Hole-y Double-Knits, bat-people!

This tutorial shows how I made the eyelets for the drawstrings in my Hornpipe Bag pattern. It's also good for buttonholes in double-knitting, in case you endeavour to a double-knit cardigan or vest.

For this tutorial, I'm using two colors of worsted weight yarn, Fresh Green as the Main Color (MC) and Off-white as the Contrast Color (CC), for good contrast and so the stitches are a bit larger and visible for you.

While the numbers and spacing are for my Hornpipe Bag, I hope you'll be able to apply this tutorial to other projects as well.

At Rnds 64 and 65, the chart directs you back to the written instructions. Here's what rnd 64 says:

Rnd 64: [Work 6 sts as established, *cast-off 6 sts working them in their same colors, work 13 sts as established (20 sts worked per * * repeat); repeat from * 6 more times, cast-off 6 sts working them in their same colors, work 3 sts as established] twice.

And here's what my "bag" looks like ready to start rnd 64: 

Ok, so I work 6 sts as established:

... and then cast-off 6 sts, working them with their same color:

Now you work 13sts; you'll have 14 sts to the left of your eyelet because of the stitch that was used to cast-off the last eyelet stitch:

And you repeat these steps to the end of the round as it's lined out in row 64. Here's all of my eyelets done in my tutorial swatch:

Onto rnd 65. I'm going to break this down line by line.

 Rnd 65: *Work sts as established until you reach an eyelet. Turn the piece. (Before you ask: yes, this is worked the same in both working in the round and working flat):

Next step:

**Insert the right needle into the 2nd st on the left needle as if to knit it through its back loop:

Using the same color as this stitch, draw through a loop:

... and place it on the left needle. One new stitch has been cast-on.:

Now insert the right needle into the 2nd stitch on the left needle as if to knit it:

Using the same color as this stitch, draw through a loop:

... and place it on the left needle; a new stitch has been cast-on.:

Repeat from ** twice; you've cast on 6 new sts total:

Turn the work and repeat working from the * (ie the beginning of rnd 65):

One other thing I should mention that you're probably noticing about my swatch. The Contrast Color strands are looking a bit crossed over each other. It's mostly undetectable once those sts are worked into on the following rnd/row, but I also recommend when knitting flat (as I am with the swatch) to always do the casting off of your eyelets on a Right Side row, so this bit of crossing is on the Wrong Side/inside of your finished item.

And there you have it! This concludes my photo tutorial on eyelets (or buttonholes) in double-knitting.

Swatching Experiments: a behind the scenes look at a future idea

Now that I'm pretty much back to my usual knitting pace (with breaks; I don't want another 6+ week hiatus!), I've been doing some swatching for some ideas I'm sort of toying with, and I thought you might like to see what goes on at this stage if my process.

Ok, to be totally truthful my process rarely if ever follows the same path twice. Not how I function lol. But what does stay the same is swatching happens. 

Do I like this yarn on this size needle? What does this decrease look like? Can I work this and this on the same row and have it not look cluttered? The best way to answer these questions is to cast-on 50 or 60 stitches and start knitting whatever is going to answer the important question in front of me. Luckily I love playing with yarn. I see swatching as extra play time, which *really* makes it feel like less of a boring chore. I see you in the back shaking your head and hating on swatching. And I used to think it was pointless too. Joke was fully on me because now I cast-on a swatch at the drop of a new ball of yarn.

I digress.

So this week, besides the photos for the tutorial I mentioned on Monday (it'll be up late tomorrow or on Sunday), I had an old idea pop into my head. I had started, back in... I really want to say 2008? 2009? Possibly earlier. (Canadian retail yarn trivia: what was the craft store that was in at least one mall in most larger cities in the late 90s - early 2000s? For anyone in Regina, it was in the Southland Mall across from Safeway; where M&M Meats was in 2012. You know the spot.) Ok, I had gotten some cool teal/blue/purple variegated mohair yarn at that store probably 6 months or so before they closed out, and I was designing with it to make a triangular shawl starting at the point and working up. Between the cross country move in 2012, and a bunch of other events, that on the needles proto shawl (and any notes I had taken) no longer exists. 

And of course at around 2:30-3:00 in the morning the other day it popped up big and bold in my head. Clear as day. And that prompted me to wonder if I could at least recall how I was shaping it. Which led to a swatch. And me being a much more experienced knitter now means I have a few more tricks in my shaping knits repertoire than I did back then. 

