Monday, February 4, 2008

The End is Nigh

We are nearing the end of entrelac talk. Really. It's done.


And I love it. This may be the Go To headband pattern for a very long time. It's fun, fast and easily adaptable to any yarn and head; and it's a great stash buster to boot. Or is it? This is how much yarn is left over after completing my ele-Quant.


I feel like I barely dented it! Here's why. As you can guess, frogging Silk Rhapsody isn't easy. And I did it a while back, before I'd learned a thing or two. So I ended up cutting a few times, leaving behind tiny little balls worth their weight in gold and good for nothing. Except entrelac! Entrelac is the ultimate stash buster, because each little diamond is self contained. And you can change colors on your project to your heart's delight. Ok, you will have more ends to weave in, but really.

For instance here are a few projects I bailed on, but they give me ideas for the future.

If the black hadn't bled so much into the white, this could have been something. It gives me ideas for another headband, though. Black and white, with little shots of hot pink.

Or this failed Danica,



A fabulous self striping yarn from Gedifra. It was too heavy looking for a scarf but I always thought it might make a lovely pillow. And if there is any left over it would look fabulous as a headband too.

And I have plenty of this too. Sort of.

What I have is 1 or 2 balls of several colors. Teddy Sympatic. 70% acrylic, 30% wool. It's actually nicer than I remember! It looks good alone, but I think mixed together it could have some kind of Boho chic going.

But enough dreaming. Let's finish up with those triangle pieces.

The main thing to remember is this. Left triangles build up to the next row and right triangles go down to fill in below. Huh? Let's try again. Left triangles start with one stitch and INCREASE while right triangles pick up stitches along the side (like the diamonds) and DECREASE down to one stitch.

To create a left triangle, you K1 on the wrong side, turn and Knit into the Front and Back of that stitch creating 2 stitches.


Subsequent right side rows will have a M1 increase before the last stitch.


Wrong side rows will purl the last stitch of the triangle with the first stitch of the previous diamond.

Here is a completed Left triangle


Right side triangles pick up the total number of stitches and row by row decrease them back down to 1. This picture shows the two last stitches being knit together (on the wrong side) to decrease 1.

After all the stitches are decreased down to one the Right triangle is complete. It will be slipped to the right needle and act as the first stitch of the next diamond.

And that's all I had left to say about entrelac. I have too many projects going and too many planned to be thinking about any more headbands, but now that I am perfecting my toe up skills (I have a very nice toe section to show you soon,) I am getting closer and closer to casting on for Eunny's Entrelac Socks.

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