It feels like I’ve been working on this wrap for an entire year. I started thinking about it in the beginning of October, reached out to the recipient in mid-December, but wasn’t able to really start working on it until the end of April. I finished it mid-May. Sounds like I only really worked on it for 2 or 3 weeks! Felt like so much longer.
I had found my inspiration images in December. I took them from a website of a guy who is a graphic designer, and he was using traditional Hawaiian-Japanese textiles as his inspiration. Perfect, the designs had already been translated into drawings which are easily re-interpreted into knitting patterns. While I didn’t have time to sit down and draw out my ideas, I definitely had these images floating in my head for weeks. Triangles, lines, dots, triangles within triangles, very geometric. The one that I thought of most often was the rows of two colored triangles. It did seem very basic, not original (I expected more from myself, more complicated or more intricate), but also the pattern is authentic. This was validated when I traveled to Hawaii in the beginning of April for spring break, and I found the exact triangle pattern I had in mind on my pool wrist band (modeled here by my son’s friend who was also at the pool, #RHOSV). This was a sign.
Picking out yarn felt like cheating because I knew what I wanted before I even walked in to Imagiknit, my favorite SF yarn store. Still, I did my usual scan of the entire place to be sure I couldn’t find something better. When I was confident in my choice, I studied the color options of Shibui Birch, 100% extra fine merino wool from Peru. I had used this yarn for a scarf already, so I knew how it would behave on the machine and how it would feel when it was done. Soft and luxurious. I was lucky that they made this yarn in the color I needed - navy - and plenty of complementary colors to make the pattern pop. I chose two additional colors, an off white and a tan color they call “caffeine”. They also had a soft grey, which goes really well with the navy, but ultimately I chose the tan rather than the grey because it felt more elegant or formal or … hmmm… I can’t think of the word, but it seemed to embody the image I have in my head of the receipient. I bought 3 skeins of navy, and 2 each of the other colors, intending to balance out the contrasting colors with the main color. (and uhh, a few skeins of navy in another yarn, you know, just in case.)
Weeks later, after finishing up a couple Meg Shawls, I finally started to put my ideas down on paper. First, a list of words to describe my goal. Soft, cozy, post-treatment comfort, stylish, multi-function, shoulder cover/shrug, head cover, hawaiian, japanese.
I plotted out my first attempt at a punch card pattern based on the image of rows upon rows of triangles, and triangles within triangles. Punch cards are limited to 24 stitches across. I had to think how to place the pattern within the limit and get a good repeat. Will I be knitting length-wise or width-wise? Do I want the triangles to go up and down or left and right? How many triangles can I get on each repeat? Will it repeat the way I expect it to, or will it look weird for some reason and I'll have to try again?
You can see in my first punch card attempt on the left, my triangles were pretty chunky! If you look at the very top triangle, you can see that I punched out every two rows. Who knows why I felt I had to make the shape 2 stitches over, 2 stitches up to create a diagonal line. I think I was doing that to keep the repeats consistent or something? But then I realized I could punch every other corner and get a much smoother line. Then I played with the triangles within triangles, trying to get the shape to sit evenly within the space I had on the punch card. At first, using the 2 over, 2 up triangles, the interior triangles weren’t able to be centered very well. The triangles looked lop-sided. Then, once I cleaned up the outer triangle edges, the inner triangle spacing made a lot more sense. You can see the slight difference on the card on the left to the placement I ended up using on the card on the right.
Here is my first test swatch, where you can see what the chunky triangles looked like when knit! You can also see that I played with some stripe options, still trying to get that third color worked into the pattern somehow.
Once I felt I had the punchcard pattern correct (the version on the right), I tried more options with the 3 yarn colors. You can see in the second test swatch (image below) that I wanted to know if it looked best to have solid navy triangles with navy “dots” (the smaller triangle within a triangle), or solid brown triangles with brown “dots”. How could I incorporate the third color? Maybe every other row is the third color? Maybe the non-solid triangles are striped?
Ultimately, I felt the best balance and use of navy was to make it the primary color, as both the solid triangles and the “dots”. I decided that additional stripes complicated the design too much, so I resigned myself to use just two colors, the navy and tan, instead of all three including the off-white. (Just to quickly note, I used a string-like cotton yarn for these test swatches. I just happened to have colors that are representative of the actual colors I’m using for this project.) I also noticed in the test swatch that something funky was happening at the triangle edges where the color changes, the stitches are bigger there and it creates a kind of blanket stitch look. Not the worst, but not what I wanted. I was confident this would resolve itself during the next part of the process.
After the pattern was figured out, it was time to convert it to a multi-rib pattern card. What’s that? Well, when you knit with two colors on a regular knitting machine, the yarn/color you are NOT knitting will hang out on the back of the fabric until its turn to be knit again. This creates a messy look and loops (called floats) which easily get caught on things. You have probably noticed this if you’ve ever worn a chunky sweater with a colorful pattern on it. To solve this problem of floats, you can attach a second knitting machine to the regular knitting machine. This is called a ribber. When you use the ribber, there is a second set of needles knitting the back side of the fabric, knitting the out-of-use yarn rather than creating loops, and ultimately creating a flat surface on the back side (see image below).
