Circa 1956 short rows, 9spi & strange diagrams

Around this time back in 1956 I was busy plotting an early entry into the world.

Sometime earlier that year, my mother was trying to get her knit on in anticipation of my arrival. My mother, like her sister aka MATB, was not a knitter.

Unlike her sister, my mother had no real illusions about her lack of knitting skills and yet, interestingly, she somehow managed to teach some of her WW II era Girl Scout charges how to knit even though she hadn't a clue of her own. Must have been some really good tech writing 'splaining how to knit and/or how to teach knitting.

Mother's knitting so sucked that MATN (yet another aunt acronym) was said to have pulled the woeful WIP out of mum's hands to frog and finish since as Luisa declared, Mein Gott im Himmel the child will freeze.

I can't be sure but it may well be that Luisa was the knitter behind the long lost and treasured matinee set that I treasured as a kid. Sadly, that particular bit of my knitwear history isn't in the bit of knitting history that is the subject of today's posting or I'd be able to recreate it for a new generation.

If Wikipedia is to believed, Woman's Day magazine (the US version) has been in publication since 1931 when it began as a free publication designed to boost sales at A&P stores. Free didn't last but it was still an A&P exclusive until 1958 when it was sold to Fawcett Publications.

In 1956 it was still an A & P publication and, as you can see, it wasn't a big glossy exercise but apparently, at least in 1956 (and likely long before) they put out an annual Woman's Day Big Book of Knitting with designs for the experienced knitter and instructions for the less experienced wanna be knitter.

Interestingly, English needle sizes were also given and circular needles were also popular enough to be specified in some designs. The models are a scream, especially the male ones -- think Mad Men for crazy camp.

Half a century later, the average American knitter of today might run screaming off into the night (or onto the internet for HELP!) over patterns with no schematics, very little hand holding on the designs and many, many being knit at 9 spi on size 1 US.

While the specifics (gauge and lack of diagrams) might send today's average knitter off the edge, some of the designs are pretty timeless and would definitely appeal to today's knitters with a few tweaks.

Having knit a few of the smaller designs in the past, I can attest to the fact that then, just as now, there are mistakes lurking in these patterns and the errata is long gone from memory and print as near as I can tell.

The largest size given on any of these designs is a size 18 which, back in the day, was a 36" chest. I'd have to swatch to be sure, but I'm guessing that simply upsizing needles and yarn might yield a gauge and garment to fit today's larger sizes and knitting styles.

I was particularly interested in three of the designs three pictured here.

The fourth design is for the footie crowd and while no, they didn't suggest making your own felt for the felted thongs, tabis were mainstream in 1956. BTW, not a picot bind off, a picot hem.

The little white ribbed number appeals to my interest in shaping and the effective use of diagonal ribbing to contour fabric.

The yoke treatment on the pullover combined with the waist shaping is wonderful on its own but has me wondering about combining a hand pain with a solid for an updated look that would provide a pop of colour and be an affordable way to explore some of the great boutique dyers that have abounded in recent years.

The gal doing a great impersonation of the classic Superman stance/pose got my attention not only for the pose. The cardigan has a great fitted shape and, at first glance seems to have some miter treatment forming the yoke.

A glance at the instructions gave me even more interest because my beloved short rows are a big part of the design.

Even though this is the only design in the book with a diagram, initially I couldn't wrap my head around how the diagram related to the design.

Here's the diagram, does it communicate any better to you blog readers than it did to me?

The diagram should look oddly familiar to some of you who have seen my short rowed Kathryn's Kimonos and other odd experiments in strip knitting via short rows.

Believe it or not, all that short rowing is to form the button bands, neckline and bottom edge of the cardigan.

And, after all that effort, the thing is sewn onto the rest of the garment instead of picking up and knitting and/or grafting. So I guess they were forward looking in 1956 but they still had a few things to learn.

Portrait of the knitter as a young girl

Or back when my mother and I both really liked my profile, my mother had this silhouette piece done of me.

I think I remember the hat -- a modified cloche with a wide velvet ribbon that was my Easter bonnet in maybe 1961 or thereabouts.

I remember a long lost hazy photo or two of me and my brother from that time line.

In a perfect world, I'd be able to pair this shot with a photo of the silhouette I had done at Disneyland about 20 years later.

That bit of my history is in the I'm sure it is here somewhere but I've no clue where column, so maybe next December it will debut.

No knitting content today although there's plenty in the queue -- old knitting magazines with quirks and forward looking designs, updates on Santorini Sand and more.

Collared or Prudence Part 2

Although in the knitting early days my fingers/brain seemed intent on not learning the rhythm of the pattern, the Brilla Prudence lace collar knit up quickly once it really hit the front of the knitting queue.

I cast on on the 10th of October and finished on the 22nd of November.

I'm quite clear that October was more tinking, frogging and taking the back seat to Carol's colour splash shawl project.

Prudence ended up taking 31 lace points to get what I think is a reasonable length to fit 'round neck/shoulders.

