I hate it when I stumble over the names of knitting patterns. Especially ones I’m working on in public.
“What pattern is that?”
“Uh… Schief… Scheif… mumble mumble… Shawl”
“What?”
“I can spell it for you…”
Obviously I’d never make a good podcaster.
At any rate, I’m working on the Schieffelin Point Shawl*, a lovely new pattern. I saw the one that Susan did, and fell in love with it. Hers was made with the recommended yarn, which was really nice. But as this is the year of the stash, I was determined to find something I already own that would work.
I decided to use some Manos Silk Wool in ‘Hibiscus’, a lovely red with touches of pink and orange. Boy, do I love this color! The yarn is a little heavier than the called-for-Savannah yarn, so I probably should have used a larger needle for more drape, but I wanted it to be the same size as Susan’s–so I stuck with the same needle size. It will be denser and warmer, but I think it will be fine after blocking.
This shawl, like a couple of others I’ve done, starts with a garter-stitch tab. You provisionally cast on a few stitches, knit a few rows, then turn the work to pick up stitches along the garter ridges, and finally work the stitches from the provisional cast-on.
But one thing has mystified me about this process. When you do a provisional cast-on of “X” number of stitches, and later work those stitches downward, you lose one stitch. When you remove the waste yarn, you’ll have “X-1″ stitches, with a half-stitch on each end. Therefore, if you provisionally cast on 3 stitches, there will only be 2 stitches to pick up. I’ve always just sort of faked the extra stitch somewhere if I needed to have a specific number of stitches, but I find it interesting that none of the patterns have addressed that problem – they just tell you to return the “X” number of stitches from the provisional cast-on to the needle and knit them.
How do you deal with the discrepancy? I suppose you could cast on one extra stitch and then decrease one stitch in the next row when working upwards, and then you’d have the correct number of cast-on loops to pick up. Once I took the tail end of the yarn and wove it back into the edge of the knitting to form a full loop, and then picked it up. But usually I just pick up an extra stitch somewhere at the edge.
* I’m guessing that this should be pronounced “SHEE-fuh-lin”. Evidently Schieffelin Point is a place in Maine – anyone know the correct pronunciation?
Cabled Sheep lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she enjoys knitting, cooking, and munching veggies out of the garden. She never tires of Utah's glorious landscape.
I always tell people that I’m an internet knitter and don’t know how to pronounce anything. Ya know, I never lose that stitch. If it tells me to cast on 3, I always have three to pick up at the end. Wonder what I’m doing wrong.
Hmm. It’s been long enough since I did a provisional cast on that I’m not sure if I have the right number or one less.
Yeah, I’m always one short. I fake it somehow – prolly a different way each time.
And I’d say it SHEFlin. But that’s just me, and just a guess.
I’d pronounce it phonetically and probably incorrectly. I’m used to it.
Hmm. I’m always adding/dropping sts with wild abandon so I haven’t really noticed the provisional cast on being any different. I’ll have to check Flutter tonight when I get home, I just finished picking up the provisional cast on sts for the other half.
It’s a germanic word, but I don’t know how Americans pronouce it. In German it would be “shee-feh-lin.” I always lose a stitch with provisional too. I would think the best solution would be to cast on an extra stitch.
In ” Victorian Lace Today”, Jane Sowerby says about picking up loops from temporary cast ons (p. 166): “there is always one fewer loop than cast-on stitches. Adjust for this by casting on one more stitch, the decreasing one in first row”. She goes on to say that the instructions in the book include the adjustment. I didn’t see this note for a LONG time and kept wondering WHY in the world the first row started with a k2tog. Gee. Maybe I should READ those techniques pages!!