I’ve been working on the buffalo silk cowl for TheEnabler on and off since August as an excellent purse project. The skein is 50g of lace weight and the pattern, Monroe, is basically k2 p2 ribbing for 14 of the 16 row repeat. Rows 8 and 16 aren’t exactly rocket science either.
The great thing about putting a project like this in my purse is that if I’m pulling it out to work on it, there’s a good chance that k2 p2 is more either A) more interesting that whatever I’m otherwise doing (standing in line somewhere) or B) repetitive enough that I can do it while doing something more interesting (like talking with friends and family).
However, it was designed around staying one size all the way through, and I want a close fitting cowl that my husband can pull up over his head when it’s cold, but that then flares out over the shoulders so that he doesn’t get an annoying cold gap at the bottom of his neck.
Basically, I needed to figure out how to add in repeats.
Here’s the challenge: I can’t add the extra stitches evenly spaced around, or it’ll completely disrupt the pattern where I do. I wanted to add three repeats worth of stitches to the ten repeats I have, and I needed to add in each one between two repeats in such a way that they grew naturally and maintained the staggered nature of the ovals.
I tried to work it out in my head, and then realized it would be smarter to do it on paper. Behold:
I realize it’s not pretty, and since I charted it the way it would look from top to bottom, I actually need to turn it upside down to work it. The Xs are actually the knit stitches and there’s no info on how I intend to do the increases (I’ll do M1L and M1R as looks good). But it gave me what I needed to proceed.
Once I’d worked out what needed to be done, and set markers for the three points at which to start each increase, I only had to refer to my chart a few times to make sure I was on track (see? This is why I didn’t make it prettier).
All in all, I’m really happy with how naturally the new repeats grew out of the old. I think it’ll look even nicer after it’s completed and blocked.
And now that this more interesting interlude in the cowl’s life if over and it’s back to k2 p2 for evermore, I think I’m going to go work on Ergane for a bit…