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.

Mod Elegance

OK, so I've got a thing for entrelac. What is it? And why do I like so much?

Wikipedia defines entrelac as a "technique used to create a textured diamond pattern. While the end result resembles basket-woven strips of knitted fabric, the actual material comprises interconnected squares on two different orientations."

I'm guessing the word is French. If it isn't, please let me know. It highly resembles the English word "interlock" and that makes sense to me since, though it may look like two pieces that are interwoven, they are actually one piece of interlocking diamonds.

What first drew me to entrelac trying to figure out how it worked. It looks cool, and I HAD to know how to do it. That simple. I learned the technique pretty quickly. And yet. I have had a hard time finding patterns that appeal to me. Quant is a great little headband the shows off the technique nicely. Danica is also nice, but another flat accessory. Go bigger and, well, ugh. Most entrelac patterns are boxy. That I don't like. That's why John Briengar's Entrelac Jacket appeals. It's got all the detail and shaping. Truly the only reasons it keeps getting knocked down the queue are these: 1) It's heck of expensive to make (find me a good substitute yarn and we'll talk. Then again there is point 2,) it's a VK pattern people, it's never going to fit me. Sigh... I'm working towards neither of those things being a problem, but for now I guess I stick with the accessories. And always ready for a new challenge, I am ready to do it in the round! I finally replaced my wayward IK Spring '07 just to get my hands on Eunny's Entrelac Socks pattern. But more of that anon...

For now, here is Ele-quant. A more subtle, dignified version of Quant. (The original was bit big and bold for some people at the Shabbos table.)


The modifications are simple. I used a super expensive yarn (white elephant stash people, white elephant stash!) 4 mm needles instead of 5 mm and increased to 15 sts instead of 18. The last increase row uses a M1 in the center to get that odd number. That's it. My base number is 5 instead of 6 and all the rest is as the pattern.

Now here are the demonstration pictures I spoke of yesterday. I hope they are helpful, or at least interesting.

Every time you finish a diamond, it is time to pick up and knit (left slanting) or pick and purl (right slanting.) You'll notice that the pattern calls for slipping the first stitch on every diamond row, either direction. This creates a nice selvage row, allowing you to easily pick up the stitches. What keeps everything interlocked is this: as you make your new diamond, you are always hooking up the last stitch of your present work with the first available stitch on the next diamond. Using a right slanting diamond, following the pictures from left to right: Picture 1: The selvage stitches from where we will pick up. Picture 2: pick up and purl. Picture 3: the last picked up stitch is slipped to the left needle and Picture 4: purled together with the first stitch of completed, left slanting diamond of the previous section.

Click to enlarge

The diamonds are worked one at a time. As each row of stitches (that's 6 sts per the pattern, 5 in my pictures) is completed, you just turn and knit back. For the rest of the rows you will simply purl the last stitch of your current diamond with the first available stitch from the finished, (in our case,) left slanting diamond. As each diamond is completed, simply pick up the necessary stitches for the next diamond and repeat the steps.

The left slanting diamonds are worked from the knit side, which means they are joined by an SSK:

The two end stitches have been slipped knit wise,
the left needle comes through the front and the stitches are knit together,
through the back loop.

the completed row

In the meantime, here's where I was holding yesterday morning. (This morning's picture was pretty bad. Just imagine this about twice as long.)


And here is a close up of the wrong side. See all that interconnected goodness?


Now I have only covered the diamonds here, not the side triangles. But the post is running long so I will address them, and hopefully present the finished object, tomorrow.

moments

There are always moments. You know. Moments. Moments when you know you have crossed from one state of being to another. Like when I started on Backyard Leaves, I became a Knitter. But there are also smaller moments, moments that move towards the Moment. My big pre-Moment moment, must have been when I became besotted with Entrelac. I had to know how to do it. I had just bought my first Vogue Knitting magazine, no small investment in Israel. I believe it cost 70 NIS or approximately $15. It was the Fall 06 issue and featured a tutorial in Entrelac.

So there I was, knitting for only a few months, and I managed to work my way through. I don't think it was the best written tutorial, and I had to start over a few times. But when I got it, I got it. The thing that helped the most: I changed colors every diamond and every triangle. This let me see more clearly what was going on. Here's a picture of that first swatch:



Anyway, I have been looking for the right pattern ever since. I tried Danica, but it just wasn't working for me. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a fab pattern. Now that I am a wiser Knitter, I am sure it was because I wasn't using the greatest of materials so I didn't like the how the scarf was flowing. I am sure I will revisit the pattern one day. If you don't know the pattern, check it out. And visit Jesse's blog. His was the first blog I visited and eventually subscribed to. I wish Yarn Boy was updated more often, but he is working on his book, so though I miss his posts I wish him much success.

Another Entrelac pattern that caught my eye, and was forever in my queue, was the Entrelac Jacket by John Brinegar, VK Holiday 2006. There are many reasons why I haven't yet cast on, among them that magazine is MIA (remember that all my things from Israel seemed to have arrived to CA EXCEPT my knitting books, etc...) but it remains a goal.

So here we are. Winter '08. I haven't had a hair cut since I left Jerusalem. But it's curly again, which somehow makes this ok. Still, it's just not looking its best. And since I have yet to purchase a shower cap (can you tell I'm still in a bit of limbo land?) it picks up a bit more frizz each morning from the shower. I needed a head band and I needed one stat. Thus I remembered Quant by Star Athena, from the newest crop of Knitty patterns. A nice wide headband, Entrelac, who could ask for anything more. (For more of my Quant project details, here is the link to my Ravelry project page.)

