Heere Be Dragones Journal--Complete!

It's the size of New Jersey! Well, maybe the size of a small town in New Jersey. OK, would you believe the size of a modest pea patch in New Jersey? Actually, I have seen rice paddies smaller than this sucker--it's 7.5 feet wide and 5 feet long. No wonder knitting the edging was interminable. I'd knit for what seemed like hours, but the edging didn't seem to creep any further along the side.

Speaking of the edging, it looks nice and scaly and I much prefer it to the original border, no offense to Sharon, the designer of this masterpiece.



I intend to glitz it up a bit with some glittery red yarn and maybe a few other adornments. You can see the beady eyeball already in place, although I haven't figured out how to stabilize it yet.



It was a pleasure to knit, but I am happy it's done, so I can turn my attention back to the Black Widow Spider King. And there are several other neglected tidbits waiting for me to finish, like the Brain-Melting-Completely-Plain-Blue-Socks for my father. Every time I pick one of them up to work on, I fall instantly asleep. I did manage to stay awake long enough to turn the heels this morning, but only because I was drinking large quantities of coffee at the time.

I am also half-finished with the design for Harry's Shawl, which may be a feaure in a new Harry story that we are tinkering with.

Anyway, enjoy Dragone!

Shawl Updates

As you can see from the wrinkly picture below, two repeats of the Black Widow Spider Queen shawl are now complete, and I am well into the third of four repeats. Nothing of any note to report--no dropped stitches, no tinking, no frogging, and no cat-claw snags (thank you, Laptop).


I am fiddling around with the border patterns, because I will be knitting them in-the-round to avoid the Franken-seam that grotesquely deforms the original. When I have the process all worked out, I will post the instructions, in case anyone wants to follow in my tottering footsteps.

And here's a pix of my Dragone border. I am a quarter around at this point, and am very pleased with the dragon-scaly look.


For those who wish to further totter along with me, here is the chart of the border pattern. The even-numbered rows are purled, so don't forget row 16, ok?


This weekend, we are taking a break and driving up to Asheville, North Carolina. Talk about target-rich environments! When I Googled for Yarn Stores in Asheville, I got 220 hits! After I stopped hyperventilating, I grazed through the results and found that most of them were typical goofy seach returns. But there were 15 genuine yarn stores in the area, so I will be busy pinching and poking, hoping in vain to find yarn for Mountain Ash.

Poor Mountain Ash. So far, I have considered and rejected about seven different yarns, including one that was supposed to be hand-dyed to a submitted sample. The dyer overdid the green (it's a bit too minty-fresh for me), so I had her overdye that to dark blue. Now I have 2500 yards of lovely silk merino lace for something, but not, alas, Mountain Ash.

Heere Be Dragones Journal--Border Swatch

I finished the body of the Dragone shawl a few days ago, and have been puzzling about the border ever since. The original border just didn't work for me. It was a bit too sloppy looking and the join looks, um, maybe not so smooth. And I didn't care for the top shaping, either. Here's Sharon's original shawl:


So I spent a few hours coming up with my own border design.



I wanted something that resembled dragon scales, and I think this does. The right side is an adaptation of an Estonian lace pattern; the left side is an adaptation of one of Kinzel's edgings. I kind of blended them together with a column of YO/K2tog. I am going to sit on it (well, not literally) for a few days, leaf through my books some more, and see if another pattern jumps out at me.

Heere Be Dragones Journal--Row 211

This morning, I knitted the first row of his chin. There is definite progress, as evidenced by the fact that the entire piece won't fit into the picture frame anymore without zooming way out. And two people are needed to hold it up for a photo. Alas, only one of us was available this morning, so you can only see a cropped view of dragone's middle. Nice tummy! I loved that part!

If you are contemplating knitting this piece, think a little thicker, than thinner yarn. Half the beauty of the design are the textural stitches. In fine yarn, these disappear. I saw one the other day knitted in white yarn. It was exquisitely done in very fine wool, but it it didn't show the lacy or relief textures that a thicker yarn would show offf to better effect.

And, I know this sounds a bit nuts, but really, it gets way easier! Somewhere in the middle of the wings you will zone into auto-pilot. Clear sailing from there.

I am now swatching for an alternative border. I didn't care for the original version, so I am looking at dragon-scaly patterns. Suggestions are welcome!

Heere Be Dragones Journal--Row 135

I hit row 135 this morning, which is just past the tail coils and on to the tummy and wings. I know most of you won't believe this, but the knitting gets easier as you progress. The logic of the pattern becomes obvious and, if you count judiciously and use lifelines religiously, you'll begin to sail along about row 40 or so.

This pattern is actually easier than the Peacock shawl, once you have mastered the range of new stitch techniques that Sharon incorporated into the design,

I discovered early on that this piece always requires two lifelines. If you have to tink back a row, well, you have to remove the first lifeline. And of course, as soon as you do that and begin to tink things like K3tog/no slant, the stitches follow the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:

Stitches will always drop to the cast-on row.

