For some reason I really enjoy figuring out how to work decreases and increases into stitch patterns: witness all of my hats (Beaufort, Maple Seed, Rose of Sharo

(I've decided to start adding some Italian translations; I thought it would be good practice for me, plus I just joined the Knitters in Europe webring, and, I don't know, multilingual is good.  Please feel free to correct me if your Italian is better than mine!)

I stopped by my LYS today to pick up a set of US size 6 dpns, and the only ones on their wall display were 12 inches long!  I mean, is there really anyone who would rather use 12-inch-long dpns than, say, a 24 or 32 inch circular needle?  Someone who works as a security guard and can use them as weapons in a pinch, perhaps?  Luckily, a helpful saleslady found a set of normal-length Brittany birch dpns tucked into a basket on the floor.  I know I had a set of #6s, but they seem to have disappeared, and I need to complete a sample of a special edition of /patterns/beaufort-hat">Beaufort I'm creating for sale at a certain LYS (not the one I just visited); the owner requested a version using a thinner yarn.  I feel somewhat awkward about offering a pattern for sale that is gratis on the web, but I am rewriting for a different gauge, in a larger range of sizes, and I plan to use a new photograph, and reformat the whole thing to make it more suitable for display in a bricks'n'mortar store (and more portable for the on-the-go knitter). After I got home, I realized that I had a pair of metal 14-inch-long dpns that look to be about a US size 8.  I have no memory of ever having used them for anything, and why do I only have two?  Did I use the others to stake tomatoes or hang curtains?   Hmmm. P.S.  Thanks for the well-wishes concerning the sailing accident; the victim is mending, and gives his assurances that that particular mishap will never happen again!     

Well, Jeri, that is a very good question, and one which I had asked myself--and why doesn't Maple Seed swirl in the opposite direction, since it uses left-slanting decreases (SSKs) instead of right-slanting decreases (k2tog)? The stitch pattern for Beaufort originally caught my attention because it was so similar to one segment of Chinese Lace, and I had even MORE questions about the latter.  Why do the first two segments, rows 1-4 and 5-8 on the chart, slant to the left, even though the YOs slant to the right, and the decreases slant both left and right?  Why are the third and sixth segments, rows 9-12 and 21-24, essentially vertical, in spite of slanting YOs and decreases slanting both left and right?  And why do the remaining segments, rows 13-16 and 17-20, slant to the right, even though the YOs slant to the left?  Is it the proximity of YOs and decreases?  Well, I must admit that the main conclusion I had drawn from Chinese Lace was that the direction of decreases and the position of YOs does not always determine the slant of a stitch pattern--or lack thereof.  And this was confirmed by my experience with Beaufort and Maple Seed. But to return to Jeri's question, there are two different kinds of swirls going on in these hats:  one is the spiral at the crown, and the other is the diagonal that the stitch pattern creates, which would exist even if the knit fabric was flat.  First, why does the stitch pattern spiral at the crown?  I had noticed the same phenomenon in Grumperina's Odessa hat pattern.  I know that I did nothing in the way of decreases to create the spiral at Beaufort's crown; in fact, I reworked those decreases a number of times, not only to create the most consistently decreasing shapes within the knit columns, but also to keep the natural spiral as smooth as possible. We've already noted that Beaufort's stitch pattern moves at an angle from the bottom edge--which is a circle, since it's a hat.  If you picture a hat as a series of concentric circles, and the line crossing the circles at left shows the angle of B's stitch pattern, you can see that as the circles get smaller, and the line continues to cross each one at the SAME angle as the first, it begins to curve in a spiral. As for what causes that angle, if you look closely at the photo of Beaufort, you can see that the decreases for each 4-row pattern repeat form the shape of a triangle, (I'll call these the "decrease triangles", colored gray in the above diagram), while the corresponding YOs form--roughly-- an upside-down triangle that fits next to the first (white in the diagram; the purled areas are represented by the squiggly lines).  Thus begins the Beaufort swirl, but what causes it to continue is that the left lower corner of each subsequent decrease triangle sits on the apex of the decrease triangle below, forming a diagonal line. Clear?  Unclear?  Agree?  Disagree?  The floor is open for discussion.

I decided that the two hats I pictured in my earlier post, although similar, are different enough that they each deserve a moment in the spotlight (so stay tuned for "Falling Leaves").  I delayed putting these patterns up because Kerrie at MagKnits was kind enough to feature another of my

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I finished this hat about a month ago, and wrote a quick post promising the pattern, once I had finished a variation using SSKs instead of k2togs.  I worked on said variation over the weekend, and when I started the crown

I would imagine that a hat is one of the last things on the average knitter's mind right now; it's a gorgeous spring day, and my thoughts are certainly turning to, if not knit bikinis (never!), then sleeveless, short sleeves, lace--that sort of thing.   Well, this hat is kind of lacy, anyway; I've decided I like lace patterns for hats because they get stretched on the wearer's head and display the stitches nicely.  As simple as this little number looks, it has gone through a number of alterations; I added the ribbed edging so it grips the head better (although I'm also working on a version that has no ribbing), and I re-worked the crown decreases probably a half-dozen times.  I think what I've ended up with carries the pattern nicely to the top.  I used the "spiral" pattern I found here.  The yarn is Jo Sharp's Desert Garden Aran Cotton, color "Solstice".  I like this yarn a lot; it's an aran weight blend of cotton (65%) and microfiber (35%), and springy and soft to work with.  When I finish the version without ribs (and in which I tried using SSKs instead of k2togs), in Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran "Merlot", I'll post both patterns gratis (the only real work involved was figuring out the decreases, which I take a geeky pleasure in doing anyway).