When I got to the last (first) two rows, I saw that I had even used that trick for avoiding twists when joining in the round. You know the one where you work the first bit flat, and then join in the round? In theory, because you have a few rows of fabric flapping off your circular needle, you’ll be able to see whether you have an inadvertent twist or two when you join for working in the round.

Yeah, well, here’s a hint: work more than two rows flat before joining in the round. Also, consider using a long enough circular needle so that your stitches aren’t crammed together so tightly you can’t distinguish twists from ruffling. I think I had 40+ inches’ worth of stitches in aran weight packed onto a 24 inch circular, so the cast-on edge ruffled up and down, and I missed the place where it ruffled all the way around the needle’s cable the two rows I had worked didn’t stick out far enough to be obvious.

Andrea (in the comments in the last post) took comfort from that flub. Uh, I also have this one hanging around:

(the fabric is not my bedsheet, it’s cotton voile from Emma One Sock)

I think this one predates the cashmere. It was supposed to be ribbing for a hat. After I noticed the twist, I decided to keep going and steek it (just the ribbing, not the whole hat) because it was too big, anyway.

(Also, Rachel, on the mismatch between a bottom-up body and top-down sleeves: well, it doesn’t bother me… it may depend on the stitch pattern, but it doesn’t seem to be glaringly obvious here. I think it bothers me more with colourwork.)

And then throwing in some cables is not only fun, but it impresses yourself because it’s just so neat that you’re working a short-rowed, cabled, set-in sleeve knit from the top down.

(Okay, it doesn’t look like much, but the recipient is at least acting like he’s pleased.)

This is a cabled pullover or jacket knit gansey-style, with the body worked from the hem to the shoulders. The jacket will have no side seams, and the pullover body is worked in the round for one neckline (crew/turtleneck), and flat for another (shawl collar)… I had wanted it all to be in the round, but the shawl collar neckline begins below the armhole bind-offs, and the alternatives didn’t seem to be much more fun (either steek something — and this is an aran-ish gauge — or begin rounds on the body front, or break yarn after the tubular part is finished and rejoin at the neck edge).

I started one in Colourmart cashmere mill ends, four strands in natural-ish colours. The yarn had an oily yet acrid smell (the yarn was meant for knitting machines, after all), but I could deal with that because I knew just how soft it would become after laundering.

It was going to be nice. Was . See the problem?

Maybe another picture will help…

This one has been in timeout since the winter. It was only this week I started thinking about ripping it out and starting over.

As I said in the first post, I compiled the information when I decided to write about ease. I can’t remember if that’s completely accurate; either I decided to write about ease, or I needed to figure out what kind of ease to use myself. Whichever. I also used this information to learn out how to draft the typical set-in sleeve of a knitted sweater, but in the end figured out that I preferred a more mathematical approach to the sketch-on-graph-paper (such as Thomas, Vogue, and Michelson & Davis) or the knit-until-it-fits-together (such as Duncan and Elalouf) — hand knit sweater sleeves generally being designed with front-back symmetry (even though our bodies aren’t), it’s easy to compute the numbers for pattern instructions in advance.

There’s an obvious trend in the amount of ease recommended overall — as we progress from the mid-20th century to the early nineties, sweaters get looser, reflecting the styles at the time. Righetti even mentions including sufficient space for shoulder pads; the styles depicted in the 80s-era books include gathered sleeves, which I always associate incorrectly with the “Princess Diana Black Sheep Sweater” (a stranded colourwork sweater in red, patterned with an array of sheep, all white, with the exception of one black sheep). Once Diana appeared in public with that sweater, it got knocked off right quick. I had one of those knock-offs (somebody bought it for me, I didn’t choose to get it); while I don’t think the original had puffed sleeves, for some reason the tween-sized version I had did.

The looseness of the fit determines the shape of the set-in sleeve cap. For example, Newton gives a final bind-off of 4 to 6 inches, which is frankly huge and appropriate only if the sweater is rather loose fitting; having such a wide final bind-off implies a relatively shallow sleeve cap. The fit of the sleeve around the bicep is loose, since she suggests the same amount applied to the body (4 to 6 inches). She also says the sleeve bicep measurement should be about twice the sleeve cap height plus 1 inch, which is a bit odd: Newton says the set-in sleeve armscye depth (the vertical measurement) should be 2 to 3 inches less than the drop-shoulder armscye depth of 8 to 10 inches; this gives a maximum value of 8 inches for the set-in sleeve armscye depth. She also says that the height of the “classic”-fitting sleeve cap fitting into this is about 2/3 the armscye depth; that’s 5 1/3 inches. But twice this height plus 1 inch is 11 2/3 inches. That’s nowhere near the same amount as a bicep measurement plus 4 to 6 inches, which suggests there’s either an error in my notes, or Newton was referring to the bicep measurement of a drop-shoulder sleeve, or she was referring to the bicep measurement of a set-in sleeve but really meant to say that the finished bicep measurement of the sleeve is supposed to be twice the armscye depth plus 1 inch.

If I had to recommend only one book for use in drafting knitting patterns, it would be Righetti; it actually deals with different body shapes and teaches fitting techniques (e.g., short rows) to accommodate larger bumps and curves. My second choice would probably be Michelson & Davis. Both Righetti and Michelson & Davis offer a “worksheet” method for computing pattern instructions (they work through examples, and present the process in a sort of fill-in-the-blank way), but for those who are really arithmetic-phobic, Michelson & Davis do demonstrate the graph-paper method of drafting. Righetti, of course, has the advantage that it is still in print.

