture friendly exhibit that doesn't require a sale at the other end but so far I haven't found one.

I find it very odd that I walked away from art during college but I keep doing art and mostly sculpture which was never my strength.

Knowing that one of the keys to keeping my hand healthy and not giving myself a repetitive stress injury is to change up needle and yarn sizes, I resisted the impulse to immediately cast on and knit a pine paper person -- toe up, of course and with short rows.

The liquid gold leaf is left over from the shoe project and the starching (diluted white glue this time) was not quite as crazy as the pine paper shoe process. But it did require a hunt for china and I only managed to find one tea cup and none of the matching saucers. I'm not 100% happy with how the handle distorted the molding process but I also wasn't about to break my tea cup.

With perfect hindsight, it struck me that I could use tin foil to get a shape to mold over. My experience with the shoes tells me that eventually even the diluted glue will not hold the shape so I'd like to explore some other options/combinations.

I really like the idea of using some form of resin to create forms that could drop into something like this to retain the shape and not detract from the lace.

I'd like to explore this a bit more and do "normal" lace rather than this technique so the time and effort is reduced. Yes, that's right, a centre out lace medallion is easier than this so called "lazy lace."