I added a small short row tab with a single YO/2tog button hole to accommodate the faux pearl button closure.

The photos don't quite do justice to how lovely the Brilla worked up. The sheen of the rayon almost makes it look beaded.

While it has some heft to it (it took 75g to complete), the overall impression is substantial but not heavy and feminine but not delicate. For my purposes and my vision, it fits/works on all levels and the 31 points are something of an inside serendipitous joke.

I'm more than a bit curious to see how this and other collar patterns would work up using hand paints and way bigger needles and yes, I am thinking chill chaser more than garment collar but garment collar would also be interesting to explore.

This construction would also be interesting for a skirt or an off shoulder frill/flounce treatment.

It has just a few more public appearances to make here in San Diego before it ships off to its new home/owner.

I'm wishing I had another full hank of white Brilla so I could crank out another collar before the end of the year.

Just a bit of bloom

I'm not much for the holiday itself but I'm pretty good at being thankful or at least I try.

Today's posting is one of those life's simple pleasures to be thankful for in this case, a sunny day, Southern California and a rose in bloom in November.

A couple weeks ago, I spent the day getting my neighbour comfortable with his first digital camera.

Our route took us through Balboa Park and, of course, included the rose and cactus gardens on Park Boulevard where I took this shot to show the value of the macro feature.

The goal on the day was to get him comfortable using some of the basic features like zoom and macro to get some shots in the camera and uploaded to his computer.

Not every feature, not every option, not information overload, not terribly technical, just getting feet wet and shooting.

It was a taming technology session and it reaffirmed to me that even though I may be much more technically inclined than a student, I can still listen and communicate at an appropriate level. He's been complimenting and singing the praises of my teaching ever since -- warm fuzzies abound.

I like the praise but I am even more thankful for the underlying skill that makes that praise possible.

Organising or index cards & envelopes

In either a tweet or a FB status update, I noted that one of the problems with creating databases is changing sort strategies.

It isn't a big deal when the sort is purely theoretical and/or bits and bytes but if you change the sort strategy of tangible items things are more complicated.

Actually, it is only more complicated if you're the one who actually has to find the items, see if the sort still makes sense or just find shelf space.

Several years ago I embarked on a stash sorting exercise that pretty much divided yarn by fibre content and colour.

I didn't go into great detail defining what was in each bin and although I tried to get as many like things with like things I wasn't too concerned when not every hank of yarn X found its way into the bin containing the other hanks of yarn X.

Over time yarn came and went from the bins. Some bins became sparsely populated, others saw little change and still others saw overcrowding and wait lists. More bins were added to the original collection but that only delayed, and in some cases exacerbated the underlying problem.

The pure amount of yarn I had grew and my handle on the inventory was much too LIFO with the first in stuff becoming the lost, forgotten or can't find. My FILO was First In LOst and my FIFO was First In FOrgotten and that just wasn't working for me.

The studio still has a certain amount of constant chaos and the "go back bins" will always be with me as I find that I didn't catch all hanks of X when I put the other hanks away or as I pull a hank or two of X for a project and then need/want to put it back with the rest of its kind but don't feel inspired to move other bins around to put a single hank away.

Add the active and not so active WIPs, things blocking, swatches "seasoning" and things waiting to be photographed. . . I'm just trying to not let it get too out of hand before restoring some order.

Originally in this year's October re-org, I was excited about repurposing some diskette labels to better document the contents of each yarn bin.

For some bins containing lots of hanks of a just a few sorts of yarns this idea had great promise but as I got into bins where there were more types of yarns with fewer hanks each and/or finer gauge stuff, that scheme was not working.

Enter old school index cards, a little new school Ravelry and alcohol.

Up first, old school index cards. One of the big failings I saw in my previous stash sorting scheme was that sometimes, especially as yarn got used up, it made more sense to combine the contents of bins with a little less attention to fibre content, colour etc. but labeling and relabeling as things changed was a pain and not enough of a priority to keep current.

So I started thinking old school and physical cards for physical items. The idea is a simple one with each bin having an envelope and each envelope containing an index card for each type of yarn contained in the bin.

That way, if I decide to shuffle yarn from bin to bin, I can shuffle the cards too. In addition, even if I can't see all the yarns in the bin, I can pull the cards and see detailed info (yarn name, mfg, weight, yardage per hank, # hanks, dye lot & colour) on the contents.

The original frugal plan was for me to make the envelopes and use old business cards but it wasn't quite coming together. Enter Warwick's. I was just wandering through on the outside chance that I'd hit the shop when a friend was working and when she wasn't I wandered into the stationery section for inspiration.

Half 3 x 5 inch index cards and gift insert envelopes are the perfect old school answer. A 3 x 5 card is too big/wasteful for the info I need and a business card too small. The gift insert envelope will hold the half 3 x 5 cards nicely. For day to day functioning, I leave the cards sticking out but in the event of a move, the envelopes can be closed to keep the cards secure.