So I always retain the lifeline of the row before, giving me several backups, should I really start goofing up.

There have been no big problems, but there was a point of confusion about the wing stitches. There are actually two sets of instructions for these. The first set just says that they are twisted on the right side and slipped on the wrong side. But if you go back to the first page of directions, you'll see that these stitches float on top of other stitches, which requires that you do some fancy things in terms of slipping stitches to cable needles and moving the wing stitches into position over one or two background stitches on the right side of the work.

This concept probably will make absolutely no sense until you arrive at that point. Trust me, it will become obvious. And some people didn't bother to float the stitches at all. Your call.

The biggest headache about this piece is the size of the charts. One person constructed an elaborate easel with foamcore that extends the full four pages of graphs and used about four pounds of Post-It notes and a gaily colored array of markers to keep track of everything.

This concept was more than I could handle. My office is basically paperless--I use laptops for everything, including reading ebooks, generating pattern graphs, and so on. So I constructed an elaborate virtual easel in CorelDraw, with sliding, color-coded stitch counters, multiple views, and variably transparent "paper" so I could see the rows below my current place in the chart.

Here's an annotated screen shot of a section of row 135 (click the picture for a less fuzzy view):


And here's a zoomed-out view so you can see my sliding marker collection.


It takes only a few minutes to adjust the real markers to match the virtual ones, and the system has proven to be foolproof. It's basically impossible to make a mistake, as long as I count accurately.

On to the wings, now.

Dragone Tail

I am at Row 61 and thought you might want to see how beautifully the designer uses stitch textures to create the dragon. This picture shows the bottom of the tail, complete with the pointy tip. I am awestruck by her creativity. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Dragone Notes

I don't want to turn this blog into a diary, but I am keeping some good notes on the Dragone shawl and thought I would tip them into this blog for anyone else who wants to give this design a try. It is far and away the most difficult piece I've ever attempted, incorporating unfamiliar techniques with a non-repeating pattern. On the other hand, it is also the most fascinating design I have ever worked on. Each row is a new adventure. Of course, there is that old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times...


So, for those intrepid souls who are clutching their needles in anticipation, here are my observations so far (row 51 and counting...)


First, for the horizontal stitch, don't bother flipping the second stitch. Take the LH needle around the back of the first stitch, through the gap between the first and second stitch, and knit through the front of the second stitch first, then the front of the HS second. Unless, of course, you like flipping stitches. I hate it. An extra maneuver I don't want to deal with.

Second, the number of horizontal stitches on the chart is deceiving. The first stitch, that is, the one you knitted through the front of at the very beginning, counts as one stitch. And the K2tog at the end of the run counts as one stitch. So if you see a run of 15 horizontal stitches on the chart, you are really only making 13 horizontal stitches. This little omission in the directions cost me hours of frogging.

Third, there are occasional purls through the back loops of yarnovers from the previous knit rows. Be very careful with these--they are surprisingly difficult.

I found the actual counting off to be the biggest problem, as there are no repeats--you have to knit the picture. And the picture is very large. When I knit ordinary lace, I memorize a repeat, but with this sucker, it's impossible. I tried a number of visualization techniques, a whole slew of counting techniques, and finally ended up doing something truly brute force.

Before I work a row, I count off blocks of thingies, for example, a run of horizontal stitches or a group of right/left crosses. I then put removable markers around the blocks. That way, I don't have to count while I am knitting--I just do whatever until I get to the next marker.

I am lifelining every row and have needed the lifeline on every row. I am not usually so clumsy, but until I get used to the odd techniques, dropping, slithering, and disappearing stitches are way, way too common not to have a lifeline to repair the damage.

I don't know if I mentioned it, but the yarn I am using is fabulous. It's from Running Wild Farm--the 2/16 Lamoramere Fine Lace Blend of 50% Cormo Lambwool, 40% Angora, and 10% Cashmere. It's heavier than some laceweights--maybe 2/3 of a fingering weight.

I decided not to use the original yarn, Fino, for several reasons. First, it's quite fine and I wanted something sturdier so I could embellish the dragon with beads and embroidery. Second, I had my heart set on Fireball Red, and didn't feel like dying my own yarn. Third, I thought the original shawl looked a bit frail, and I think dragons should have considerable substance.

Sorry there are no pictures to show--I hope to have something more visual at a later date. Right now, it looks like a really small, ratty headscarf. As usual.

Heere Be Dragones Shawl Progress

Well, I can't say I have exactly set my needles on fire, but I am up to row 33. Row 31 is the first one with the weird Horizontal Stitch and Row 32 is the first purl row with Right Twists. This shawl was designed by Sharon Winsauer (aka Mistress of Knitting Pain) and you can read more details about it here.

I thought it might be instructive for anyone approaching this design with the idea of actually knitting it, to see my setup. I don't think I have anything more to add at this point. But I surely will keep you posted on my progress, if any.


Close-up view of workspace: