Pumpkins, or let the gourds begin

Halloween or All Hallow's Eve aka Celtic New Year's Eve has oddly inspired me this year so I guess it makes sense that I should revive the blog at this time of year.

Little side line about the gap in blog postings, I've written drafts, I've saved them, edited them, and consciously decided not to delete them but also not to publish them.

In the age of cult of personality and over share, I'm still in the don't drop the veil mode which will, undoubtedly confuse the Hades out of those who see me as a total extrovert -- buzz, sorry, wrong answer, thank you for playing, please try again, we have these lovely parting gifts. . .

Short-form is wrist/hand has improved since last report but not as much as promised. I'm still dealing with challenges from the fracture that I'd rather not but I'm coping.

Onto the pumpkins.

Recently I knit some knitted balls and blocks for a friend's grandchild.

The balls were done using short row wedges in garter stitch. They are really just one of many variations of a Knitlist pattern exchange recipe -- double pie wedge short rows that form a ball.

Since my walkabout knitting was still sort of in the training wheels stage of its comeback, I had some trouble keeping track of how many wedges I'd worked. To remedy the situation, I decided to finish each segment with a plain knit/purl row to give me a reference/sanity check. Once stuffed they had a ribbed sort of look that, had they been orange rather than yellow, looked a bit like pumpkins.

This got me in the decorating mode so a big ball of orange cotton jumped into my cart at the local JoAnn's and it was suddenly a let the gourds begin moment.

A big challenge was finding the yarn for the stem. In a good/bad news moment, I'd not actually managed to unload some nasty Xmas green acrylic so it got pressed into service.

The first one I did got "filled" with an inflated 15" helium quality balloon.

The rest were stuffed it with a mix of crumpled junque mail and plastic shopping bags. I didn't sew up either end (stem or bottom base) of the pumpkins so that I can remove/recycle the stuffing and store the pumpkins flat when they aren't seasonal.

So what's the recipe? The basic recipe, as mentioned, is from a gift to the Knitlist from 1995 which, sadly, no longer exists on the web except perhaps on the wayback machine. The nearest version I've seen is from Tia Judy's page which is more pattern than recipe but I'm providing the link to help 'splain how the short row pie wedges work.

My versions are 48, 36, 30 & 24 stitch cast ons @ about 5 spi (stitches per inch) but any evenly divisible by 3 which results in an even # of stitches will work without too much thought/effort. Twelve wedges for a nice full pumpkin.

Short form recipe = cast on 48 (36, 30, 24) . Knit 32 (24, 20, 16) wrap & turn "orphaning" 16, (12, 10, 8) stitches. Knit 30 (22, 18, 14) wrap & turn "orphaning" 2 sticthes. Continue last two rows until you've reversed which side the stitches are orphaned. Complete the wedge in the next row, and this is this is the key to the ridges for the pumpkins, by purling 48 (36, 30, 24). Eleven more wedges, cast off & sew cast on & cast off stitches together.

Stem -- with green pick up about 24 (or any multiple x3) stitches. Arrange on dps -- join. Knit one round. Knit 2, Purl 1 all round for 2 rounds. Next round K2tog, Purl 1 all round. Knit 1, Purl 1 round for 2 rounds. Bind off.

Cut yarn, weave in ends blah, blah, blah. Stuff with tissue paper, crumpled junque mail or plastic bags

Seis what and Whistlestop

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. My only connections to the celebrations of the day involved eating pollo asada and knitting a five (cinco) sided swirling salmon polygon while on walkabout.

When the salmon coloured pentagon was last seen, it had 10 stitches on a side and I saw real possibilities for its future. Based on yesterday's knitting, I can honestly say that my not needing to move the increase points was somewhat misguided and misleading. The increases continue to be at the start (or if swirling the other way end) of each side of the pentagon but where the side starts shifts because of the short rows.

In the first photo, the red twist tie marks the original start of a round of knitting. Would that I had purled that first round to make it pop but I didn't and I was not about to frog an experiment. Instead the shifted polygon formed from the short rows is indicated by the yellow headed pins.

The yellow headed pin to the left of the twist tie, which is also the pin at the top of the photo, marks the new starting point of the round. With the increases now shifted to the new start of the round, I continued knitting until I had double the stitches on a side (20). This time, to mark the swirl point, I purled one round before beginning the short row points/segments.

I still have 20 stitches on a side but what constitutes a side has once again shifted as has the start of the round.

The first pentagon was 3 inches tall/wide. The second one (marked with the yellow pins) is 4 inches,

The third one (being the 20 stitches on a side before short rowing) is a hair under 7 inches and the after most recent short row treatment is a bit over 9 inches.

All of these measurement are without any coaxing/blocking. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to square this piece out at this point.

