Sweater Project

Yes, I am still working on the Candle Flame shawl for grandma. Yes, I know Mothers’ Day has come and gone. Hopefully she will still appreciate it.

I want to try and elucidate an idea that I’ve had about the candle flame pattern. The shawl is constructed by casting on one stitch, then doing a make three stitch in the middle of each right-side row until the starting flame is eleven stitches wide. Once you get to that point, you cast on three stitches on either side of the first flame. The first and last stitch in the row then get the same make three treatment as the first stitch did. The other two stitches from each cast-on group become a reverse stockinette strip that separates the new flames from the first one. And the original flame is reduced by two stitches on each right side row by doing a s2st, k, psso manoever. When the first flame has been reduced to a single stitch, you expand it again.

Following so far?

So here’s what I’m thinking about. The resulting fabric has a lot of these cute little candle flame patterns in it, but think that it should be possible to mix it up a little bit by choosing a couple of flames and making them larger. Instead of stopping their increases at eleven stitches, you could keep expanding them until they were, say, twenty-three stitches wide, so that it would expand widthwise into the space that would have been occupied by flames on either side.

I think this could create a nice effect if done properly. I need to sit down and work out the math to see what combinations of increases and decreases are feasible. Hm, maybe this is another good job for the cable grapher… I can write code all day long, but I can’t count to save my life.

Speaking of the cable grapher, someone wrote me a while ago and asked if I’d release the source code for it. I think I probably will. I need to slap some copyright statements on it and find a decent license to release it under - I’m thinking some form of the GPL would be appropriate. Looks like I’ll be playing with it some this weekend to try and get non-rectangular patterns working correctly.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Candleflame Shawl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.