This is not (duh) legal advice, and in fact any discussion of the law is kept to a minimum. And there are no dollar figures (well, not very many). What this post really contains is… common sense. At least, I think it’s common sense — you may have a different sense than I do.

Chat
Sometimes new knitting authors — or rather, those new to being published by others — encounter offers of publication, and find themselves internally asking, “is this a good deal?” or better yet, asking others with more experience, “is this a good deal?”.

Asking other people with more experience in the field is a good idea, because they are probably aware of other issues that the new designer hasn’t thought of at all, and they may raise those issues for further consideration. But do not expect to find the “yes” or “no” answer this way, for a couple of reasons:

First, other people may be sensitive about disclosing their business information, either directly to another person or in a public forum. Would you disclose your financial information to a virtual stranger who happens to share a love of knitting? Would you tell this stranger about your negotiation efforts with a particular publisher, and their outcome? … well, okay, seeing as there are a lot of knitters who blog about personal and employment issues that I would filter myself, maybe you would. But by and large, one doesn’t disclose many particular details about their business unless they have reason to be comfortable doing so — because they know the person to whom they are disclosing it, they know the information won’t be used in competition against them, they know this person won’t blurt out the information to someone else.

Secondly, whether something is a “good deal” is very subjective; it really depends on an author’s priorities, his or her needs, and his or her intentions for the work created. Whether something is a “good deal” also depends on context: “good deal” could mean “am I being taken advantage of?”, or “would I be better off publishing via a different route?”, or “is this publishing contract actually giving me what they promised/what I expect?”… and even if the answer is not the one that the author wanted to hear, there is still the question of, “should I just agree to suck it up anyway, in the hopes that the intangible benefits will outweigh the negatives?”

… And there’s no clear way to answer these questions. People will determine whether a deal is “good” with reference to their own experience. For example, knowing how much might be made from self-publishing and distributing a pattern, one knitting author who derives most of her knitting-related income from publishing patterns only may declare that all publishing contracts from book and magazine publishers have got to be bad deals because they all curtail the author’s rights after first publication, or the value of those rights, in some manner; somebody else, whose income is mainly derived from travelling and teaching across the country and who needs to ensure that his name gets maximum exposure in order to create demand for his services, might think that magazine contracts are not so bad after all because the intangible losses are balanced by intangible gains. (These are just examples pulled out of thin air — I’m not trying to obliquely reference any personalities in particular.)

Answering some of these questions involves actually reading and, more importantly, understanding the contract at issue. Answering some of these questions involves an exploration of publishing alternatives. Answering all of these questions also requires the author to have his or her priorities lined up: the importance of money, the importance of retaining the right to deal with the pattern as he or she sees fit in the future, the importance of intangible benefits like exposure in a print publication. Nobody can get an answer to “is this a good deal?” without already knowing what their objectives are.

In short, there’s nothing wrong with asking other people who you know have more experience in the field. But bear in mind that these other people can’t do all your thinking for you, and their impressions of what you’ve been offered may be skewed by the priorities they apply to their own business, not by the priorities that you have determined (or haven’t) for yours. The answers you’ll get will be helpful, but they’ll often be heavy on generalities, like this post, and light on the gory details (like, “I tried negotiating a such-and-such a change to my contract with that company and they bent over backwards/told me to take a hike” or “I got $350 for my layette design”). In addition, it may even be that the people who are giving you useful advice don’t even completely understand the contracts they’ve signed themselves.

Ask away, but the final decision is yours.

Good intentions
Book and magazine publishers are in the business for their own gain. Yes, a publishing business may have started for the love of the craft, but love does not keep a business afloat, nor does it pay other people’s salaries. This is not to say that publishers are bad; they’re not all trying to get rich off their contributors’ blood, sweat, and tears, but it doesn’t mean that they’re simply trying to give away their own money or to break even, either. Publishers can provide the author with an opportunity to be published on a scale that might not be possible with self-publishing, or that might only be possible with self-publishing with a lot of time and labour that the author might not be able to dedicate to the venture.

The point is, just because a publisher loves knitting as much as you, and is beloved by all readers, doesn’t mean that the deals the publisher offers will ultimately work in your best interest. And that’s okay; you have the power to decide whether to take that deal, decline, or try to negotiate better terms.

Compensation from knitting publications has not matched inflation
Just in case you’re wondering. Have you heard the anecdote that magazine compensation for a knitting pattern hasn’t increased over ten or more years? Ask around.

Here’s a link to U.S. consumer price index information (click on the “Inflation Calculator”): comparing 2006 to 1996, there was a 28% increase. If compensation matched inflation, then somebody who was paid $500 for first publication rights for a pattern in 1996 should receive about $640 now. But anecdotally speaking, at least (remember, people are not going to divulge their financial information to all and sundry), they’re not getting that.

Technically speaking, you could say that over the past ten years, the average compensation across the industry from magazines has decreased, if you include online publications. However, you can’t make a straight comparison this way, because…

Dollar figures aren’t the whole story
Some publishers may compensate contributors on comparable pay scales. However, a full comparison will also take other intangibles into account.

Think about the labour involved. If an article pays something along the same scale as a pattern, then an author may realize more, on an hourly wage basis, for writing an article than writing a pattern. This depends on the subject matter; a technically complex or exhaustively-researched article may take a lot longer to complete than a one-hour hat in a couple of sizes. But if the author of a pattern is expected to supply draft instructions and numbers for a range of sizes, a sample garment, and perhaps to change the pattern to suit a yarn selected by the editor, the number of hours of work can skyrocket. It has been pointed out by others that the development of a pattern, from initial concept, yarn research and swatching, to experimental and test knitting (and ripping), pattern writing and revision, to sample knitting and final draft reduces the standard magazine compensation to something less than minimum wage.

In addition to the labour of generating a pattern in the first place, today the labour simply does not stop there. Ten or twenty years ago, if a reader had a problem with a pattern, most questions would have been fielded by the publisher as the main point of contact. Now, it’s easier for the reader to seek out and contact the author directly, because many authors now have an Internet presence. (And the authors especially need that Internet presence to promote their businesses if the compensation from traditional publishing outlets hasn’t improved.)

Think about the rights involved. It is not enough, really, to be told that the author will “retain copyright”. One can draft a contract that leaves copyright with the author while effectively eviscerating whatever rights the author’s copyright may carry with it. It is possible to draft a contract that purports to allow an author to republish a pattern or article two years (or less) after the first publication in a magazine, but then to throw in a proviso that prevents the author from competing with the publisher in any way… and also gives the publisher the right to republish the pattern or article itself, if it chooses. Are these bad deals? Maybe, maybe not; it really depends on what plans the author might have had for the pattern after its original publication went out of print. Was she planning to distribute for free, package it up in a kit for sale, or sell copies of the pattern itself? Given the level of compensation from a publisher, the author may be counting on the opportunity to exploit the pattern to generate further income, to make up for that less-than-minimum-wage period. If the contract she signs removes that opportunity… well, that’s a problem.

And that bit above about compensation not increasing over the past ten years? There is something that has changed in recent years. Since the advent of digital distribution (whether over the Internet or on physical media), there have been lawsuits over the scope of freelancer’s publishing contracts, and whether publishers had the right to distribute freelancers’ works digitally. Publishers who are now aware that the contracts they put out five or so years ago might not have given them rights to digital distribution, are taking more care to make sure that they retain some of these rights themselves. It’s possible, then, that for the same compensation offered ten years ago, the author is actually retaining fewer rights than previously.

This doesn’t mean that a deal that allows you to retain copyright and be free to exercise your copyright is automatically the best deal. Consider online publications that offer up their archives to readers for free, in perpetuity. You may be paid less, but you may retain copyright without too many limitations on its exploitation; however, if the pattern or article is available for the foreseeable future for free, it takes some creativity to realize more revenue when you’re competing against the free offering. (It’s certainly possible: you can expand a pattern with extra sizes, or you can diversify and sell kits or printed versions to yarn shops, for example.)

Cranking numbers at this point might suggest that self-publishing, or if not self-publishing, entering into a different type of publishing deal that provides a decent royalty (and not just a token amount) is the ticket. Maybe so. On the other hand, self-publishing takes a lot more work on an ongoing basis, because the self-publisher usually interacts with her customers directly and handles her own promotion, and will continue to do so for as long as she has a product to sell. Licensing a pattern for a royalty payment might result in less revenue per sale for the author, but may also require less work; but whether this balances out to be better or worse than self-publishing in the long run depends on the level of sales and the effort that the publisher itself puts into selling the pattern, too.

And in that vein, you need to think about the intangible benefits of exposure, too. For some, getting published in a national or international magazine is a necessary step to getting one’s name “out there”, and whatever loss of rights and/or money is worth it. For others, it’s not, and they haven’t regretted foregoing that exposure. The positive effects of being published in a magazine or a book are not easily quantified. If you self-publish as well, some readers may indeed find you because you were published elsewhere, and maybe those readers will be converted to customers. But there’s no formula that guarantees this. Some knitters have an aversion to paying for single patterns, and may only ever want to purchase magazines on the theory that they may want to knit multiple patterns from a single issue. Some knitters just want free patterns. Still, some knitters do turn into customers.

If you are thinking about entering into a publishing agreement, driven mainly by the promise of exposure or promotion, still consider the risk that it won’t happen. In an offer to be published in somebody else’s compilation of patterns, you may be promised that your website’s URL will be published in a book… but what if the publisher makes a last-minute decision to remove it? If you were counting on that promise, do you have any recourse?

As you can see, for all publishing routes, you need to balance what the publisher can offer (or what you can get the publisher to offer) against what you’re losing by publishing with that publisher. You may calculate that if you self-published a pattern — while this does take more ongoing effort on your part — the modest sales over a year would result in greater revenue than the top rate you could get out of a magazine, and that ongoing sales beyond that year might make up for the magazine publisher’s re-use fees or royalties. On the other hand, sometimes there are intangible benefits that you can’t easily quantify, like the cachet of being published in one of the “big” magazines, and the opportunity to reach out to an audience that might not have heard of you online. But if your target market is web-enabled and not afraid of online transactions, you might not care about that cachet or opportunity quite so much (but concluding that your target market is only web-enabled is a big assumption to make).

You v. Them
Sadly, despite the great and abiding love that all parties concerned may have for two sticks and string, when a knitting publishing contract is negotiated there is usually a power imbalance, for one or more reasons:

First, the author is (usually) a single individual; a sole proprietor or principal of a business. He or she is contemplating entering into a one-off contract to supply one work to a publisher, for what looks like a relatively small sum — “small”, when you compare the dollar value to cars and houses, for example. The author typically does not have a background in publishing or copyright law, but the dollar value involved, when compared to a literary agent’s cut or a lawyer’s fees, makes seeking business or legal advice seem like an extravagance; it might make financial sense to get a lawyer involved when you propose to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars… but a publishing contract for five hundred dollars? (In some areas, you may be able to get cheaper legal advice from associations that provide legal assistance specifically to artists). The publisher, on the other hand, probably paid a lawyer to draft its publishing contracts, and got advice about what kinds of modifications they can safely make without compromising the rights they want to retain.

So far as contract-specific knowledge is concerned, then, the typical author enters the contract negotiation with a disadvantage. And sadly, it is not always wise for the author to believe whatever the publisher’s representative or editor says — they’re not legal experts, either, and what they say about the nature of the contract may be inaccurate (whether deliberately or accidentally so). If a publisher’s rep says one thing, but your reading of the contract says another thing, you should consider getting legal advice.

Secondly, a new author doesn’t have complete information about what is “standard” in the industry for these types of contracts. That’s where calling on other authors with more experience comes in, and that’s addressed above.

Thirdly, there’s the timing issue. Given the number of steps required to generate a magazine, submissions are due at the magazine a year or so in advance of the publication date. Accepted submissions must be finalized well in advance of publication because patterns and articles need to be edited, sample garments need to be photographed, and so on. That’s understandable. But the actual contract governing the publication of the article or pattern is usually not received by the author until she receives the “guess what? we’ve accepted your submission for publication!” notification — or later. (Try asking a magazine publisher for a copy of their standard contract before you make a submission to them. See if you get it, or just a rep’s description of what they say it says.) By this point, the timeline for getting the submission finalized, samples knit, and everything delivered to the publisher has been set. The author is elated, perhaps panicky about meeting deadlines, perhaps excited about the forthcoming payment. The emotional reaction may overwhelm the inclination to evaluate the terms of the contract before signing.

And finally, a newer author might be afraid to negotiate or to walk away from a not-so-good deal. The author may want or need the payment. She’s excited. She knows that the publisher gets lots of submissions. Despite the tight timeline, the publisher probably has time to drop a project and replace it with something else if one deal falls through. So, the author might be afraid that if she makes difficulties about the contractual terms, she might blow the whole deal, or might never get another publishing contract. That may not be true, but a new author doesn’t know that because she may never have negotiated a contract before. If a sample garment needs to be knit, there may not be enough time to negotiate terms without starting the sample knitting… and if the knitting is done and the negotiations have stalled, what then?

What do you do?
There are a lot of related issues not discussed here: the merits of print vs. digital distribution, copyright infringement, actually getting paid (and when), what to do when a potential publisher asks you for a contract, for example. Although most of this post dealt with publication through a magazine (or a book) publisher vs. a bit of self-publishing, those aren’t the only options. A pattern author can enter into a deal with a local shop that wants to print and distribute her patterns; she can sell or licence a design to a yarn manufacturer; she can licence the pattern to a distributor who publishes the patterns digitally and pays a royalty. Whether any one of these options (or a combination of them), will work best depends on the individual author.

You can choose to sign a contract that you actually think is a bad deal — that’s your business, and your choice. Ideally, though, won’t do it repeatedly, and you’ll first think about whether the contract you sign today will curtail your plans for the future. Even though you can’t predict the future, you can figure out your priorities now and treat yourself fairly by agreeing only to those deals that help advance your priorities — not somebody else’s.

The books I surveyed were:

1. Ida Riley Duncan, The Complete Book of Progressive Knitting (Liveright, 1940) and Knit to Fit, 2nd ed. (Liveright, 1970)
2. Sion Elalouf, The Knitting Architect (Knitting Fever Inc., 1982)
3. Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book (Random House, 1989)
4. Carmen Michelson & Mary-Ann Davis, The Knitter’s Guide to Sweater Design (Interweave Press, 1989)
5. Deborah Newton, Designing Knitwear (Taunton, 1992)

As you can probably tell, only two of these books are still in print. The other three I bought second-hand at various times. Obviously my design instruction library is seriously focused on the 80s and 90s; not too long after the survey, I finally bought Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English. At the time I did this survey, I also had (and still have) Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns (that’s the first one in the series) and Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top; I didn’t consult them for the survey, I think because neither discussed ease or measurement in absolute terms the way the other books did. Budd’s “Handy” series, of course, isn’t really directed towards designing your own patterns, but rather provides a framework for basic knitted garment shapes. All three of these books are still in print.

