Knitting Rules! (33 page)
Authors: Stephanie Pearl–McPhee
Pelerine
. Technically speaking, a pelerine is a woman's short cape with points in the front. From a knitter's point of view, it's interpreted as a triangular shawl worn draped so the points are at the front. It doesn't matter much, though; you and a few scholars are the only ones who are going to know the word.
Mantilla
. This is the word for a Spanish lace shawl traditionally worn over the head and shoulders.
Wrap
. The word
wrap
suggests a certain length and coziness. The only shawl I own that I think qualifies as a wrap is of heavy wool and would stand me in good stead in a blizzard. A wrap is a good way to justify an avoidance of lace-weight yarns.
Serape
. This is a Mexican shawl, with large bright stripes, worn by men. If your shawl is rectangular and striped, maybe it's a serape. (I love the word so much that even though I'm a middle-aged, five-foot-tall woman and the last person alive who should be wearing a serape, I want one to distraction.)
I'm not going to tell you how to knit a rectangle. Do the thinking from Scarf Rescue Hat Recipe #1 (see
page 107
). Just make it wide enough to cover you from at least neck to elbow and long enough for amusement.
Knitting a circle without a pattern is â there's no way to get around it â a mathematical concept. Throughout this
book, I've attempted to devise simple ways to dispense with the worst of knitting math and now, in the circular shawl section, I find myself having to face the music. It's as inevitable as the sunrise. I promise to be gentle.
All of the ideas for knitting a circular shawl are based on Ï, but you do not need to know that Ï is 3.14 (with an infinite, non-repeating decimal), or that Ï is a common factor in every circular construction. I want you to know that these ideas are based on Ï, but you don't need to know anything at all about Ï unless you want to bore house guests into leaving early or triumph at Trivial Pursuit.
There are three reasonably painless ways to make a circular shawl that lies flat, and all of them are apparently based on the concept of Ï. (I'll take a moment now to tell you that there are ways other than these three. Because I didn't find them painless, I can't in good conscience pass them on to other knitters. The madness stops here.) That little symbol means
pi
and Ï is related to circles in that if you divide a circle's circumference by its diameter, the number you get will always be an expression of this ratio: 3.14. I know this because I've been told it's so, but I've never been able to grasp the concept. I tried to understand, but got a nosebleed, which I took as a sign that my brain was trying to escape, so I gave up. Elizabeth Zimmermann, knitting genius and the author of
The Knitter's Almanac,
explained this better than I ever could, and designed a pi shawl that makes perfect sense of the principle, so if you are intrigued, go look there.
If you want your shawl to stay on, no matter what shape it is, knit it so that it's at least the length of your wing-span â fingertip to fingertip with your arms outstretched. This measurement will also be the same as your height.
In virtually all humans,
wingspan equals height,
so you don't have to go around measuring people for shawls with their arms poised as if for flight. Simply ask them how tall they are.
Practical experiments and long conversations with delightfully geeky (and patient) friends have taught me the following (if we understand that by “taught” I mean that they told me and I wrote it in the book): Every time the radius of a circle (a line drawn from the center to the outside edge) doubles, the circumference (the distance around the circle) doubles. This piece of information is way more useful than it sounds, even if you aren't a geek.
What the pi rule means is that if you want to knit a circle, you need to double the number of stitches in a round every time you double the number of rounds you have worked. Practically speaking, this means you double your stitches on rounds 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and so on. ⦠Get it?
Ingredients
You'll need double-pointed needles and circular needles, short ones for short rounds, long ones for long rounds.
There are two easy ways to double your stitches in a round. You can either knit into the front and back of each stitch, which makes a solid round, or you can knit one, yarn over, knit one, yarn over all the way around the round. The second method makes a circle of lacy holes where you increase.
How to Do It
Round 1:
Start with 4 stitches on double-pointed needles.
Round 2:
Since 2 is double the number 1, you double the stitches for a total of 8, using any increase method you like.
Round 3:
Work around with no increase.
Round 4:
The number 4 is double the number 2 (the last time you doubled your stitches), so double them again for a total of 16 stitches.
Rounds 5, 6, and 7:
Work with no increase.
Round 8:
The number 8 is double the number 4, so double your stitches to 32.
There is no law, mathematical or otherwise, that says all the increases must be done on the doubling rows. The rule (as interpreted by a knitter who did a swatch) is actually that you need to have doubled by the time the radius doubles, and this means you can get your extra stitches in anytime you want to, as long as by the time you've doubled your rows, you've doubled your stitches.
From here, you'll nod off and knit around plain or get fancy and do lace or whatever turns your crank, amusing yourself on those plain rows, knitting around and waiting for the next “doubling” rows â 16, 32, 64, 128, and so on âuntil the diameter of the shawl (from one edge to the other) measures at least the height or wingspan of the recipient, and then call it quits.
I really don't understand the math behind this one, and in fact I was forced to beg the geeks to stop trying to explain it to me. They kept going and going and it was when I slid from my chair onto the floor and sobbed knitterly sobs that I realized it was okay not to get it. I don't fully
understand gravity and I'm still not flying off into space, and I don't get why so many people think Tom Cruise is attractive, but that doesn't change the throngs of people swooning at him. Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it isn't true, and as a result of my failure that evening, you're going to have to live with not knowing why this works. Just trust the geeks â they know.
How to Do It
Cast on
(you're going to love this) as many stitches as you want. The number should have some relation to what you'd like the finished radius to be (the line from the center of the shawl to the outside edge), but there's no magic number.
A circle can also be made up of a series of wedges. Imagine a round pizza, cut into slices. Now see each slice as being a wedge of the total shawl. This kind of shawl is worked by making pointed knitted wedges and joining them to form a circle.
The brilliance of this approach is that you may stop and make a semicircle, an almost circle, anything you want, simply by stopping at a desired point. The downside of knitting only a semicircle is that your knitting friends are totally going to figure you bailed out on a circle shawl because you couldn't take the heat.
Row 1:
Knit across the row until you get to the last stitch.
Leave the last stitch unknit,
then turn the work.
Row 2 and all even rows
: Knit across.
Row 3
: Knit to the last
2
stitches, then turn the work (leaving the last two stitches unknit).
Row 5
: Knit to the last
3
stitches; turn.
Row 7
: Knit to the last
4
stitches; turn.
See what's happening? Each time, you stop one more stitch short of the end. Keep going until you're fresh out of stitches, then knit all the way down the row, across all of your stitches, turn, and knit back ⦠and smile at your knitting, because you've made a wedge. Now, poised at the outside edge (where you began row 1), do it again â the second wedge will grow off the first.
Lay down the knitting on the floor periodically as you knit and have a look at it. When you have enough wedges to complete a circle (probably eight, but it could vary and you shouldn't worry about it),
cast off.
Sew the beginning edge to the ending edge and that's it â you've got a circle.
This method is a bit of a cheat, which should be an indication that I thought it up myself and it might not have much to do with Ï. I offer it here because it has no math â none, and I thought you might find this a relief. I was thinking about when you decrease for the top of a hat, and if you decrease at the right rate and slope, the top of the hat is a perfect flat circle with a definite pillbox feel. I monkeyed around a little, not with a calculator but with some needles and yarn, and discovered that this works.
