That's More-Than-Circular, in case you're wondering!
As I detailed on June 1, I've been thinking a lot about shawl shapings that allow shawls to hang on human bodies in graceful ways (especially larger bodies, since that's another of my interests). I'm not a fan of the seemingly ubiquitous triangle shawls because they seem to slip off the shoulders. I do like the Faroese shawls, both the traditional patterns and Myrna Stahman's top-down versions, but I'm not always enthralled with the design limitations imposed by the back panel on these shawls. I'm sure there are work-arounds, and I'd like to learn as much as I can about various things people have tried to shape shawls.
To that end, I'm investigating "more than circular" shawls. I originally heard about this idea from JoAnn Besold who sort of accidentally knit a circle shawl with progressively larger needles, and produced a shawl that hung very smoothly around her shoulders. She didn't realize quite what had happened until she folded it in half and realized that "the 'half' filled almost two-thirds of a circle." Voila! The more-than-circular idea was born.
As I said a few days ago, I knit her shawl recently with a heavy-ish cotton thread (actually I believe it's carpet warp, if truth be told!). I started on a size 5 (3.75mm) needle, and eventually worked my way up to an 11 (8mm, I think). I had a lot of fun with the knitting through a size 8 (5mm) needle, but after that point I didn't much like the knitting experience, nor the fabric I was getting. I had originally fallen in love with the photo of JoAnn's shawl, however, and looking at it realized it has the same look of the piece I was getting (she used size 5 crochet thread). So I decided to finish it, but to experiment with other techniques that would avoid knitting on such large needles relative to the thread.
I think the most obvious way to do that, at least in a circular format, is to simply add more "spokes" to the wheel. Doilies generally have a certain number of repeats that complete the circle (most often 6-8). So what if instead of 8 repeats, for instance, I cast on 9 or 10 instead?
I wanted to figure out the geometry of doing this. JoAnn says her half circle filled almost two-thirds of a circle, so if I follow her example, I know that I will need my shawl to be approximately 4/3 of a full circle (or 133%). How many points is that? I came up with the following chart:
| Possible Configurations | |
| 6 points | 1.00 |
| extended to 7 | 1.17 |
| extended to 8 | 1.33 |
| extended to 9 | 1.50 |
| extended to 10 | 1.67 |
| 7 points | 1.00 |
| extended to 8 | 1.14 |
| extended to 9 | 1.29 |
| extended to 10 | 1.43 |
| extended to 11 | 1.57 |
| 8 points | 1.00 |
| extended to 9 | 1.13 |
| extended to 10 | 1.25 |
| extended to 11 | 1.38 |
| extended to 12 | 1.50 |
| extended to 13 | 1.63 |
And yes, I do realize that I'm a fairly anal knitter! ;) I actually think that anywhere from 2/3 to 3/4 of a half-circle would work well, so an acceptable range would be from 1.33 to 1.5. I know that I want a doily with quite a few rows. Besold suggests 75-90 for an elbow length shawl, but that's with the last rows on progressively larger needles, so I know that I need more rows on my smaller needles to compensate. I'm also a large woman and fairly tall, so I think extra length is usually good. My Renaissance Shawl had about 115 rows (if I remember correctly), so that gives me a good ballpark figure.
So now I just have to make a decision about which one of these wonderful patterns from Ragnhild Falch Ervik I want to knit next! There are truly enough gorgeous ones to make a person scream ;) The yarn I'm planning to use is variegated (I'll try and have a photo of it up tomorrow), and about a sport-weight cotton. I plan to start the shawl on size 5 (3.75mm) needles and work the 3" diameter that Besold recommends on that needle, then increase to a 7 or 8 (4.5-5mm) and stay there for the rest of the doily. I've decided on "Gammelrosa bladmønstret duk" (on page 40-41 of the first Kunststrikk volume, for those who happen to have copies; mine is the "2 bøker i 1" set of Kunststrikk 1 and 2).
The instruction starts "Legg opp 14 m fordelt på 3 små pinner. Flytt over til rundpinne nør arbeidet er stort nok. 1.-2.-3.omg rett." I think that means to cast on 14 stitches on three DP needles. As you can probably guess from the 14 stitches, this doily has seven points, so from my chart I could choose 9 points (129%) or 10 (143%). I think I'm going to go with 10.
I sent Mona and Kari an email with the few phrases I need translated from this pattern, and I think I might actually go ahead and cast-on tonight. We'll see!
Since I've not provided much in the way of eye-candy of late, here's a link to some gorgeous new shawl patterns. Sivia Harding is the creator of these, and I just got my hot little hands on two of the patterns yesterday. Yummy stuff! And I love the unique shaping of the "Waves in the Square " shawl. The site is still under construction, but Sivia is open for business. I received my patterns in just a couple of days, and they're quite well put together. Tell her I sent you ;)
Posted by Shelda at June 4, 2003 07:12 PMI have my own little thing which may or may not help you. Rather than more than circular, I sometimes go less--taking a circular pattern I like and removing one or more repeats from it, then adding a narrow garter stitch border to the two edges that are created. Now, if you're dead set on knitting in the round or having a folded, double-layered shawl, this won't work for you, but I've found it works rather well for me. One of the scaled-up doily shawls I did (with the same size needle throughout) had a six-repeat pattern which I cut down to five, and I ended up with a shawl a fair bit more "winged" than a Faroese shawl. The second one I did, to get even more coverage in front, was a 10-repeat pattern that I only removed 1 repeat from. The third doily shawl, which I'm doing now, is fully circular because the pattern would have left a very jagged edge if I split it open along the repeat line--I only mention it because it proves that my technique won't work with every pattern.
I realize my post ended up being a miniature dissertation, but I hope this helps.
Lizzi
Posted by: Lizzi at June 15, 2003 08:22 PMI forgot! If you haven't already discovered this site, http://www.nurhanne.com/yarnover.html has quite a few beautiful doily patterns. These are the ones I've been using in my experimentation.
Lizzi
Posted by: Lizzi at June 15, 2003 08:24 PMThanks for your comments on my blog, Lizzi! I'm always glad to hear from people who are trying similar experiments. I do like this "more than half a circle" idea.