01-19-2024 swatching

The pattern uses wrap and turn. I’ve never done short rows so wanted to practice and also try converting to German short rows to compare what that looks like and see if I like that better. Also, many thanks to aknitster for her notes and photos of her cast on/off and selvage modifications - I tried these out and think they improve the pattern a lot. (Direct link to her pattern is in my favorites for this pattern.)

I took photos of my swatches in case they’re useful. See photo comments. I picked the ugliest scrap yarn color combo possible and used a US 4 needle since I don’t have any US 3 needles on hand, yet. Mistakes were made and you can see them in the swatches, but I learned from them.

It took a little time to gain the intuition to be able to switch to German short rows (~1 day of swatching, YouTubing, and studying the pattern.) But after I played with both options it clicked. There isn’t a huge difference in look on the backside of work between wrap and turn and German short rows, IMO. The German short rows are a lot faster for me and less fiddly IMO so I think I’m going to go with that.

I’m still in search for a cast off that feels stretchy enough. But I have a lot of time to figure that out.

I’ll add another note on the videos and articles I found helpful.

01-19-2024 cast on

Whew. Casting on gave me an appreciation for the size of this project.

I’ve not cast on nearly so many stitches before. And the pattern warns that I need to conserve color A yarn as there is only just enough for the pattern.

I used the wrap method for estimating the long tail length. I was sweating it near the end but it worked perfectly. I wrapped the yarn 10x around my needle, measured the length, divided that into 26.5 and added 4” for the tail. I came up with 381 cm.

For the cast-on I used Twisted German long tail. This video demonstrated it well for me.

Side note: I’m a lefty cast-oner (but knit right handed) so I just rotate the cast on 180 degrees, putting cast on needle in my left hand, the tail around my index finger, and the working yarn around my thumb so it looks like I’m doing it upside down. You probably need to be a lefty cast-oner, righty knitter like me to understand what I mean.

I’m also thankful I came across Patty Lyon’s video for keeping the long tail yarn from unraveling.

01-19-2024 first rows

First 7 rows. This is going to take me a gazzillion years. I need to learn how to knit faster!

01-20-2024 First Triangle

For the selvage on the first triangle, I copied what aknitster did:

RS: knit in pattern to last 2 sts, slip 1 purlwise, purl 1
WS: slip 1 with yarn in back, purl 1, continue knitting in pattern.

Changing this pattern to German short rows on the first triangle is straightforward. On row 2 (WS) I knitted to the last stitch and turned the work to start row 3 (RS). DS, then knit to end/selvidge. For the rest of the WS rows I knit to the last DS, turned work, DS and continued to knit on the following row. The DS’s are easy to see so no stitch marker needed. You’re done with the triangle when all but the first and last sts are DS. The yarn is already on the front for the DS so all that’s needed is slip the stitch purlwise and pull the yarn up over and behind the needle before continuing to knit.

I’m up another 10 rows (which are shrinking by 1 stitch every other row.) I’m not sure I can sit on my butt knitting for longer than I spent today. So I’m estimating it’ll take roughly 2 months to knit if I can keep my motivation up throughout the project.

01-24-2024 more swatching

I saw in the pattern comments that Purl Soho recommends sticking to the wrap and twist method due to it being deliberate for the color transitions. I think it’ll be ok but I’ll swatch it with representative color changes to make sure I make right decisions using German short row method when I get to the transitions. For the striped samples I made before starting, it seemed fine. But I hadn’t covered all the bases. While I’m at it I can use the swatches to try out different cast offs.

01-25-2024 timer

Row 33 took a little under 12.5 mins.

From that reading I’m guessing I spent 7.5-8 hrs so far.

And I have about 111 hrs to go. I’ll try to keep a stopwatch going so I can see what the actual is.

I’m definitely not on pace to finish this in 2 months.

01-31-2024 continental

At around row 75-77, at the risk of f-ing up my gauge, I’m teaching myself to knit continental to see if that’s faster and/or easier on my hands. It’s also helping keep this project interesting for me.

02-14-2024 color change!

Finally! A color change!

One thing I didn’t swatch out was a color change on the first triangle using the German short row.

I knitted to one stitch before turning work and made the color change there before turning the work and making that stitch a German short row stitch. So it’s half color A and half color B. Then I moved the ends to the wrong side and kept knitting along.

We’ll see how it comes out - it’s only in 2 places so I’m not too worried.

Up to now the work seems good - I needed to frog back a couple of times and then had to figure out how to pick up German short row stitches that I accidentally dropped as part of the frogging process, but I learned it’s not too bad to recover those.

I’m continental knitting the whole way and loving it.