Chainmaille Pt 2 July 29, 2009

This post is way overdue.  I’ll blame the laundry.  I can’t blame the brutal heat wave, since I have air conditioning.  I’ve been dealing with some crappy stuff (not just laundry) but now I have drugs to help so hopefully the blog will go back to having entries on a regular schedule. 

 

Last year at this time I was teaching some chainmaille classes at a local Girl Scout camp.  This year, I’ve passed my classes on to a good friend.  She’s using my handouts, though, so it finally forced me to put them all in PDF form.  Which means that now you get to see them too!

 

Today’s chainmaille lesson is the classic chainmaille weave: European 4-in-1.  This was the weave used in actual chainmaille armor.  It makes beautiful, supple jewelry.  This weave has great drape, which make it perfect for earrings.

 

    

 

I’m going to quote what I wrote last year about chainmaille and there’s some more weave-specific information in the PDF:

To make chainmaille, you need two pairs of piers. Most chainmaillers use needle nose or chain nose, but I like to use a pair of bent nose pliers and a pair of flat nose pliers. Pliers without teeth are best if you’re going to be making silver or gold jewelry (the bracelets above are made with silver). You’ll hold a pair in each hand, using them to open and close jump rings by twisting them towards and away from you. (Never pull jump rings from side to side! It’ll weaken the metal and mess up the shape of the ring.)

The jump rings can be made by hand by wrapping wire around a dowel to get a coil, then cutting the coil with snips or a jeweler’s saw to get individual rings. Or, my favorite method, save yourself the hassle and let a machine do all that coiling and cutting for you! Trust me, it takes forever to get enough rings for a large project like a necklace. Some of my favorite jump ring suppliers are the Ring Lord (great prices and variety, but terrible shipping time) and Spiderchain, a very talented chainmaille artist and of course, there are many suppliers on Etsy.

Chainmaille rings are “named” using the gauge of the wire used and the diameter of the dowel used to make the rings. For example, if I were to wrap a 20ga wire around a 1/8″ dowel rod, I would have a 20ga 1/8″ ring. Some ring sizes are better than others for certain weaves, like suggested needle sizes for knitting. You don’t want to knit fingering weight with size 7 needles (most of the time) and you don’t want to make a Byzantine weave with 18ga 1/8″ rings. Unlike knitting, though, where you can still knit with non-recommended needles, if you have a ring that is too small the weave will just not work. You just won’t be able to fit all the rings together. Most weaves have an “aspect ratio” that works best. The aspect ratio of a ring is the mm or inch measurement of the ring’s inner diameter (the space inside the ring) divided by the width of the wire (the mm or inch measurement, not the gauge). This is a great article about the effect of aspect ratio (or AR) on chainmaille: Aspect Ratio on Maille Artisans.

Download the tutorial here: European 4-in1 (PDF)

 

For the adventurous, these items all use the European 4-in-1 weave with some simple adjustments.  Have fun!

      

Intarsia Multi-Directional Scarf July 10, 2009

It took me forever to write up this tutorial.  It’s kind of hard to explain, but once you get the hang of it, it seems really simple.  This scarf looks great in handpainted yarns, but if you want solid colors this is a great way to go.  So, I hope that I’ve written the instructions clear enough so that you can experiment on your own.  It will be helpful to have a read the directions of the Multi-Directional scarf, since I haven’t rewritten the instructions, just made them confusing! 

 

The Multi-Directional Scarf is basically made of triangles that are formed with short rows.  The triangles start at the bottom as essentially one stitch and increase from there, with a decrease eating up the stitches from the previous triangle.  A typical multidirectional scarf looks like this, with the arrows showing the direction of the knitting:

 

To knit the scarf with intarsia blocks, the essential construction is the same except that at a certain point in the triangle, a new color is added.  This is done by adding the new color at the beginning of the row as part of the increase instructions.  The old color becomes a stripe and the new color is a little triangle inside the overall bigger triangle.  The color changes are the dotted lines on the line drawing.

  

 

Start the Multi-Directional scarf according to the directions with your first color.  When you’re sick of that color and before you reach the desired width, change to the next color.  At the beginning of a row, work the increase with the new color.  Bring the old color’s working yarn up from under the new color (to prevent holes) and continue the row with the old color.  The side that has the yarn wrap showing is now the WS.  On the next row, work the old color until you reach the new color; bring the new yarn up from under the old yarn on the WS (you’ll have to bring the working yarn to the front to do this on alternate rows) and work the remaining stitches with the new yarn.  Continue this way until your triangle is as wide as you want.

  

Wrong side:

Right side:

 

Now, you’ve got your base triangle.  Mine looks all wrong because I forgot to increase every row.  But the principle is the same!

Main Triangles

Choose a new color.  This is the stripe part of the larger triangle.  It won’t look like a stripe yet, because of the short rows.  The key is to add the new color when the side of the triangle is as tall as you’d like the stripe.  It can be as short as two rows or as tall as twenty-five, it’s up to you.  Work the instructions in this color until the side is as tall as you’d like, then make the next set of increases in a new color.  Bring the old yarn up from under the new on the WS to prevent holes and continue the row (including decrease) in the old yarn.  Work back with the old yarn until the first stitch of the new yarn, bring the new yarn up from under the old on the WS and continue the row.  Work this way until the triangle is completed.

If you want, you can use more than two colors per triangle.  It can get a little dicey, because every new color in a triangle means another ball of yarn hanging from the back, but if you can handle the tangle, go right ahead!  The principle is the same, work the increases in the new color and switch yarns as you reach them.

 

Just remember to always twist your yarns on the same side of the scarf for neatness.  And good luck weaving in all those ends… that was not fun!

Afterthought Lifeline May 7, 2009

Having ripped back on a number of projects recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about mistakes.  Some mistakes are easy to fix, involving just a single stitch or maybe three or four.  Or there are the mistakes that require you to rip back rows and rows of knitting.  In detailed lace knitting, knitters will thread a lifeline every few rows or every pattern repeat.  A lifeline goes through a specific row of stitches so that when you have to rip back, you know which row you’re on and it’s easy to put the stitches back on the needles. 

 

Well, most of us usually don’t put in lifelines as we’re knitting.  I sometimes think about it and then am too lazy to do it.  So what I end up using is what I call the afterthought lifeline.  Like an afterthought heel, it’s put in after the fact to save you from pain and heartache.  It’s easiest when done on stockinette stitch, pretty straightforward on ribbing, and can take a little practice with fancier stitches.  I’m not sure what it says about my knitting, but I’m now practiced enough to do an afterthought lifeline pretty well on cables and lace.

 

Placing an Afterthought Lifeline

You’ll need a tapestry needle and some scrap yarn long enough to go through your project.  The yarn used for this tutorial is Knit Picks CotLin, in Key Lime; the scrap yarn is Patons Grace in Sky.

 

  

This is a swatch of stockinette.  We need to decide which row we’re going to rip back to.  I like to use a spare needle to help me keep track of columns of stitches.

 

    

Now I’ve placed the needle at the bottom of the row where I want to put my lifeline.  Remember that a knit stitch forms a V; each V lines up with the one next to it.

 

   

Using a tapestry needle threaded with some scrap yarn, pick up the right side of each stitch.  If you pick up the left side of the stitch, the stitches will be twisted when you put them back on the needle.  It can take a little practice to pick out the next stitch in the row without a guide; try practicing this on a spare swatch to get the hang of it.

 

Yes, I am using the world’s largest tapestry needle.  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me take that thing on a plane- it’s 3 inches long and thicker than my size 1 needles!

   

Once the lifeline is in, take a deep breath, pull the needle out and rip back with gusto.  The lifeline will keep you from ripping back to far.  If you ended up loosing the row and threading some of your lifeline through the row above your chosen row, you can transfer the stitches back to the needles and tink from there.  Or move the lifeline around, or whatever works for your knitting.  Depends on the project and the number of stitches from the wrong row.  Experiment, there’s no wrong answers here.

 

Put the stitches back on the needle and return joyously or resignedly to your knitting.

Purling tbl March 25, 2009

I thought I had made an awesome discovery about short row heels.  Turns out I haven’t.  Or maybe I have, but I can’t duplicate the results, so in the end it’s the same thing.  Very disappointing, since I spent the last two hours trying to unvent my own “mistake” and failing miserably.  So instead of an awesome short row heel tutorial, I’m going to put up something certainly less interesting and probably less useful.

 

Purling through the back loop is a lost skill, I think.  Rarely, if ever, does a pattern request that you purl through the back loop.  The only ones I’ve found, really, have been twisted stitch patterns that are worked flat, like the heel flap of my Socks (circa 2008,) where the twisted purl stitch on the wrong side shows as a twisted knit stitch on the right side.  Purling through the back loop is also useful for the occasional unintended twisted purl stitch, like the ones I always get when I have to rip out and then put ribbing back on my needles.  Instead of having to move the stitch to untwist it, I can just purl it through the back loop.  It’s a small time-saver, but I like it.

 

Go behind the stitch with the right needle and insert the needle into the stitch from the back.

Wrap the yarn as usual and pull through the stitch.

 

Easy as pie!  Mmm, pie…

Purling through the back loop January 27, 2009

Purling through the back loop (p tbl) is not something that’s done very often, but it’s a handy skill to have.  It can also be confusing to figure out without pictures.  Purling through the back loop after a cable turn can help avoid holes.  If you’ve accidentally twisted a purl stitch, it’s an easy way to correct it.  Or, if you’re like me, you mostly run into twisted purl stitches when you’ve had to rip back and no matter how many times you’ve put stitches back on the needles, they’re always twisted.

 

 

Insert the right needle into the back loop of the purl stitch from the back to the front.

   

 

Wrap yarn around needle as usual and pull through the stitch.

 

Recently, I’ve been using p tbl in my ribbing.  I wrap my yarn around the bottom of the right hand needle (instead of around the top as in the picture) which twists the resulting stitch.  On the next row, I purl the stitch through the back loop to correct the twist, still wrapping my yarn in the opposite direction.  Personally, I think that doing that has improved the look of my k1p1 ribbing considerably.  I should probably take some pictures of the two ribbings, but I’ve been a little under the weather lately and so I am lazy. 

 

I got the yarn for my Fireflake hat in blue and white, although I’m not sure I’ll have time to knit it before winter is gone.  Yarn for my sweater/cardigan should be here soon too!  I’m really excited about that.  Can’t wait to get started!