Sunday, April 18, 2010

Knitting Gail

So I knitted up Gail (AKA Nightsongs) and I love the pattern! It did take a bit to figure out and I had to make a couple minor mental changes to the pattern to make it work for me. Not really changes to the pattern it self but things to make it "click". You can get the pattern free on Ravelry but I don't think it's available off the Rav site (though Ravelry is free to join).

For starters the pattern has a left and right side chart. You don't need both these charts as the shawl is symmetrical and one chart works for both sides. And as for the double YO's at the peak, I purled into them so as to twist each stitch. this worked much better than knitting and purling, makes a cleaner, more consistent stitch.

Then the pattern says to repeat it 7 times. I had one skein of yarn so did 6 repeats as one is not quite enough to get 7.

It says to repeat the chart. But you will make the full chart on the 1st repeat and then after that you will only need to repeat rows 23-37. I made a line to mark this on my chart. This is a small clip of how I drew my lines for the repeats. I repeat the center part as many times as needed and when headed twards the peak or end I then followed the chart to the edge (ignoring the stitches in the yellow poriton). This is my marked on chart but you can transpose the lines to your chart.


The pattern says to repeat and end on row 33. I ended on row 35. On the last 2 pattern rows you need to do the peak slightly different. On row 33 make 1 YO instead of 2. and at the peak on row 35 I did yo, k1, yo. this will set you up to easily make the border.

Because by knitting up to row 35 you will need to start the border chart on row 5.

Here is a photo before blocking. You can click on them for super sized images.


And after blocking. I, again, used my steamer and blocking this way was really fast, I was able to unpin it as soon as I was done steaming it.

5 comments:

Elaine said...

I love the way this has turned out! The super big pics show all the pattern detailing superbly. I love the idea of steaming for blocking - need to try that out! Any more shawls in the pipeline?

GsCraftsNthings said...

Steaming is so fast! I was wondering how it would work on a more natural fiber but you can see the fiber relax as soon as the steam hits it and it's instantly set.

I was expecting the colors to sort of stretch out but they seem to stay rather uniform through.

I have some shawls in my queue over at Rav. I think I would like a darker shaded one w/more natural colors (kinda like the one you started). Love the orange but it won't go with everything.

Elaine said...

Yes, I think with shawls, longer colour gradations work better - like the shawl blanks I painted last year. Need to paint up some more and try them out.

Next shawl I finish I'll try out the steaming - sounds a much faster process. Do you use it for all your blocking or just the lace?

GsCraftsNthings said...

So far it looks like it will be a great all purpose blocking method. worked wonders on acrylic and this shawl. I like how fast it works, no drying time needed.

Elaine said...

Sounds just what I need:-) Perfect! I just get too impatient to wait for things to dry!!