When you knit two colors using just the main knitting machine, you can knit with two yarns at the same time. The punch card tells the machine when to use the first color and when to use the second color across the same row. With the ribber, you can only knit with one yarn/color at a time (for this fair isle or jacquard style of pattern, anyway. There's another technique called plaiting where you can use two yarns/colors at once but it doesn't make these types of patterns, plaiting uses both yarns in each stitch). So you have to adjust the punchcard pattern to knit one color at a time for a 2 color pattern. That means on the first pass, it knits row 1 color A, (switch yarns) second pass knits row 1 color B, third pass knits row 2 color B, (switch yarns) fourth pass knits row 2 color A, fifth pass knits row 3 color A, etc.
Meanwhile, the knitting machine ribber set up for multi-color knitting actually creates a birdseye pattern on the back side of the fabric by automatically knitting every other needle each time you pass the carriage across (IOW knit a row). The alternating needle selection makes the back side of the fabric the same size as the front side. What? So, remember that the main carriage takes 2 passes to make one complete row. If the ribber made one complete row with each pass, the back of the fabric would have 4 rows by the time the front of the fabric only had 2. That can be used as a design technique, but generally speaking, it's not a desired effect. In my case, I wanted the front and back of the fabrics to be smooth and the same number of rows. So when the ribber selects every other needle when knitting in one direction, then uses the opposite every other needle on the way back, the ribber is taking 2 passes to create one row. Then the back and face of the fabric are equal.
To make this work, you have to adjust the punchcard so that instead of knitting colors A and B on row 1, row 2, row 3 etc, you tell it to knit color A row 1 (punchcard row 1), color B row 1 (punchcard row 2), color B row 2 (punchcard row 3), color A row 2 (punchcard row 4), etc.
Here is what the multi-rib pattern triangle punchcard looks like:
This test swatch using the actual yarn shows both the front and back of the fabric. You can see how the back has the birdseye pattern and the front is a successful execution of the triangle motif. I did notice that in some spots on the back of the fabric, there are missed stitches. But it didn’t impact the front of the fabric, so I chose not to worry about that too much. If it happens on the finished piece (and it did), then it will just be a little wabi-sabi that reminds you that this is hand made and is not perfect. I also used this test swatch as my gauge swatch. I measured the number of stitches (width wise) per inch and the number of rows (length wise) per inch so I would know how many needles to use and how many rows to knit. I had to be a bit strategic with these numbers because I wanted to be sure to have a complete triangle on either end of the main body and stay close to my desired final measurements. I needed the length to be wrist to wrist to fit properly in one of the 6 ways I intended for the shawl to be used. But I didn’t want to cut off a triangle in the middle, so I had to decide if I wanted the full length to be slightly over or slightly under the ideal length in order to maintain a good looking motif.
In order to determine the length and width of the main body, I used what’s called a muslin or sample. Basically, it's any ol' piece of fabric cut and roughly sewn to the approximate size and shape you have in mind, then you can use that rough sample to refine the fit and design without wasting precious expensive materials. I had a big piece of black fleece fabric and I cut it down to the size I thought would be good for this project. It’s about the same height/length as me, 64”, and I wanted the width from about the top of the back of my neck to the base of my back, which turned out to be about 24”. I draped this rectangle of fabric over my manequin to see if it looked right. I had to tweak it a bit here and there, but overall I knew I was on the right track.
An element of the design of this shawl that I had been considering for months even before I had the idea for this particular piece, was to include a band of buttons along both edges of the shawl. My hope was that these buttons and button holes would make the wrap really versatile. You could button the edges together into sleeves and wear it like a shrug. You could rest it over your shoulders like a cape and hold it in place with a single button at the front of your neck. Or button it all the way down the front so it’s a poncho. This multi-use shawl idea actually came from another similar idea I had which is to button together two or more of these kinds of shawls (or in my mind at the time, mini-blankets), and they could make a family snuggle blanket. But that idea is on the back burner… for now…
So I cut a couple of strips of the black fleece representing the button bands, and used my serger to quickly attach it to the edges of the main body, cut a few jagged button holes approximately where I thought they might go, tied on some buttons I stole, er, borrowed, from the kid's craft box, and tried it on. The idea is good! It works how I want it. But getting the exact location of the buttons and button holes will be tricky. This makes me nervous. It has to be just right. It will also be tricky to figure out exactly how this button band will look. Like, is it ribbed? striped? solid navy? sewn on? how? by hand? serger? linker? And how, exactly, do you make button holes on a machine? I think it involves holding stitches? Or knitting from both sides? Or… ? I had a lot to research and practice before getting it right.
(side note about the image above: At some point in this process, I put a hood on the muslin to see how that would look and how it would work with the multi-function elements of the buttons. Nothing cozier than a wrap with a hood on it. It felt important to add that element of warmth. But the amount of shaping required and the impact on the multi-function buttons resulted in my decision to proceed without the hood. Maybe I’ll add it back in on a future version.)
Armed with all the information and prep work I needed - my yarn, my punch card, my gauge, my fabric size - I was ready to start knitting the main section of the shawl.
Please read my next blog post which details the production process!
-nina
Wabi SABI!✍🏻