Sunday, August 03, 2008

Truly Reversible Entrelac Scarf!

So, I started spinning my Mediterranean batts from Loop! on Etsy, and fell in love hard. Like, really really hard. I sampled like 25 grams of 3-ply light fingering weight yarn from it (navajo plied, of course), and have since been alternating between spinning up more singles, and furiously swatching with my sampled yarn, trying to get a fabric that didn't look like ass.

First I tried lace. 3 ply, too round, poor pattern definition. Then I tried the start of the Clapotis - which worked, but I got bored like 20 rows in, so not so much. I pondered tiny cables, but then I've already got my Irish Miss scarf going on zeroes, and there's only so much patience I have for tiny cabled scarves. Plus, with the color pooling, it would look like ass. I pondered some more.

Today I tried some entrelac, on a whim. I like entrelac, it's surprisingly amusing to work and the front side looks very impressive. The back side, though, looks like ass. Not only like ass, but like crazy asymmetrical ass, which instantly withers the impressed stares of passers-by (and you know I loves me some impressed stares of passers-by).

So I got thinking. Entrelac. Reversible. Entrelac. Reversible. Ribbing? Would ribbing work? I did a quick search on Ravelry, and yes, someone has done an entrelac scarf in ribbing, and it is reversible... but it kinda looks like ass. Each of the squares draws in towards the middle (like ribbing does), but the ends flare because of the picked up stitches. In short, the squares are, well, NOT.

So, I got fiddling. In the end, I worked up a pretty simple solution for the whole pulling problem - don't pick up so many damned stitches. If you have a square of 16 stitches, pick up eight, then increase in each stitch as you knit them (you should also twist the picked up stitches, to prevent holes, but that's what I always do when picking up stitches so I don't know if that's like special instructions or not). If you do that, you're picking up about the same width of fabric as you'll get with your ribbing, which is pretty damn awesome in my opinion. So, yeah, I'll be finishing my little 25 gram reversible entrelac swatch, and hope to post pictures. I may even write this up as a PDF and post it as a free Ravelry download.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You've expressed my thoughts exactly. I'm signed up for an entrelac class tomorrow, which is fine, but the back of the scarf we're making really looks like the WRONG side. I was wondering if a moss stitch would work? Anyway, did you finish yours and post photos of it?

Dieuwke said...

Hi!
Have you written down those instructions? I'd like to see them, have been dying to do some entrelac but I hate the wrong side of the work..

Anonymous said...

The key is in Garter stitch ;)