Start-in-the-Middle Scarves

I've been playing around with an idea which got started from the super-easy cast-on of picking up along the side of one of the new ruffle yarns. What if you could pick up from both sides of the ruffle yarn?

But most of those yarns are made so each side is different, and that was going to take some thought. In the meantime, I looked through my stash and found this.

Using one of my magic balls of yarn, I picked up every other loop on one side with a size 11 needle, and then picked up the remaining loops on the other side with another size 11 needle, placing two markers at each end. Then I just continued knitting one entire round, and then purling the next so I had a garter effect, and continued in this fashion until it was wide enough.

At each end, I increased on either side of the markers on each knit round, which is what squared off the ends.

Here's one more look at the center. By picking up every other loop, it ended up looking like a bit of lace in the middle.

All in all, a success! And this made me brave.

So I went to JoAnn's (a craft and fabric store) looking for some lace to use the same way. I found this.

I took another magic ball, this one from all whites and beiges, and made another scarf the same way.

I rounded off the ends of this one instead of squaring them by adding 4 stitches roughly evenly spaced between the end markers on each knit round.

Here are some other looks, although note that I haven't blocked this one yet.

Another success. 

I think of the yarn at JoAnn's as being on the cheap and less interesting side, so I was astonished at how beautiful much of it was--my, how yarn choices have grown! I bought these while I was there.

And these inspired me to return to my original idea, and begin in the center with the ruffle yarn. I solved the sides-not-matching issue by doubling it and then using the other yarn to crochet a join up the middle, before picking up and starting around and around the sides. 

Here's the result.

I tried to match the ruffle yarn in the middle so that the same shade was on either side of the join. The middle was unexpectantly large, so I only had to knit a few rounds (using the rounded corners again) before casting off, pulling in some of the same ruffle yarn in each cast-off stitch.

It looks very glamorous in real life. Here are some closer pictures.

I'm very pleased with all the scarves, and they couldn't be easier to make. I'm going to have to try a few more variations.

Oh, and those glimpses of tabby tails? They belong to him.

The inspector.

Bloops in Triangles

I continue the exploration of Planet Bloop.

(This shows the shawl hanging in my office.)

My exploration was whether bloops would work with increases. I think it was a success.

It was knit vertically, increasing one stitch at the beginning of each ridge, and leaving a tail at the beginning and end to make the fringe. (I knotted them together as I went along.) When it seemed long enough, I began decreasing at the beginning of each row instead.

The first few ridges were done plain, and then I started a small bloop sequence with a plain row in between the bloop rows. The part that worried me was the end bloops: what would happen as the rows increased, and then decreased? How do the bloops work there?

What I ended up doing was saving the bloop nearest to the edge until the end of each sequence on the increase side, and making it the first bloop in the sequence on the decrease side, just to be sure it was accounted for. In retrospect I don't know for sure if I needed to do that, but it worked well enough.

However, on the increase side I did learn to make the bloop next to the final edge one as early as possible, because as the edge grew, it was easy to end up having to finish a sequence with a lot of bloops next to each other, which didn't help the random look I was after. On the decrease side, I had to be careful to make the ones near the top early on.

The pictures don't show it very clearly, but the top edge is again the ruffle yarn.

Conditional Blocking

We have a new member of the household, by the name of Dex.

He's very helpful.

Too helpful. So what was I going to do when I needed to block some new creations?

In thinking about it, I realized that I usually wanted more width than length, or you could say, I was always more concerned with stretch one way rather than both ways.

So I really only needed gravity!

Here's what I did for a shawl:

For a large triangular shawl:

For a scarf:

For another scarf, which I put in front of the first one:

I threaded the pieces on blocking wires and then hung those wires across furniture knobs, the hooks on the shower, and similar places.

And all out of reach of the Tabinator.

It worked pretty well, as you've seen in other posts, but it wouldn't work for lace, for example, where you need to stretch it in all directions to bring out the beauty.