Knit up in bright self striping yarn, this is a super fast, super easy little project that gave me the Entrelac project I had been craving and cute headband to cover a myriad of hair sins. From the stash, I used Lang's Mille Colori and was quite pleased with the results.

from the front

and from the back

on the head

from the right

and from the left

Can I take just a moment to say how proud I am of these pictures? You see, I took them myself! Using the bathroom mirror to guide me, I actually got focused, close up shots OF MYSELF!

While I am quite pleased with the results, this headband is a bit wide. So I decided to use up that Artyarns I've been talking about and make another Quant. A more subtle Quant. An Ele-quant. I cast on with smaller needles and fewer stitches. Tomorrow we'll see how that's coming along and look at some pics I took showing some of the Entrelac process.

Entrelac Intricacies

Before I begin I just want to let those of you who are less familiar with the Blogger site that you can click on any of the pictures to see them full size. Additionally I have linked all the free patterns back to their original sites.

Now let's talk about Entrelac. Wikipedea defines Entrelac as "a knitting technique used to create a textured diamond pattern. While the end result resembles basket-woven strips of knitted fabric, the actual material comprises interconnected squares on two different orientations."

The first time I saw entrelac was in the Fall 2006 Vogue Knitting. I am sure I have seen completed pieces of entrela but of course I never knew what it was called or really thought about how it was made. Then I bought my first VK and saw the "Entrelac Workshop" article and just HAD to try it out. I didn't much like the coat pattern that the workshop was supposed to help me with but I did want to know the technique. So I set off on my sample swatch.

I usually don't have trouble reading instructions, but these did get a bit confusing. I think the difficult part was that the article mixed the instructions with explanations of what I was supposed to be accomplishing and that mixed me up a bit. Also it took me some time to differentiate between rows of stitches and rows of rectangles. That first swatch was a square with two base triangles of 20 sts each. Somewhere along the way I lost my side triangles and new something was majorly wrong. Nevertheless I persevered and began a new swatch with two major changes.

The first change I made was halving the stitches to 10. I was not going to make a pillow, handbag or any of the other suggestions of what to do with the swatch. I just wanted to understand what I was doing. Which is why I made the second change. I decided to change color for each rectangle so I would understand the placement. And it worked. Here is that first swatch.

Now with the swatch completed I set of to make the Danica scarf. This scarf was designed by Jesse Loesberg aka Yarn Boy. His blog is one of my favorites and I recommend it highly. With the swatch under my belt, the Danica instructions made total sense. My first attempt was using acrylic in colors I thought would look nice together, but as Yarn Boy himself stated in his blog, sometimes skeins that look good together when you hold them side by side don't always work out. The feedback on this wasn't so positive and it was going to be a present for my BIL but my sister said not to bother, he NEVER wears scarves, so this was relegated to the stash bin.


Still determined to make this scarf I tried again with a few modifications. The rectangles on this are big and lend themselves to being a man's scarf. In order to "fem" it up a bit I changed the instructions from 2 sets of 10 sts to 3 sets of 7 sts thus keeping the overall width but decreasing the size of the rectangles. I also used a self striping yarn from Gedifra: Fashion Trend Fino Stripe.

I do admit to breaking the yarn in strategic places so that the colors changed the way I wanted them to. The thing is, as I was knitting I thought it would be perfect as a pillow and the scarf was still a bit "heavy" looking. So now I need to do some frogging and start again. I think as a pillow I will finally love it!

OK, third try. I had bought a few balls of Teddy Wool Superwash Merino to see if I could do the VK (Fall 2006) black and white Cabled Jacket I was crazy for. Besides having a hard time with the swatch, I saw that when I frogged the swatch a couple of times the black yarn had dyed the white yarn gray. This didn't bode well so I've put that project on hold indefinitely. Instead I thought I'd try this yarn out for Danica. So to these balls I added a hot pink one and tried again. Unfortunately the same thing happened. White turned gray. I'm not sure what I am going to do with the yarn but I definitely will pair it with something darker!

So with no scarf and a pillow that I have put off for the time being I set my sites on something else. I liked the idea of a coat or sweater but hadn't found a pattern I liked. I revisited my growing magazine collection and found John Brinager's A Foreign Affair (VK Holiday 2006). I like that it uses Entrelac, but also stockinette and thus has more shaping.

The pattern calls for Colinette/Unique Kolours Lasso but 10 skeins at about $24 a piece is a bit beyond my budget. I started a sleeve with Teddy's Sympatic (below). It obviously won't have the same drape but it might work. What do you think?

Now for a scarf update. First I finished my 4th Argosy scarf. I still don't know what to do with the first one, and gave No. 2 & 3 to my cousin and sister, respectively. So this one is for me! I made it in the same colorway as No. 2 and am very happy with my results. Argosy is now retired for the foreseeable future!

I also made Ivy Bigelow's Midwest Moonlight using the same Lanas Stop: Yes Please yarn, but in a subtler colorway.

Here is a close up of the stitch work.
I am almost finished with my take of the Debbie Bliss' Zigzag Stripes. I call mine Funky Chunky Zigzag and I used Teddy Wool's new Himalaya yarn in F. I just need to buy one more ball of yarn to finihs it up. This nice chunky yarn knits up very quickly and since it is self striping it went a lot faster and smoother than using separate colors.

I also worked up a swatch of Amy Modesitt's Backyard Leaves. I did it with some of that leftover acrylic that I didn't use for Danica and am waiting patiently for the real stuff to show up so I can get to work. This is by far the most complicated thing I have worked on. Chart only and 15 different symbols. I had to restart the swatch a few times until I got the hang of it and now I can't wait to start. Can you see the leaves? Fantastic!

The last three scarves all come from scarf STYLE from Interweave Press.

And of course I am still working on the Wraparound Sweater for T, Banff for myself, the Entrelac pillow as well as few other things. So until I something to report...