Before I go on, I’ll say that while I’m happy to own all of them, I find I’m most inclined to go back and re-read Walker, Righetti, and Newton. With Walker and Righetti I’m likely to read out of idle interest; from time to time I agree, but I do find myself disagreeing with points here and there. I just read Newton over because of her description of her creative process — not because I’d do the same thing, oh, no! I shudder a little when I look at the lavendar cabled motorcycle jacket. But it’s interesting that Newton wrote a book with concrete examples about how she translates her ideas into swatches and garments. Walker’s book, of course, is most unlike all of the others I’ve mentioned here, because it goes into great detail about knitting many garment shapes from the top down. (I also own stitch dictionaries, including Walker’s four treasuries, but I tend not to use them. I look at stitch dictionaries from time to time, note interesting patterns, but then… tend not to use them.)

The book I’m least likely to consult out of the numbered list is Elalouf; while that is in part because I can never find my copy (but it’s available for free from Knitting Fever on its website! it’s not a big book; rather, it’s a cerlox-bound booklet), it’s also because the designing methodology is covered in significant part by Michelson & Davis. both Elalouf and Michelson & Davis explain pattern drafting with a similar chart format and with worked examples, too, Michelson & Davis has better diagrams and provides worksheets and formulas to follow when doing your own calculations. Both books also cover different sleeve shapes; the content of both books is similar, but Michelson & Davis has more detail. If you’re hunting for books on drafting knitting patterns and are wondering whether it’s worth the effort to hunt down Michelson & Davis, then look at Elalouf’s book online, ignoring the section on “constants” (this is Elalouf’s way of explaining certain constant-but-still-variable numbers in a pattern, like a 7.5 inch armhole depth for a size 38 sweater; Michelson & Davis do a better job of explaining where numbers like that come from). If that kind of methodology works for you, but you want a different (or better) explanation, you might be happier with Michelson & Davis.

Both The Knitting Architect and The Knitter’s Guide to Sweater Design stick with hem-to-neck construction. I’ve never seen Elalouf’s second work that goes into different construction methods, The Advanced Knitting Architect; evidently it’s back in print now, because here’s a review. But the information in the first Elalouf book is generally covered in Michelson & Davis, and Michelson & Davis has more content.

Next, once I format the tables: a survey of how these books identified body measurements and instructed its readers on ease.

The style of English language has evolved over the years, which sometimes makes reading old texts slightly challenging. A well-written text, though, will not present a problem to the modern reader. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. For just about every sentence I’ve read so far — and I haven’t got very far — I’ve come up with about three interpretations of Mrs C’s instructions before I’ve hit on (what I think is) the right one.

The meandering post after the jump is my thought process as I tried to follow the instructions in the book. The first part was done very late at night, right after I had finished drafting a patent application, so I wasn’t in a mood to make allowances for ambiguity.

Here we go…

Take the measure of wrist between the wrist joint and hand.

Okay, good, got that. Six inches. Ooh! Sounds petite!

With one point of the compass at A, draw a quadrant A B C, to the size of wrist measure,

And so soon, here’s where it started to break down for me. Is it the entire perimeter of the quadrant — two radii plus an arc — that she means should equal my wrist measurement? Or just the arc? Or the radius? Is it because it’s late and I’m overthinking this?

Fortunately, on the following page, she does indicate that “A B is size of wrist” which suggests that I should be drawing a quadrant with a 6 inch radius. So here’s our first quadrant:

next with the arc B C, increase the figure to D E, that being the line, or circle on which the length of back and size of waist both, are described.

Yeah. So now, I’m supposed to draw another quadrant with center A and larger radius, but this new radius is a mystery. “[N]ext with the arc B C” could mean following the shape of BC, measuring from the points B and C, with the common center A, or using the length of arc BC… which is it?

Figure 1 in the book — and there’s nothing to say it’s to scale — suggests that we’re not doubling it. Reading ahead, it seems that the arc of this new quadrant, DE, is supposed to correspond with the length of the back in one example involving the “2nd order and 3d class” (meaning you’d use DE to separately work out the waist).

At this point, I did a little figuring by computing the resultant radius if DE was equal to my back waist length (which is about 15.5 inches), and guessed that she meant that I was supposed to use a radius equal to the length of arc BC, which is approximately 9.42 inches:

The length of back is determined by adding 1 2 and 3, parts of the measure — by part is meant one-sixth — of wrist measure — to the arc D E, or taking 1 and 2 parts from said arc.

If you’ve looked at the book diagram, you know that there are no less than three points, each labelled 1, 2, and 3. After about ten minutes of inward ranting, I combined this with the one-sixth reference to arrive at “The length of the back is determined by adding one-sixth, two-sixths, or three-sixths of the wrist measure to the arc DE, or taking one-sixth or two-sixths from said arc.” And this interpretation makes sense, because…

These different lengths of back make the different classes to which bodies may belong, there being six in number, as designated by the numbers written thereon, nearest the point E.

… And the Number of the Back shall be 6! Ahahahahaha. Did anyone else find that funny? I found that funny. But it’s after 1 a.m. and I’m trying to decipher incomplete instructions on how to draft patterns from my wrist measurement.

What I gather from this is that to determine your back length measurement from DE, is that you actually need to select one of six values:

• length of DE minus 2/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE minus 1/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE
• length of DE plus 1/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE plus 2/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE plus 3/6 of wrist measurement

This is indicated in Figure 1 by those short horizontal line segments that are around point E: note that “3″ is right on the line defined by AE, meaning that you take the length of DE if you fit that class.

