Finished shawl, with pride.

I finally finished my Pi Are Squared shawl! I can't remember when I first decided to make this, but I think it was while I was living in Chicago which means before 1989. (Coincidentally, I bought this yarn while living in Chicago, too.) I cast this on in July or August 2005, for something to knit while taking a long car ride. It has lasted me through many of them, but it is finally done.

My biggest holdup has been the final edging around the neck/front opening. I started making an applied I-cord edging but didn't like it, and ripped it back in favor of a very plain, very simple single crochet edge. I might put something fancier on later, but I doubt it -- there's enough going on everywhere else.

Here it is blocking:


I just used t-pins stuck into the carpet. I should have vacuumed first; I had to pick quite a few fuzzy bits off the back after it dried. See the tape measure in the middle? I used that to make both sides approximately the same.

Here it is from another angle:


Note the fan in the background? That's because my final impetus to finish was the local county fair -- I pinned this out at 2 in the afternoon and entries were due by 9 p.m. It was dry in plenty of time.

I don't know where the time goes. I decided in early summer that I would finish this in time for the fair this year, and I never really lost sight of that .... but I still ended up weaving in ends up until the last minute (after blocking; you can see some loose ends here). But I love going to the fair and looking at others people's items, so I always try to enter a few myself.

I tell myself that I don't really care if I win or not but it turns out I lie. Because this didn't win ANYTHING and I was really, really grouchy about it. I know it's hardly a masterpiece of design but I think it's quite nice and it is also a huge honking piece of lace. Given our bizarre classes it had to go into the "knitted coats, sweaters and capes" class, and it lost out to a couple of sweaters that really didn't seem all that special to me. But maybe that's my bitterness talking.

Really, I don't think I'd mind nearly as much if there were any explanations at all. There are never any comments on the judging, plus they don't reclass if they think you've entered something in the wrong class. (I think third place in this class went to a baby sweater which IMO should have been in the baby sweater class.) I want to know if the judges really thought this wasn't as well done as the items that placed, or if there was some other reason for their decisions, or (honestly) if they ever even unfolded it.

I also entered a couple of scarves -- knitted and woven -- and a skein of handspun which had to go into "any other crafts". Both scarves placed but they're nothing special.

I do have to say that the woman who knit the winning sweater was there when I was, and she was really really excited and proud, and also seemed to be thrilled with the small cash prize that goes with the ribbon. So that's pretty neat. I'll try to think about that and not about my (apparently wildly overinflated) expectations.

Modeled shots next week, after I reclaim it and bribe my photographer.

Applied i-cord

Fooling around with methods of applying i-cord as edging for pi are squared shawl. Color sometimes contrasts but usually doesn't. Needs to stay stretchy for blocking. Want to have this ready to take on vacation with me, don't have much time to spend on it. Anyone have suggestions?

Am currently using three stitches: k2, slip one knitwise, pick up & knit one stitch, psso, pick up stitch for next row, slip to beginning, repeat forever.

Tried the version where you slip a stitch, then yarn over, then knit the body stitch & pass both slipped stitch & yo over knitted-up body stitch, but it is very difficult to do with lace weight yarn -- that yarn over won't get on the needle. I cannot fight my way through a million rows, I want to do this on vacation while chatting. Bad enough that I need to keep picking those stitches up.

The end is in sight!

Way back in 2005 I impulsively cast on for Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi Are Square shawl, thinking it would keep me busy on a long car trip. Well, it did, and it has. Here it is in 2006 and 2007. I set it aside shortly after that because I needed to make some decisions, and didn't pick it up again until July of this year, when I was anticipating another long car ride. Here's what it looked like then:


It took me a while to remember where I was and what I was trying to do. I had run out of the two purples I was using for the body of the shawl, and needed to decide how far to go with the gray and what to do about an edging.

I decided to push the gray as far as it would go, to give me more length. I may regret this when I block it. During our car trip (from Oklahoma to Michigan) I finished the body of the shawl and started the edging. As it turns out, a lace edging is not really the best sit-and-chat sort of knitting, so I didn't get much done during the non-driving parts of our vacation. But there was lots of driving, and once I memorized the pattern I started really making progress. Here's where it is today:


And here is a closeup of the patterning:

I'm not entirely happy with this. In case you're not familiar with the pi-shawl concept, you double the number of stitches at intervals that themselves double. So every line of simple holes you see there is a doubling row -- except maybe the last one, I can't remember if I doubled there or not. There's no puckering (the drawback to this method) so I might not have doubled. I'll figure that out later, when I write the finished shawl up.

Anyways, my overall concept for this shawl was "pi are squared, purple, lacy" and so I just picked patterns at each doubling, and I don't really think my choices were all that felicitous. The first pattern is a madeira fan that was hard to do and will be invisible under my hair. I like the next zig-zag one, and think it works well with both the fan and the pattern below, although I don't think I'm wild about all the faggoting on the third pattern. But my real concern is the print o' the wave. What was I thinking? It really has nothing in common with the others. I think I thought it would further develop the faggoting, but looking at it now I don't think that the visual connection really happens.

