Keeping Tabs on Tabs

Ran across a video yesterday about a new way to do garter tabs in shawls.  Say, for example,  you want to knit a triangular shawl.  You have several options for construction all of which will have an effect on the finished product.  You can start at one side point, get wider toward the center, and then get narrower to the point at the other side.  You can start wide, by knitting all across the top edge, and decrease to the bottom point, or you can start at the bottom point and increase to the whole top edge.  The garter tab allows you to start in the center of the top and knit outward to the side points and downward to the bottom point, all at the same time.  I’ve used this technique in my own patterns, and I’ve used it in other’s patterns.

Ms. Bryan’s method uses a multi-stitch increase method:  k,yo,k (or kyok) which means work a knit stitch, a yarn over, and a knit stitch in one stitch.  This is a technique for increasing one stitch into three stitches.  I’d never encountered this stitch combination before.   As I was hunter-gathering through the selection of YouTube videos watching this video produced, I ran across a video by Ms. Benson about an easy lacy crescent shawl, and this shawl pattern also used the kyok stitch combination.   So here’s an increase method I’d not encountered before, and bang!  I encounter it twice in the same day.   Cue sound tract.

Most of the colorways of the Mandala yarn are pretty meh! as far as I’m concerned.  The two exceptions were the “Troll” pink/purple/dark blue combination (at right) I’m using for the reader’s shrug.   (Apparently, the name hearkens to one of the characters in the film “Trolls” who has this color scheme). The other one is this grey/blue combination called “Spirit.” (at left) I had a cake of it, and ordered more from Lion Brand Yarn.  I decided on a semicircular shawl, which I’ve started.  Oh, so much yarn, so little time!  Instead of doing the shawl in garter stitch, I’m doing it in stockinette with a purl detail.   Oddly enough, it has kyok’s in it.  The yarn is a DK weight, lighter in weight than regular worsted yarn and I’m doing it on a size US4 (3.5 mm) needle.  It won’t be quite so heavy as those shawls I’m doing in worsted weight.  This is the same weight of yarn that my reader’s shrug will be when I get the sleeves done.

I ripped this shawl all out and reworked the pattern.  I don’t like how the bottom point is.  It doesn’t look right and doesn’t lay right, so RIBBIT!

I played with the pattern and reworked it, and it’s still not exactly perfectly right, but it’s better than it was before, and close enough for gummint* work.

I’ve written up the pattern and I’m calling it “Najidama Bay.” In C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner books, this is the bay on the Atevi mainland where Bren Cameron’s estate of Najida is located.  The “eyelets” in the knitted as you go edging kind of make it look like waves on the beach.  I still may end up frogging it yet again and take out two rows at the point, but not tonight.  When I’m completely satisfied with the way it looks, it’ll go up on my knitting patterns website.

My friend CB who had bypass surgery on the 16th went home on the 22nd, which I find amazing.  I mean, they saw your breast bone in half down the middle and open your chest up!  Still I think you do better at home than you do in the hospital — where it’s quiet and you can sleep in your own bed instead of those horribly uncomfortable hospital beds (and where you can just plain sleep without nurses waking you up two or three times during the night),  and where you’re not surrounded by all those sick people.  Most importantly, you’ve got all your stuff — all your tunes, your electronic devices, and your books, and a TV you can turn up loud enough to hear.

His wife, L, who is a knitting friend, knitted him this hat in black and white at his request.  I have a picture of him in his hospital gown and this hat, but don’t have his permission to publish it.  The nurses got as big a kick out of it as he did.   He has such a positive attitude and I expect him to continue to do well, especially now that he’s home.

*gummint -- that bunch of yahoos in D.C. who think they know how to run a country, and the massive bureaucracy they think it takes to do it.