Whatever side I'd define as the base side would simply stay unworked or be bound off. The flanking sides of that base would get a bit of short rowing to create steep triangles. The top sides would get the same short row treatment as before and to finish off the square. No, no, really -- I promise it really will work although I can't promise that it will work the first time through.

I'll be putting it on a circular and walkabout knitting to the Whistlestop on glorious sunny Sunday.

WWHD? and short rows starring stars

Fellow Knitnite attendee Julie, mentioned that now whenever she does short rows (and she does them a lot very well thank you) she thinks "what would heather do?" Which I've shortened to WWHD. I suggested that often the answer is frog, curse and have a tipple of a potent potable.

I did have some short row and polygon pieces in my bag as part of the rethink/fiddling about with the San Diego County fair yarn block project mentioned in my 22 April blog entry.

My first flawed theory to combine some pentagon modules into a square involved working short rows on a pentagon side as follows -- knit or purl one less stitch each time. Assuming a 10 stitch side that translates into knitter speak as: knit 10, turn, purl 9, knit 8, turn, purl 7 etc. working one less stitch each row until you've "orphaned" (heather speak) all of the stitches and have 5 on each side. Then I knit down the small hill of 5 stitches and repeat the process on the next segment.

So what's the problem? I have 5 stitches on a side and the goal was to graft these wedge pieces to another pentagon's side and, at least in my mind, that other pentagon had 10 stitches on each side.

At least that's what I had drawn and then set about the business of seeing how and if I could so just that with some combination of short rows. I played with doing some sort of m1 to double the number of stitches on each side and, while that gets ride of the short row gap quite nicely, it doesn't give me an any additional length to graft to a pentagon with 10 stitches on a side.

The star shape you get when you use this type of short rowing is a bit, frankly, squat. If you were trying to make a sculptural piece (reverse your short rowing back to the base on each segment) you would get a nice star but it wouldn't have strongly pronounced points. It wouldn't have any seams either but the trade off is a chunky star.

From the original modular perspective this is not a winner even though I have all the live stitches I envisioned. From another modular perspective and even from just a hmmm perspective it has promise in terms of rotating your polygon (or spiraling your shape) without having to change your increase positions.

Take a look at the salmon star swatch to the left and tell me that you don't see seriously fun possibilities for this construction method.

But it has some problems for me since of one the kicking design around ideas involved using the short rows to extend the shape and give me that extra width and this just isn't the technique to get me there.

My second flawed theory to combine some pentagon modules into a square involved working short rows on a pentagon side as follows -- continue knitting to the right side of and stop knitting on the left side. Assuming a 10 stitch side that translates into knitter speak as: knit 10, turn, purl 10, knit 9, turn, purl 9 etc. working one less stitch each set of rows until you've "orphaned" (heather speak) 9 of the 10 stitches. The photo at the top of this blog entry shows the two different methods worked on the same base pentagon to show the differences clearly.

If you knit back down your 10 stitch mini-mountain and repeat the process on each of your other four sides you will produce a five-pointed star that looks rather like the one to the left.
It is a nice look and if you bind off your "down the mountain" stitches you get a nice star that would make a great applique.

For strictly modular purposes there are some problems. Each segment has a mix of live and edge stitches. Unless you work the 1st knit or purl stitch as a selvedge stitch you don't have a good graft point for those stitches, The live stitches are separated by two rows leaving you with a noticeable gap if you attach yarn and begin knitting from them. And, then there's the can't get there from here part where you either have to attach new yarn to each segment with live stitches or do a pick up and knit on your non-live stitches to get to the next set of live stitches.
Third theory had me going back to a swatch I'd started as a possible way small gauge sports bra inspired thing. It was clear that I'd not used either of the two methods documented above to get the shape that make me go "ooooh, that;ll work" but I wasn't sure what I had done. I found it and this is round 3.

This is the classic long row method where you start by knitting one stitch and purling back one. Assuming a 10 stitch side that translates into knitter speak as: knit 1, turn, purl 1, knit 2, turn, purl 2 etc. working one more stitch each set of rows until you've worked all 10 stitches.

You knit back down your 10 stitch mini-mountain and repeat the process on each of your other four sides you will produce a five-pointed star that looks rather like the one to the left.

This star has some of the same problems as both of the other methods and here's just a quick couple of those points:

• Like the 2nd method it has a mix of live and dead stitches so you have the same can't get there from here issue.

• The points are not as squat as the 1st nor as long as the 2nd.

• The live stitches are on the same row level (unlike the 2nd method) so you have less of a gap.

For the fair square this shows promise and for the give me width to produce a garment both the 2nd and third method give me options and the photo below shows how that twice the number of rows in method 2 varies from method 3

Casual Cable update -- at Knitnite , I'd disconnected the Casual cables' sleeves and did pull it out to ask for group consult.

That's when I described the sleeves as "phreaking Juliet sleeves" and came to the current conclusion that sleeves and sweater body will probably be permanently separated into different projects after they have been frogged and reworked.