I thought maybe some of you might be interested in how my series/ebook came about. What started my knitting-Irish dance "mashup" patterns?
It happened in a dream. That sounds a bit silly but it's exactly what happened! I woke up in the wee hours one August morning in 2016 with the idea of a basic cowl with rope cables and moss st, because rope cables can be 4 stitches wide (each strand being 2 stitches) and crossed every 4 rows/rounds. 4x4 or 4/4, which is the time signature for reels. And the first solo learned in Irish dance is the light reel. By this point I'd grabbed a pen off my nightstand and started scribbling on a sheet of paper. I chose moss st to show off the cables because it shares the 4 rows/rounds repeat. And if I did 7 pattern repeats going around the cowl, that would be the perfect tie in with 7s aka the basic side step in Irish dance...
The cowl took shape in my dark room without any yarn or needles in hand, a first for me.
After I'd gone back to sleep and woke up properly for the day, I looked over my hastily scribbled night time notes and the idea still had merit. In all honesty, my Light Reel Cowl pattern never changed from that original burst.
After making a more legible and coherent plan for the cowl, I wondered if I could turn the light jig into a pattern. Jigs have a time signature of 6/8. I took the 6 as 6 stitches, which is 3 strands if they're 2 stitches each. What does 3 strands say to you? To me it was a braid. Braid cables are some of my favorites. What could I make that would highlight the braid(s)? I decided a tam with 8 wedges, using the 8 from 6/8, was the right idea. I played with the placements of both the braids and the decreases. At one point, the lines of the decreases were fighting with the braids; not what I wanted! But what if I flipped it? What if I start at the top and increase each wedge?... That turned out to be exactly what I was looking for! Funny how turning a chart in a different direction can make all the difference.
So there I was with designs for a light reel inspired cowl and a light jig inspired tam. Could I come up with something for a single jig? Again with the 6/8 time signature. Ah! What if 6 were the number of strands in the cable? There's a classic 6 strand cable that's been published in many stitch dictionaries and patterns, sometimes called "Saxon Braid", "Celtic Braid", etc. Everyone has probably seen it somewhere.
I decided on mittens, with the 6 strand cable traveling the back from cuff to fingers. And if I used the ribbed palm and thumb a lady from the town I grew up in used to make her mittens that I swear every child in the area had a pair of, maybe they'd invoke that woolly hug I remembered from putting hers on. I had the basis for my Single Jig Mittens.
At the point I was coming up with these ideas, I was still waiting to get into physiotherapy for my injury and was using a cane to get around. Because I was also dealing with neuropathy, my hands often felt cold no matter the temperature. Using my mitten idea as a jumping off point, I knit a pair of fingerless mitts, I call them mitties, using DK weight yarn in place of worsted. I really liked them and they made a difference for my hands, especially when going over to the store or post office, so I decided I would release them alongside the mittens. In the actual timeline, the mitties were knit before the mittens!
If I was going to keep going, and it really looked like I was onto something, I needed something for the slip jig. Slip jigs are a completely different animal to the other jigs. First off they have a time signature of 9/8, unique to every other tune/dance the world over! They tend to be a bit... ethereal. Floaty and light. How could I represent that??
I took inspiration from Riverdance, in particular the slip jig "Countess Cathleen". I had wanted to knit a cloak with cables for quite awhile. I decided to knit a cloak that the Countess might wear when she's in hiding. I designed a 9 strand cable to run down the center back, and decided to start at the neck and increase as I worked down...
I started knitting and discovered this was going to take far too long and hold up the rest of the project. In the meantime, I had decided on what I'd do for the treble reel (return to rope cables and moss stitch in a toque/beanie but with short rows to shape the ribbing like I'd done on one I'd knit Dad long before) and treble jig (legwarmers with braid cables and trinity st), and was narrowing down how to look at the hornpipe. I needed an "easier" option for the slip jig!
Somewhere in the back of my mind a word popped up and floated to the surface: lace. Slip jigs are light and floaty, sometimes ethereal, all qualities that describe lace. My first idea was to knit a shawl with increases between panels of a sort of interlocking lace design; sort of like if cables were opened up really wide. At first I was thinking 9 panels in a sort of circular shape. I even tried to draw it out: a circle cut in 12 with 3 slices blacked out. What I eventually settled on is a hexagon missing one piece, so 5 wedges.
And now you're thinking "5? Where did 5 come from?!" Going back to the slip jig's specialness, that 9/8 time signature means the count for dancing isn't counts of 8 as with the other dances, it's 5. Listen to the song "Rocky Road to Dublin", it's a slip jig and the count is clear in the chorus: "1 2 3 4 5 Hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road, And all the way to Dublin...". So my using 5 sections makes complete musical, and dance, sense.
I've had nothing but trouble with the edging for the shawl. I think I've finally stumbled onto the solution but believe me, this is the last time I try designing something with a limited amount of yarn in a discontinued colorway. I digress.
I decided to make a scarf with the basic lace pattern from the shawl so that I could keep the series going in learning order. I knit my Slip Jig Scarf using a gradient dyed yarn in a DK weight, as opposed to the light fingering weight I'm using for the shawl. Two very different looks and feels from the same lace patterning. The shawl will be the last pattern of the nine released.
I've already given you my idea behind the Treble Reel Toque. That was nice and straight forward, and knit up pretty much exactly how I envisioned it. I ran into a bit of trouble with the trinity stitch paired with the braid cables for the legwarmers and after a good deal of swatching (and truth be told, swearing) I came up with what I called a waffle stitch that sort of resembles the bubble (or poodle) socks worn by dancers in competitions. That was originally why I wanted to use trinity stitch but it just never looked right to me.
This brought me up to the last dance, the hornpipe. Hornpipes are another tune with an interesting time signature, most often they're in 2/4. This gave me some trouble because I kept thinking in terms of cables or lace, like the rest of the patterns. Ah, but what if 2 were represented by 2 colors? And 4 were 4 sides? Hmm...
I enjoy double-knitting, which is a method of making 2 "right" sides at the same time, with the colors reversed. For example, a scarf with red flowers on a blue background on side A, and blue flowers on a red background on side B. That's basic double-knitting. There are ways to go about knitting non-reversible things like letters or more complicated things like lace or cables. I recommend checking out the patterns and ideas of Alasdair Post-Quinn (link to his website is in the sidebar) for further exploration. My own design, Rínce Fada, uses these more complex methods. I digress, again.
So hornpipe: 2 colors, 4 sides, double-knitting; what can I do with that? What if I took a basic type Celtic knot, and worked a square in d-k, and then picked up around the edges and worked the sides of a bag upwards in the round? If I made eyelets towards the top, I could thread I-cords through and it would be a drawstring bag!
I had this started and then realized I'd completely goofed by not paying attention to gauge. Knitting is most often wider than it is tall. So if you knit something, for example, 20 stitches x 20 rows, you'll have a nice rectangle not a square. If you've ever put a design on graph paper and then tried to knit it you'll have seen that it looks much flatter or shorter than the graph. This is why there's what is called knitter's graph paper, most often in 18 stitches and 24 rows to 4"/10 cm. I paid no mind to gauge though and charted a knot on standard, square, graph paper. And my bottom square came out as a predictable rectangle. Oops. So now I need to rechart not only the base but the bag sides as well. And then, and only then, can I reknit it properly. But I have a solid idea anyway.
Thus ends the tale of how my series of All the Jigs & Reels patterns came about. We have numbers around us in a lot of our interests, why not use them in a different medium to inspire or teach others?
Yours in yarn & trebles,
Síle
