Knitting Rules! (34 page)

How to Do It

Cast on 5 stitches using any yarn and needles you like; gauge is irrelevant. Consider only what you like and nothing more.

Round 1:
Increase in every stitch (for a total of 10 stitches).
Round 2 and all even rounds:
Knit plain.
Round 3:
*K1, increase; repeat from * around.
Round 5:
*K2, increase; repeat from * around.
Round 7:
*K3, increase; repeat from * around. On each subsequent increase round, add one more stitch to the number you work before the increase.

Continue in this manner until the shawl is big enough (or the tic in your eye won't go away). This method is a cheat because, technically, since the work is done in 10 sections it's a decagon (a 10-sided object) and not really a circle.

Because it's the easiest way to solve the problem without math, I simply block it until it looks perfectly circular
(which isn't difficult) and make a mental note never to tell a mathematician or an 11-year-old doing a unit on geometry that it's round. They will call you on it.

There are two ways to go about a triangular shawl, basically speaking. Either you start with your maximum number of stitches and decrease or you start with a stitch or two and increase.

I adore a shawl that gets smaller with each row. It's very good for the morale, but the downside is that you'd better be sure that you have enough yarn or there isn't going to be a triangle, as the shape is forming as you go. (
Note to self:
Find out technical term for shape created when you don't knit the tip of a triangle. Could be an idea if it had the right name.) When a shawl is knit in the increasing manner, if you run out of yarn, you can cast off; the triangle shape is present (if tiny) from the beginning. With a shawl knit in the decreasing manner, all you can do if you run out of yarn is go for the chocolate.

To knit a triangular shawl of ever-decreasing size:

Cast on the total number of stitches you think there should be along the long top edge (number of stitches per inch × wingspan in inches).

Decrease one stitch at the end of every other row until you have nothing left.

Begin with a few stitches, gradually making your shawl bigger and bigger until the thing is as big as your wingspan (or you run out of yarn). The great advantage to this one is that your basic shape remains the same throughout the knitting process, and this means you can call it quits when you run out of yarn (or patience) and no matter where you are, you'll have a triangle.

If you're playing a complex game of derring-do with yardage, this method is sure to get you a shawl. Might be a rather small shawl, perhaps a “shoulderette,” but it'll still be a shawl.

How to Do It

Cast on 3 stitches for the back of the neck and mark the center stitch.
Work every alternate row plain.
Work the increases on the right side rows like so:
Increase one in the first stitch (“yarn over” makes a pretty hole), knit to the center, increase one before and one after the center stitch, knit to the last stitch, and increase one.

This makes a shawl with a center line of increases that will look familiar to you and is the basis for many traditional shawls. It also means (and don't forget this) that each row of the shawl is longer than the one previous, progress seems slower, and those last few rows can go on longer than a kindergarten recorder concert (with about the same emotional effect).

Following are three ways to knit a square shawl.

Cast on however many stitches you want, knit until the piece is square, cast off. (I can't believe I typed that.)

Cast on one stitch. Knit back and forth, increasing one stitch at the beginning of every row until you have a triangle that's half the size of the square you wanted, then begin decreasing one stitch at the beginning of every row until you have nothing left. Done.

You're just waiting for the geeky answer, aren't you? Fine. Cast on 4 stitches and designate each of them an official “corner.” You can even give them honorary stitch markers or something. Now knit, increasing one stitch before and after each “corner” stitch on every other row until your square is as big as you want it to be.

Recently I was with a whack of knitters and was asked by someone what I would knit if I could only knit one more thing before I had to quit forever. I answered in a heartbeat. (Well, I answered in a heartbeat once the dizziness and nausea from contemplating a life without knitting passed.) I'd knit a wedding-ring shawl. One of
the gossamer, cobwebby, lace beauties knit so fine that the entire shawl, the whole thing, millions of stitches and thousands of yards of yarn, can be drawn through a golden wedding ring. They leave me breathless, and in my mind they are knitting's holy grail.

My reasoning was simple. It would take forever to knit, and if I only get to knit one more thing in this lifetime, I'm sure not going to do a hat — it would be over too quickly. I'd have the shawl forever when it was finished, as I couldn't outgrow it, nor would it pass out of fashion. Additionally, there's no such thing as a wedding-ring shawl too big, so I could drag it out as long as I wanted to.

To ice the cake, I'd get to enjoy the magic of blocking a shawl one last time, and enjoy the magic way the pile of ratty-looking yarn, reminiscent of barely wrangled noodles, is transformed by a dunk in water and the process of stretching and pinning it out. The moment a shawl is blocked is still a remarkable one for me, even though I've done it a bunch of times. I think that to go out of knitting on such a magnificently transformative high would be the knitter's equivalent of the way Vikings used to say farewell to a warrior: by sending a burning barge carrying his earthly body off into the sea. I realize that this may be a symptom of a deep obsession with shawls, and I'm okay with that.

E
VERY SWEATER STARTS THE SAME WAY
. I go up and down the aisles in the yarn shop (I'm far too attached to my stash yarn to use it for sweaters), pulling out skeins and giving them a squeeze (perhaps a sniff), reading the labels, sighing, putting them back, and continuing to wander down the wall of yarn. Then I find a yarn I really like, realize it comes only in petal pink and violent puce, and put that one back. A couple of aisles down I actually find the right color, but it's the wrong weight of yarn. (I'd rather not discuss what I'm doing in the double-knitting section when I've come here to buy a worsted weight. I think it's the wool fumes.)

Knowing that I have the wrong yarn entirely should lead to immediate rejection, but instead I spend more than a few minutes consulting my pattern and doing a little mental math (if you can believe that) before I realize I could actually convert the pattern to use this yarn, but that I'm going to drive myself batty doing it (and it hasn't been too long since the squinty eye I developed last time went away). So, I stuff that yarn back on the shelf too. This common knitterly ritual — and it has to be common, because there are 14 other knitters in the shop, all sighing and patting and sniffing — goes on for a good long time, and it should. I'm contemplating the beginning of a sweater and that takes a lot of thought. You can throw away a couple of hours on a bad hat that was a mistake from its impulsive start, but a whole bad sweater takes some ingenuity to excuse.