The Knitting Fiend

Let’s say you’ve finished the base triangle of entrelacs. You’ve turned and now … what?

Well, you’re going to need to make some fiddly little “fill in triangles”. I’ll show how I do this for ribbed entrelac. If you aren’t doing ribbing, your directions will differ, but most of the steps will be qualitatively similar. Let’s start/

The base triangles are show to the left. Oh, don’t those look like base triangles? Well, they aren’t. My base triangles are in the darker blue. I do exactly the same thing after you finish a set of dark colored rectangles and I’m not going to rip back just to show base triangle.

So, first, look at your knitting. Notice I broke the dark blue yarn and it’s dangling on the left hand side. Now pick up the work, attach the yarn and we are going to do the following: Knit and purl into the first stitch. This increases a stitch and sets the “k1, p1″ pattern. (If we weren’t knitting rib, we’d either p into front and back or knit into front and back. All entrelac patterns will require you to increase in the first stitch.)

Here’s the detail of how to knit and purl into one stitch. (If you look carefully, you’ll see I cheat and illustrate “knitting and purling into the same stitch” when I work the 5th row of the triangle. I’ll explain why later.)

Begin row 1:
First operation: Knit and purl into same stitch:

Step 1: attach yarn and knit normally but don’t slide the stitch off the left needle then bring yarn forward as to purl. You will have a stitch on the right needle– that’s the one you just created. The stitch you knit into is still on the left needle. It will appear as in the photo above and to the right.

Step 2: Insert the tip of the right needle into the stitch you just knit. Insert this “as to purl”. (Actually, you can insert anyway you want, but this is the easiest way.)

Step 3, wrap the yarn to purl, and pull through to work the purl. Now let that very first stitch drop off the left needle tip.

You know have 2 stitches on the right needle tip, see above right.

(Now, the reasons I showed this on row 5 and not row 1 is this: 1) When you work row 1, the loops will be sloppy. This is because you’ve just attached yarn. You can pull on these to tighten them. 2) Because I’d just attached the yarn, I couldn’t hold the camera, firm up the yarn, do the operation and take pictures all at once. )

Finish row 1: Work an “ssk” as follows: Slip purl-wise, slip purlwise, place both stitches back on left needle, so the work appears as shown to the right. Now wrap the yarn knit.
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During our last knit club meeting, Doree saw me picking up stitches. She said “What are you doing?!?!” I said, “Picking up stitches for the entrelac”. She said, “That’s not how you pick up stitches!” A conversation ensued. I have to say, as far as I can tell, the whole debate centers on at exactly what point one can say one has completely picked up a stitch. That is to say: whether or not I had “picked up stitches” was a debate about semantics more than technique. (Of course semantics actually matter when reading some directions. Strangely enough, sometimes it doesn’t. )

So, to be semantically precise, I’m going to call what I’m describing in this article “pick up stitches half way so I can finish picking them up one “row 0.” I call it “row 0″, because it’s technically not working a row– it’s the second half of picking up. By describing it this way, I’ll probably satisfy Doree! (Or not. I’m still not sure she entirely likes the idea of half-way picking up a whole bunch of stitches and then doing the second half all at once. But she agrees it works just fine and you can’t tell the difference when you’re done.)

To the left, you can see that I’ve just finished the edge “triangle” of the lighter colored entrelac bits. I have one stitch on the right hand needle. There are a whole bunch of stitches on the left needle, but there seems to be a “gap” which is formed by one of the sides of the light blue triangle.

The direction are going to have me pick up nine stitches on that side edge, but as I’m picking them up, I need to work them in a “k1, p1″ pattern pluswhen I work the very last one, I will need to work a “p2tog tbl” fusing a picked up stitch with the first stitch that is currently sitting on the left hand needle.

Now there are two ways I could do this, but I’m only going to describe my way which I think is easiest when working ribbed entrelac.

It’s 1/4 finished!

Yes, I’m knitting very slowly. What with deciding to start working out, getting a diet blog set up, and deciding to see if it is even possible to make money blogging. (A final report with dollar figures, program lists and rules one must follow will be provided sometime next week.)

Still it looks like my design idea for the scarf worked out. Here are the features of the ribbed entrelac:

• Reversible.
• “Entrelacs” bits looks tall and narrow (as opposed to garterlacs, which look squarish.)
• The fabric is flat (as opposed to bulgy in-and-outie look of stockinette entrelac.)
• A bit slower to work that garter stitch or stockinette at least for me.
• Thick and “plushy”, as you would expect for ribbing.

I think this scarf design is going to be popular with my family!