So in fact, we need two measurements; we need to know our back waist measurement in order to classify the body. My actual back waist length is about 14.5 inches or so. When I need to estimate my back waist length in practice, I seldom use that because I don’t actually wear skirts and trousers that fit around my actual waist (at least, not when I can avoid it); garments that hang from a lower point on my torso are more comfortable, so I estimate the length of tops to cover up the rest of the torso accordingly.

But based on my “real” back waist length, I’m roughly in the third class because DE is equal to approximately 14.8 inches.

After getting the correct length of back, with one-fourth of it increase the circle a third time, making the line F A.

One quarter of 14.8 inches is 3.7 inches, or a length FA of 13.1 inches. (In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m rounding to three significant digits.)

The size of waist is determined by adding fractional parts of the wrist to the arc B C, or elbow measure, the smallest size having one part added, the second in size having two parts added, and so on, until the whole wrist measure is added for the largest size; that makes one-half of the waist.

At this point, I puzzled over whether I was meant to determine my waist according to my “size” as determined by how I determined my back length “class”, or if I was meant to take yet another measurement, meaning that Mrs C’s method is actually driven by three body measurements, not just one.

After some sleep, I realized I should proceed with my actual waist measurement. Beginning at the bottom of page 12, she says:

The waist measures, which are seven in number, denote the different orders to which a body may belong. I will here state that bodies belonging to the 6th class, as well as the first order, are extreme cases, and are rarely seen.

These “orders” are determined with how well the person’s body complies with these gynametric rules, but they must be different than the “classes” previously described with respect to back length, because there are seven of these waist orders and six back classes. (Therefore, she is saying that it is unusual to be in the first waist order, or smallest waist size; for my numbers, that would have been an 18.8 inch waist. It is furthermore unusual to have an extraordinarily long back waist length, which with my numbers would have been 17.8 inches. I’ll agree with her there.)

Based on this, then, I start with BC (9.42 inches) and I need to arrive at 13.5 inches, which is half of my actual waist. That puts me between the fourth order, adding fourth-sixths of my wrist measurement (13.42 inches total) and the fifth order (14.42 inches); we’ll go with the fourth order, or 13.42 inches.

Although gynametry may claim to predict certain body measurements from a single bone measurement, it certainly can’t predict all of the measurements required to draft a pattern without some help. Considering the ambiguity of Mrs C’s instructions, it’s not surprising that I missed this point; what she actually said on page 10 is:

… it is necessary only to use one measure to obtain a circle, and that another, or but one measure is required to obtain the size of the various parts, and consequently of the entire body. (emphasis added)

That suggests that only two measurements are required. Two, three, close enough.

Moving on:

After the correct waist measure is ascertained, with one-fourth of waist proper, measure on line D E from point D to its terminus, then dot, draw the intersecting line from A to said dot, letting it continue to line E G.

One-fourth of my waist proper (we’re pretending that’s 26.8 inches, based on the fourth order of the waist, which is fine; I haven’t eaten much today yet) is 6.7 inches. Therefore, I draw a chord from point D, and use that point of intersection with DE to draw a line segment from A to the arc beginning at F:

I didn’t measure the diagram to get the length of arc FG. I used the cosine rule. The angle formed by DAG is 41.7°, therefore arc FG is 41.7/360 times the circumference of circle with radius AF, or 9.54 inches.

The numbers written on line D E nearest its centre denote the different waist measures of any given wrist, while the figures on line F G denote the bust measure of its corresponding waist. I do not mean the actual measure of the bust around the figure, but it is a dividing measure between the bust and hips.

The first bit there corresponds to what we worked about about the seven waist classes; my diagram, above, reflects only the line that represents my measurements (it would be the intersection labelled “4″ at arc DE). Strangely, in the example given on page 13, Mrs C says that “[f]rom D to Q is 1/4 of waist”… Q? Where did Q come from? We know from from following the previous directions that one-quarter of the waist is the chord that we drew from D.

This means that the measure of FG in my diagram should be my “dividing measure between the bust and hips”… but on page 13, Mrs C also says that the length FG is the quarter-bust measure (while she is working out an example on page 13, the meaning of FG should not change).

Granted, because of the ambiguity in her writing, I do not know if she means the arc length FG, or the line segment FG. Turning to the example on page 13 again, she seems to be using different wording to distinguish line segments (“[f]rom D to Q”) from arcs (“A B is size of wrist”). I conclude that she means the line segment FG is the quarter-bust measurement; if it were the arc, that would make the full bust measurement about 38 inches, but the segment is 9.33 inches, for a full bust measurement of 37.3 inches.

From the example on page 13, this diagram fills in some dimensions:

Note that the “waist to hip joint” is not the distance between the waist and the widest part of the hip, it’s to the pelvis bone.

If you recall that Mrs C described that being in the second order and the third class was most common, I’m partly there: I’m in the third class, but I’m in the fourth order. But I still don’t match up to her numbers:

Note that describing DE as an arc defined by a circle quadrant is slightly misleading; the curve DE is definitely the back waist length, since it was measured, but for some people it will be short of a full quarter-circle, and for others it will be a quarter-circle plus a little extra. Because I’m not clear what the waist-to-hip-joint is really supposed to represent, I can only say that it looks like it’s in the right ballpark.

Generally, because I was in the fourth order, thanks to my waist measurement, the measurements gynametrically derived from the waist measurement were all off because the classification of orders according to actual waist measurement inform the inner arm, hand, and skirt length calculations.

