Go Fly A Kite
This week, I experiment with making a mitered dishcloth that is really big and not a bit square. In fact, it looks rather like a kite.
It's very simple. I picked out a knit-purl pattern from my big red book. I wanted something that wouldn't curl or be lacy, so this one fit the bill. In order to make the size of the dishcloth generous, I cast on enough stitches for a piece about 18" wide.
When making a piece of mitered knitting, generally, you are casting on for two of the sides at once. You then decrease on every other row until you have eaten up all of the stitches, which forces the cast-on edge to pull down and creates the other two sides of the piece. So, after casting on my stitches, I made sure my stitch pattern would work on both sides of the piece and headed forward. To add a little more interest and texture, after every 10th row, I worked a row where I knit instead of purling stitches. This caused a garter-stitch ridge to form on the back of the work. I then worked back in the usual way, worked for 10 more rows, and so on.
It would be square if I had just made the thing in garter stitch, but where's the fun in that?
It's All In the Timing
I'm just going to take time out this week to make a note about something. There's a certain wording used a lot in knit patterns that can be a bit confusing. I might be wrong about this. I think most designers, when they say "do such-and-such every X rounds" they mean do such-and-such on the X round. In other words, if you are to decrease every 4th round, you decrease on the 4th round, which means, work 3 rounds, then decrease.
I think this is pretty confusing, because it's just as easy to think they mean "work 4 rounds, then do X"...and that might even be what they mean. The whole "end on a right-side row" instruction is supposed to help, but actually makes it worse when you don't know what's going on. Does that mean you finish the previous steps by working a right-side row or when you are about to?
I guess it seems obvious that my answer to this is to use more words, since I am, after all, the woman who wrote a short-row cheat sheet that is 5 pages long. But, hey, it also includes a pattern for a tube top for Barbie.
Conversation
I have a major knitting-designer crush on Joan McGowan-Michael, so I'm really happy that she decided to come on the show this week. She clarifies what I could have said in the short-row bust-shaping cheat sheet. Of course, she says it better, faster, and with a better sense of humor than I ever could, so get out your pencil and go find yourself a tight t-shirt.