Each bin has another old school marker or two. The lids of bins I own are clear, blue and green so each bin has a C, B or G yard sale sticker and then a number. There's no hidden coding in the lid cover, the number or the colour of the index cards this information is purely for navigation and physical retrieval.

On the database side of the house, I relied to some degree on the kindness (and compulsiveness) of others and went with the Ravelry new school option.

When I joined Ravelry, I had little or no interest in doing an inventory of my stash using their tools. I didn't see the value but once I started doing the reshuffle this year, it all came into focus.

Because of the work of others, the Ravelry database, contains essential information about a lot of commercially available (and previously available) yarn. This means that if a yarn is in the Ravelry database, I can tap into that information to create my own database of my yarn inventory.

With my yarn inventoried, I can more readily figure out if I have enough of a particular yarn to knit a specific project. A good example of this was when I was trying to decide what I was going to use to knit my version of Santorini.

Classic Elite Sand was in the database so all I needed to do was list how many skeins in what colour/dye lot and automagically, the 22 skeins showed me that I had 1694 yards -- more than enough.

The stash database includes a field for location so all my inventoried yarn is coded with the bin labels. This makes reuniting orphaned skeins & hanks much easier.

I can also download the table/spreadsheet of my inventoried yarn and sort/manipulate it to meet my needs in ways that are not yet coded into Ravelry.

And the alcohol? A long time ago, I discovered the value of using the divided boxes that wine and liquor comes for storing stemware and other fragile items. They work just as well and are a much cheaper option than buying storage boxes.

Those same boxes are also great for storing yarn that come not in hanks or skeins but wrapped around a rigid cardboard tube -- think Rowan Linen Drape, Lang Opal, DMC Cebelia, etc.

I haven't gone inventory mad on those quite like I have with the bins but eventually the plan is to have each box have a key with what yarn is contained in each section. For now, it is easy enough to know what yarn's where just by glance.

No a half octagon is not a square or more on Carol's Splash of Colour

I finished knitting my version of Colonnade on the 11th and did a first pass on the blocking shortly after.

Even before it was off the needles, I did some checking into my notes on polygons and confirmed that the curving my fellow guild member saw in the final product was not her issue but the nature of the design.

It uses the increase ratio for a swirl rather than a geometric octagon and that's going to create a skew/swirl even though we're talking about a flat knit half octagon rather than a centre out knit in the round.

The swirl/curve does not become obvious until fairly far along in the knitting and it can be blocked into straight line submission but the swirl is the natural result.

That swirl actually gives a nice little "flounce" at the centre increase line. The swirl/flounce is less apparent at the next set of flanking segments and presents most strongly at the "fronts."

More than a few knitters and designers figure that you can just string a series of knitted triangles created with the same increase ratio together and produce a nice neat shape that lies flat and conforms. It doesn't work that way because math (in this case geometry) really does matter.

I've been toying with this for ages and whether it is decreases, increases, short row pie wedges or any other construction method it all comes back to the math and internal angles.

The first shows the centre back flounce and skew/swirl. The second shows the curl and swirl/curve of the front/sides.

While I may do another block of this before sending it off to Montana, I'm fairly happy with the end product. All in all, the centre back drop is about 17 or 18 inches making it just the Victorian chill chaser I'd in mind.

The picot point cast off produces a bit of ruffling that gives a nice feminine touch. I am still pawing through the bead stash to see if I've cached anything that would suit my vision of a few beads that can also function as buttons for an optional closure.

Having knit this, I will, without a doubt, get back to my own notes on ideas for half octagons and half hexs to bring those ideas to life. I was way too crazy tempted to tear back and do some of the "ooh that would be an interesting design twist" ideas that came to me while I was knitting to not pursue them.

When I decided to do this project, I thought I would pair the Curious Creek with some Louet Merino I'd purchased for a project for another friend. That other friend may still get a Louet Merino gift because, although the colour was dead on, the gauge was way off.

That gauge issue set off a stash and shops search for more Curious Creek and a compatible coordinating yarn that would suit both my eye and the colour comfort level of the intended recipient.

Curious Creek is Kristine Brooks and they are San Diego local (and seriously local to me) and when none of the local stockists had any of the yarn on hand, I broke down and phoned her to see if she had any leads on sources.

Her insight was that Woolgirl had exactly the stuff I was after in stock and since I couldn't find it locally and Kristine was headed out of town I placed the order and was impressed with the result. The final photo shows the lovely packaging and attention to detail a knitter can expect when ordering from this retailer -- kudos.

Set in stone, er, um concrete

If you know me at all you may have noticed that I tend to notice things that other people gloss over. This can be considered amusing, charming or annoying -- whatever your perspective it is one of my quirks.

I have a particular fondness for odd signs along the way and sidewalk stamps gone wrong.

Today's posting then is about long wrong stamped in concrete "where am I again" mistakes set in concrete.


There's a small/short street called Blaine that runs from Cleveland to Centre (or Center depending on who you ask) but on one particular corner, Blaine has its own identity crisis as shown by these unedited images.