If I could have called myself second order, then it looks like some of those figures would have worked. You can see that I made the assumption that based on her worked example, where she said “two parts” on page 13 she meant that because she was using a second-order example; if she meant those “two parts” to be fixed for all orders, though, the inner arm and the hand measurements would have been pretty good, and I’d be less likely to trip over my skirt (I wonder if the length made allowances for petticoats, etc.? I’d have to look at the pattern drafting instructions to find out).

This correction wouldn’t have helped the inaccuracy of the bust measurement, though. The bust measurement is based on the position of point G, which is determined by the intersection of the chord from D, the length of which was determined by the actual waist measurement. Based on this, I am apparently not as buxom as the ideal shape that Mrs C envisions… assuming I understood her instructions properly, of course!

Kathleen Fasanella just posted pages from The Science of Gynametry by Mrs. M.V. Coleman, published in 1887. Instructions on drafting a (sewing) pattern based on a single body measurement: your wrist! When I have time, I’m going to try this out to see how it works with my body.

ETA: I started going through this very late last night. My text notes, on review, are indicative of the lateness of the hour, but I’m going to keep ‘em as is when I post them. For now, I’ll note that after deciphering half a page of instructions, despite her introductory claim, Mrs C did not derive every single dimension from the wrist measurement; she had to account for the variation in our relative amount of flesh, so she divided bodies into “classes” and “orders” based on back waist length and waist measurement. Ha!

Braxton-Hicks in knitting form.

Morrigan’s pictures are relatively elusive on the net. Here’s Wannietta’s first photograph of her.

The story is a bit long (the fact that I stop halfway through to rant about yarn doesn’t help), but if you take nothing else away from this post or its sequel, remember these things:

First, Jenna and meeting knitting deadlines are mutually exclusive.

Secondly, Wannietta is the most beautiful, talented, and wonderful knitter in this eight-planet solar system.

Thirdly, to date I have not actually seen this sweater in person.

Yes, you read that correctly: between the commencement of this project and the publication of the book, we lost a planet.*

Oh, and after Wannietta finished knitting Morrigan, it went straight to Interweave; I have handled the disembodied sleeves, but that’s all of the finished garment I’ve actually seen. I haven’t tried it on, so I don’t know how it fits me (it’s the smallest size in the book, and I may be too small to wear it). I know how it fits the model in the book — it doesn’t! She’s definitely too long in the waist and arms for the sample — possibly too skinny, as well.

Anyway. Once upon a time, Amy revealed her plan to author a book on knitting without wool, alpaca, and all those animal-hair based fibers that get up her nose. This could have been sometime in 2005 — I really can’t remember. Whenever it was, I know it was some time before the general call for designs went out. It was before that that call that she asked me to design an “aran” sweater in an Amy-friendly yarn.

I put “aran” in quotation marks because, as you know if you’ve seen the finished sweater in the book, it is by no means a traditional Aran sweater. However, the design started out with the principal aim of proving that those fabled, tight-gauged, Aran sweaters were not beyond the reach of the knitter who chose to work in hypoallergenic fibres. The secondary mission was to show that one could emulate the Aran style without being constrained to the traditional boxy shape of an Aran sweater.

To put it another way, my brief was to show that cables could be rendered successfully in non-animal fibre yarns, and that “Aran” wasn’t Gaelic for “big sack”. And on that latter point, I pontificated to Amy about what made an updated Aran sweater (yes, I really did write this in casual e-mail conversation):

While some people dispute what makes a traditional aran fisherman’s sweater a tradish sweater, it is generally composed of panels of different cables, more or less symmetrically arranged across the front and back, on a garment with a crew neck, drop-shoulder sleeves (may be saddle-shouldered) and consequently a loose fit (on women). Of all those criteria, the most important identifier of a tradish aran is the cable patterning–those vertical panels. There are other somewhat distinguishable styles of fishermen’s sweaters (Starmore’s book or Priscilla G-R’s knitting in the old way are good for identifying them); if you take away the vertical cable panels, you might still have a traditional sweater, but one that falls into a category other than “aran”.

So. If we are to create a modernized aran, the one thing it must preserve above all else is the patterning consisting of vertical cable panels. You can change the neckline, make it better fitted, etc., but if you have the vertical panels, people will (almost) always look at it and think, “aran”. So that’s the starting point: roughly 4″ of ease, set-in sleeves, V-neck, either hourglass or straight body, with vertical panels of cables. However, the panel design of the tradish aran is rather clunky, so it needs updating too. In this case, narrower panels of cables (more slimming) framing the center cable, which splits to form the V-neck. However, I’m thinking about toying with the division between adjacent cable patterns–for example, thinking about creating an allover cable pattern that repeats up the height of the garment, but varies horizontally to represent the vertical panels, or using panels, but eliminating the traditional column separators so that the pattern appears to be continuous, without actually being continuous.

Please don’t take that as some kind of definitive definition of “What is Aran?”, but it is a definition of what an “updated” Aran style meant to me for the purpose of this project. You can tell already [spoiler alert!] that I deviated from these initial thoughts in the final design, because Morrigan was completed without a V-neck, and I didn’t use the idea about the allover design. I still want to explore that idea of creating an allover cabled pattern (i.e., interconnected across the entire body, not separated into distinct panels) in which the repeats vary laterally, but I dropped that particular idea for this project early on, because of the potential difficulties in grading the pattern for other sizes. I’m willing to go to such lengths, but not for somebody else’s book.

