Minty Leaves Weekend and Silky Kerchief "Pattern"

Minty Leaves Beginning
Originally uploaded by sunasak

I didn't feel like starting much of anything this weekend, so I did what I would call "comfort knitting," which means I worked on socks the whole time. The picture shows how far along I was on these socks by Saturday evening. By last night, it was double this, plus a little. I am almost to the heel.

The socks are Leaves of Whimsy, which were in the Knitting Pattern-a-Day calendar and also are available here

Apparently you have to buy some other product to get this for free. Or you had to buy the calendar, like I did. It's a simple leaf pattern where the patterning goes all the way down the heel, so it will be good with my usual clogs and Birks. I am using a very fine 100% merino yarn from Perfect Day Yarns, called Beat Sock. It is very tightly spun, in fact, a bit too tight in spots. Near the beginning it was unwound for a bit, but it's settled into a tightly twisted consistency. It's fine to work with, just tightly spun. It's acid dyed in pale mint green that seems to be a reasonable choice for leaves. It looks great on a leg or hand, not so great all folded upon itself on the needles. It's lace and needs to stretch!

It's been nice to take a rest from knitting that involves a lot of thought. I'll have to move on to the lace top soon enough.

Silk Kerchief Shawlette Pattern

I have received a few requests for the pattern to the Silky Kerchief shawlette That's a bit easier said than done, since I rather winged it, but used printed sources. If you are dying to make one, here's the closest I can get to a recipe (I will add page number for the border when I can look it up):

Yarn: 2 skeins any color Noro Silk Garden Sock, one skein of the neutral S269. I used S87 for mine.

Main body: Silky Kerchief

This is easy as long as you know how to do a provisional cast on. Just make this but keep going until you run out of one of your skeins of yarn. Make sure you reserve a whole skein of your colorful yarn for the border--I ran out because I used a little of mine in the main body.

Once your main body is done, attach the border using standard knit-on border technique (when you get to the inner edge, knit last stitch together with one stitch from the body of the shawl).

I used a garter stitch border that made little cubes, which I found in Knitting beyond the Edge or Knitting on the Edge by Nicky Epstein. I will look that up, I promise. It is near the back of whichever book it is in.

When I got to the center, I was overjoyed to see I was at a pattern repeat end. If I hadn't been, I'd have done four rows in one shawl stitch instead of two for a few rows until I got to a good edge.

On the center sttitch, I did a series of short row wedges that each ended with a [K2tog, YO, K1] so the eyelets would continue around the corner. I just ended each row one stitch sooner until there were three stitches left, then knitted back to the end and repeated. This turned the corner. You could do any kind of wedge that you like, or simply do the 4 rows per body stitch thing for a few rows as you approach the center, then try 6 in the center, then 4 rows per body stitch for the same number as you did approaching the center, keeping the pattern going. As long as you have a reasonable amount of additional rows, it will be OK. No, I do not know how many constitute a "reasonable amount." It just needs to lie flat as it goes around the corner. Ideally, you'd have a point or a valley in the center. But, it would probably look fine if the pattern just kept a-goin', too.

When you get near the end, try to aim to have the edge be at the end of a pattern repeat. You can fudge by knitting 3 together on a couple of rows. The garter stitch has enough "give" that this won't show.

Well, that's how I did it. I winged it, what can I say? I think it looks fine, even if it wasn't very scientific.