I started by trying to just chart my idea out, and I got a good 30 rows into it with everything looking good. Look at that, I said to myself. That's looking how I remember it. Cool. 

There are times when something on paper, or a digital chart program, looks really good. The proof is when it works in a swatch. 

Well, fiber friends, it started off well. The first about 12 rows or so were great. And then I noticed it sort of looked like it was developing a bubble. I persevered, and kept knitting (because that always goes well, right? Yeeeeeaaah) until I couldn't deny what was in front of me:

You see it, don't you? It's almost forming a mitered square back in on itself. That is very much not the look I was going for. Now, of course one has to consider if something like this will block out. Which isn't an answer I can give because I just grabbed any old yarn close to hand and a circular needle that looked about right to go with the yarn (my needle gauge is still MIA). Of course the yarn closest to hand on my end table was a leftover ball of acrylic of indeterminate age and brand.

And after getting the above photo, I promptly frogged the little swatch with a mind of its own. 

What have I learned? Stacking right side rows of 1-into-3 increases upon right side rows of 1-into-3 increases causes rows of garter stitch to bow out and almost turn square. 

I've adjusted the chart and sometime in the next week or so I'll see what happens with that one. Should be interesting to see.

Yours in yarn and lingering ideas,

Síle

Hello, June!

Little did I know when I wrote my last post that I had over 3 weeks more to my frozen-up arm. As you can imagine, that's put me waaay more behind on my various projects. Slowly I'm getting caught up while also working with a new strategy of breaks while working to keep my arm from going out again. 

What's going on here at KDRD? I'm currently editing my final tutorial for the Hornpipe Bag and, weather cooperating, photos should be done later in the week. I'm thinking the tutorial should be up on the weekend, with the pattern release next week. We'll see if it gets there!

The Four Hand Reel will be in test/beta knitting around July 5th. This is my log cabin square totebag. I'll be lining my proto soon; I had mislaid the fabric for a bit. The test/beta knit will be run on Yarnpond, which I found excellent to use when I tested the Hornpipe Bag last year. I'm thinking 10 weeks for the test period based on the yardage (5 colors/shades; about 200 yards each of 4 of them and 65-70 yds of the 5th one)

I'm continuing to play with my knotwork motif idea for the Countess Cathleen cloak. And I have a couple double-knitting ideas that I'm playing with too. And at least one other cable rich design. It's been very cold and blah here so I've been bringing more color into my work.

In my personal crafting, I'm well into the first sleeve of my Twist Again sweater. Finally I have the rhythm of the pattern down and the knitting is easy again. (Twist Again by Robynn Weldon on Payhip)

Does that happen to you? Find a pattern a bit of a struggle until you find the proper rhythm and then it just glides along. 

I've decided to change tracks on my bright colors sweater. Instead of crocheting a number of blocks (that truth be told were not lining up right), I've decided to make another Harvest cardigan using the 9 colors (8 bright ones with black) and knitting in alternating bands of the Fibonacci sequence, using ridges instead of rows. If you're not familiar with the Harvest cardigan, the front and neck edgings are knit at the same time as the rest of the top-down sweater, and the edgings are done in garter stitch. Hence using ridges. My plan is to knit 1 ridge in black, 1 ridge in Color 1, 2 ridges of black, 3 ridges of Color 2, 5 ridges of black, 8 ridges of Color 3, etc, keeping the colors in order and cycling through them as needed. That's the plan currently anyway. It could change again! lol (Harvest cardigan by Tin Can Knits on TinCanKnits.com)

 

I'm planning to get a new proto of my Single Jig Mitties on the needles soon. This is both a KDRD project (I want to update the photos when I get the pdf updated) and a personal project (I need something on my poor frozen hands. While the rest of North America is sweltering, we're experiencing Juneuary here on the island. It's 8°C and raining currently (46.4°F). We're living up to our Iceberg Alley nickname this year). I like when things work out that way. Single Jig Mitties on this site

And that's all I have that's fit to print this gloomy Monday! I look forward to getting the final Hornpipe Bag tutorial up this week.

I hope your crafting is going well. What are your plans for summer knitting? A light top perhaps? Or a lacy shawl? Maybe you prefer smaller things like mittens and hats so you're ready when the weather turns back to the cooler side of things. I'd love to hear about your plans :)

Your in yarn and wet weather,

Síle