Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Stitches do not exist?

Hey, Y'all! Like all of you, I am completely enthralled with the beautiful scarves and shawls to be knit from this book. Last night I started the "Scarf with French trellis border and bramble leaf center" on page 98. The yarn was (is) Debbie Bliss Pure Silk. Unfortunately, after about 10 rows I realized I had made an error at the beginning and ripped the whole thing out. And I'm not sure I am going to like that yarn choice. Has anybody else made this scarf yet?

Knitting from charts is new to me, although I have made several lace items before. Having said that, Chart B has confused me. What is the deal with the square in the middle of rows 3 and 4 that says "Stitches do not exist in the area of chart?" What do I do when I get to that part? Will it be obvious once I get there?

3 comments:

Hope said...

Basically, the stitches that appeared on a particular row, do not exist on a later row, probably because they were decreased in between times. So on a chart, they put black spaces to fill in the chart, but really it's probably best to pretend they aren't there at all.

~Lori said...

I haven't made this scarf or used that yarn; but as far as the "stitches do not exist" issue, this just means that there is a reduced number of stitches on those two rows. Just ignore the dark squares - i.e., k3 between the yo's on row 3, and p6 after the k2tog on row 4. HTH!

Unknown said...

I am making this scarf too, and have finished the first border part. Where the instructions say 'this stitch does not exist', don't worry about it because when you go to knit that row you'll just jump over the black square on the chart and finish the row as if it weren't there.
They need to put that black square in to keep the chart sides even.

However, I would not recommend DB silk for this scarf as it is a bit thick and not at all hardwearing, if you'll be frogging it'll be a fuzzy mess (albeit a nice soft one) in no time. The crisp stitch definition which is a feature of this scarf won't be shown by using the silk single strand, imho.

I'm knitting a wrap in DB pure silk and it's not a hardwearing yarn, although it is beautiful and sheeny. I iron it afterwards with a super hot iron and spray starch and get a smooth finish - try it if you dare!

I'll be posting in the next couple of days my progress on the French trellis/bramble leaf scarf - you're more than welcome to email me if you have any probs and I'll do my best to help if I can.