And I was intending to use an edging designed by Sharon Miller to coordinate with print o' the wave, but decided not to after all. Both are a stockinette fabric, and on a sort of cardigan shawl the edging needs to look good on both sides. The edging I chose has a double zig zag, which I hope will tie it in with the various other patterns once the shawl is blocked and you can actually see it, but that leaves the print o' the wave flapping alone in the breeze. I'm not going to rip it back, though! I just hope I remember this the next time I think, "oh, it will be a quick knit, I don't need to plan it." And also that very few things in laceweight are a "quick knit."

I am still pondering the front / neck edge. I had planned to just continue the same edging all the way around, but I wonder if it will be too floppy & lacy. Maybe I'd be happier with a plain edge? Maybe I am thinking this because it would be a lot faster? Oh, and perhaps this has something to do with the deadline for county fair entries in 10 days? I had thought it was in three days and was resigned to missing it, but then I learned I had an extra week. I could certainly finish the bottom & do a quick crochet around the inside edges .... but what a stupid reason to make a design decision. So -- things to think about while I knit.

(Another one is -- will I ever wear this? More than once?)

Decision point

No, this has nothing to do with my summer cardigan plans. I've been working on my Pi Are Squared shawl again (last seen here).


Doesn't look much different, does it? But I've finished the center pattern band, with zigzags to match the ones at the beginning of the faggoting. I then did my last increase, and went on to use print o' the wave. I've never knitted this pattern before, probably because I prefer garter-based patterns, and I gave it a lot of thought before I chose it. Using a stockinette based pattern gives the shawl a right & wrong side, and I wasn't sure that was a good idea.

One of the reasons I chose it is that Sharon Miller gives a beautiful coordinating edging, and thought the patterns would look really pretty together. I'm very happy with the way the print o' the wave looks on the shawl, but ...... I just don't think I can do the edging. In fact, I have no idea what I was thinking last summer when I decided on it. The edging runs up the sides of the front of the shawl, and sometimes those might be flat, and other times they will probably be folded over. I need a reversible edging. Phooey. Maybe I'll make a nice triangular shawl one of these days so I can use the two patterns together.

But that's not really the decision that needs to be made -- I've made it, or at least I've decided not to use the matching edging. No, my current decision is prompted by this:


17 grams of yarn: 10+ in one color, 6+ in the other. It takes about 4 grams to do a pair of rows -- I'm alternating the balls every two rows. So I can do 3 more pairs, or 6 more rows, before I'm out of these original yarns. I'd like to do two more repeats of print o' the wave (24 rows total, or about 50 g. of yarn) plus, of course, the miles of edging.

I have more purple yarn, but it isn't an exact match. (This yarn, which is J & S Shetland laceweight from the mid 80's, started out various gaudy baby colors. I overdyed it all in the same dyepot, but the purple is affected by the original color. My main yarns were originally baby blue and a sort of violent lavender, if I remember correctly.) I have 130 g. of assorted purples, which look pretty close but will stripe. If I used 50 g. to do another two repeats, I'd have 80 g. for the edging, which really doesn't seem like enough.

I also have about 50 g. of gray overdyed purple. I might do a stripe of this and then switch to the mismatched purples. But it is quite dark; I wonder if it would make the shawl too somber.

My other options all involve dyeing. I have about 50 g. of the lavender, 30 g. of the gray, and 130 g. of white. Of course, I couldn't match the yarn I'm using now, but I could probably come close (especially if I can find my notes on the original dye job).

So what would you do? Dark stripe across the bottom, followed by more purples? Or just switch purples?

Swatches to come. I need to find an edging, and I need to know how much yarn it takes, so I might as well fool around with colors, too.

Pi Are Squared shawl

After posting the picture of Stephanie & the purple blob, I got to wondering what the shawl really looked like. So here's a photo of it spread out onto half a dozen needles:


and here is a close up of the patterning:

The madeira wave around the neck was difficult to do, especially since I was in the car and my husband was talking to me from time to time, and now I think it will be invisible when the shawl is worn. Maybe I'll repeat it around the bottome -- when there will be a few more repeats of it.

The shawl currently hangs just above my elbows unblocked, and gains about six inches when I stretch it (very unscientific). I'm almost at the next doubling point. The discussion of the shawl in Knitting Around says they generally don't double a fifth time but this shawl needs so much more length that I think I'll do it. I've got about 8 rows to decide, though, and 8 rows takes a while.

This faggoting pattern is simplicity itself, which has made the shawl mindless knitting. I'm hoping, though that it won't look funny in the middle of the shawl, with more solid areas above and below. I can't quite remember why I launched myself on this huge project without any planning (something to do with a looming vacation & no travel knitting on hand, plus this huge quantity of purple laceweight Shetland and a decade's curiousity about this oddly shaped shawl ....). Maybe what it needs is something that combines the top and the middle -- something more open than the top but more patterned than the middle -- say, something like Sharon Miller's Feathered Border pattern (Heirloom Knitting p. 164 - 167).

That's a good plan for someone with two little kids and about half an hour of knitting time every day.

Well, I've got the 12 rows of the zig zag and a couple of rows of increase and maybe a plain row or two before I really need to figure out what I'm doing next. I'm sure inspiration will strike. Suggestions are welcome.