First Bloop Afghan

This is actually the first larger piece I ever tried with bloop knitting. My goal was to try everything I could think of, so it is far more complicated than the later pieces, and that is why I have delayed showing it until now.

That's a yardstick, to show the size.

Throughout most of this I had markers in different colors, each signifying a different bloop pattern. I even had a color for bloops made on the return row. For example, one bloop had sections of 12 with, say, a bloop of 1 2 1 3 1, and another had sections of 20 with bloops of 3 2 1 2 3. As long as all the markers were removed, it is perfectly possible to be following several bloop patterns at the same time.

I also played with yarnovers, first using them in between the bloop rows, and then using them only for bloop rows.

Finally, I did two bloop rows between the yarnover rows.

It was fun and I learned a lot, but afterwards I've just been doing a single bloop pattern in any given row because it gives a fine look all by itself, and I always make them on the front-side row because they are easier to keep track of if you have a contrast color after the stationary marker and the same color at the movable marker.

Perhaps I'll get bored with single bloops and go back to multiples one day. And then again, maybe not!

Turn the Corner

Since Mermaid's View is basically a log cabin pattern, I began with the green rectangle in the middle.

As usual, I used my markers with tails to define the bloops.

I don't have pictures of the entire process but I'll do my best to explain.

Once the green section had been completed (e.g. all the bloops were made and the markers were removed), I didn't cast off, but instead picked up stitches along one side and switched to the orange color group. I knitted one plain ridge (garter stitch across and back) across all the stitches, placing the markers for the bloops. At the corner I placed three special markers so I could always distinguish which ones these were.

When I got to the trio of corner markers on the first bloop row, I added a stitch on either side of the middle marker (so I had marker - stitch - center marker - stitch - marker), and on each subsequent right-side row I added another stitch on each side of that center marker. This meant that as I added rows, the two outer markers got farther and farther from the center one.

Here is the trick to make this work for bloop knitting: whatever color I was using when I got to the first marker was continued until I got to the third marker. In other words, the corner section was just an elongation of whatever was happening with the stitches on either side of it. If I was making bloops, the corner section didn't count as stitches. If I had to increase 3 stitches for my bloop, and the stitch just before the first corner marker was stitch 1, then I would knit that one stitch, continue knitting through the center section, increasing one on either side of the center marker, and then after the third center marker I knit the other two bloop stitches, wrapped and turned, and knit back.

This meant the center section increased as part of any bloops that were being created around it. Perhaps you can see this here (it is really a square, but slightly distorted because of how this is hanging on the bar).

With that hint, can you see it elsewhere?

I really love this piece now, but when I was knitting it, I almost took it apart just after staring the orange corner, because I hadn't realized how on the part where I didn't cast off (now on the bottom of the green section) the orange would look like a continuation of the green bloops. I was afraid that the log cabin sections wouldn't be distinctive as sections.

In the event, I didn't have to worry, but I wanted to share that moment of doubt in order to inspire you (and myself) to be a little more patient. Some things can only be seen large.

A Mermaid's View of the World

Named by an artist acquaintance--I want her to name all my knitted pieces!

This is a log cabin version of the basic bloop pattern, and all the sections were created using the same formula. I wanted to figure out how to turn corners with bloops, and it turned out to be surprisingly simple -- I'll cover this in the next blog post.

I had three sets of colors that coordinated: greens, rusts and beige-greys. My idea was to begin with sections with a single color (but with touches of the others), and end with sections where the colors were mixed.

Here are some closer looks.

Can you figure out how the corners were made?

Bloop Stole

('Stole' the noun, not 'stole' the verb!)

Just like the scarf, only you do two or three repeats of the entire pattern before binding off. I used slightly larger bloops for this one.

There is a plain ridge of thin green lace yarn, almost like a thread, in between each color section, to make it lighter and more drapy.

This one had the easiest of cast-ons, a brown ripple yarn threaded back and forth on the needles, and then when I cast off, I threaded the same ripple yarn into it.

Easy and quick!