By this point — certainly at least by late 2005 — I had worked up some vague sketches, and with the results of Shedir in mind, I had generally targeted yarns no heavier than DK and decided that most of the work would involve fine twisted stitches, restricting wider, bulkier cables to the center front detail. These limitations were geared towards reducing the weight of the finished sweater, because cottons and silks, as a general rule, are more dense than wool.

Because I really am a diehard wool fan, I already held the opinion that very few plant, silk, or synthetic fibers would meet the requirements for a really successful, heavily cabled design. I don’t deny that you can use these fibers for cabling, but I just don’t think that they’re particularly good for allover patterning or fine cabled details, either because of their density or their elasticity, or both. When the yarn is inelastic, like pure plied silk, cotton, or rayon, not only are tight cable maneuvers difficult to work (the stitches are hard to manipulate), but the finished product, being composed of so many dense cable twists, will be heavier than wool and will have a greater propensity to stretch vertically when worn. (Of course, non-wool yarns can be made to mimic the desired characteristics of wool, like the acrylic fibres that are crimped and cut to simulate wool fibers, but hey, using an acrylic yarn like that is the easy answer. The objective was to demonstrate that plant and synthetic fibers have developed to the point where the non-wool knitter isn’t doomed to big box acrylic brands.)

And so a minor tussle with the beloved editor began. What yarns originated from sources other than animals (besides silkworms) and were structured to provide a resilient and low-density yarn? The first obvious answer was Rowan Calmer, which I had already used in Shedir (plus, I knew that it would be possible for wool-lovers to find a substitute). I even started swatching various ideas for the cable panels by that point, using the last ball of Rowan Calmer left over from that project. But a good editor doesn’t develop tunnel vision, so we explored alternatives. We canvassed other potential candidates online, but I was pretty much opposed to most of them on the basis that I really, really wanted to have some inherent stretch in the yarn. The sweater was going to be complex enough with its texture patterning; it didn’t need to be made any harder by making the twists tighter and more difficult to manipulate, and increasing the likelihood of loose stitches in the reverse stockinette background.

Undaunted, Amy came back with a couple of sample balls from one of the TNNA shows for me to try before we settled on Calmer: Nashua June (the pink yarn) and RYC Natural Silk Aran. When she first described them, I dismissed them out of hand, but (probably ungraciously) agreed to swatch them. Nashua June is a 100% acrylic microfibre DK-weight yarn, which resembled mercerized cotton. In fact, it behaved very much like mercerized cotton when knitted up (I usually have problems catching all the plies mercerized cotton when knitting — the same thing happened with June). When I tried a basic twisted 1×1 rib, I had terribly loose purl stitches and the whole think looked messy enough for me to stop once I had enough to photograph. Yes, that pink swatch is very small. That’s an indication of how much faith I had in the suitability of that yarn. Amy said that she had seen a heavily cabled sweater worked up in Nashua June at the show and that it looked lovely, and while I believed her, I hazarded a guess that the cables of that sweater were not what I had in mind for this project.

The RYC Natural Silk Aran was, of course, aran weight — much heavier than the yarn I was contemplating for this project. Tweedy, too, with not only a blend of fibres, but also a blend of colours. The sample I had, overall, read as a tweedy neutral with a blue inclination (there was too much artificial light when that photo to the left was taken, but it shows you how tweedy the yarn is). That colour in itself was a problem, since it would have a tendency to obscure fine cables. Plus, it was far too thick for a comfortable allover cabled sweater. Not being wool or a similar fibre, it wouldn’t compress during knitting to a bulletproof, fisherman’s sweater gauge; it had to stick to something close to its labelled gauge. With the foregone conclusion in mind, I duly knit up a tiny swatch of that yarn as well, then officially dismissed it from the running. And so we returned to Rowan Calmer.

Of course, these rejected yarns have their own merits. Or at least, if you ask me, the Rowan yarn has merits. In general, frankly, I can’t see the point of a yarn like Nashua June. If it has a density similar to mercerized cotton, and acts like mercerized cotton when knitted up, and has the same price point, well… why, exactly, are you choosing to knit with the petrochemical rather than the plant fiber? What benefit is this actually giving you? The hand is about the same; the shine is about the same; any improved softness of microfibre is likely negligible; both it and mercerized cotton can be machine washed on delicate. I have no knowledge about its durability compared to mercerized cotton. Mind you, in googling about, I discovered that Nona enjoyed working with this yarn, and she says that she even found a little bit of stretch in it. I found it no stretchier than a similarly plied cotton.

On top of that, it’s more expensive than some mercerized cottons. June has 120 yards per 50 g ball and is machine washable on delicate, lay flat to dry, with a typical price of about $5.50 to 5.75 US. To cite an example at random, Jaeger Aqua is a mercerized cotton, also machine wash delicate, lay flat to dry; it’s about 116 yards per 50 g ball — close enough — and the price is currently about $4.65 US when ordered from the UK. You could add a dollar per ball for shipping and still match the price. An even cheaper alternative would be Diamond Cantata Cotton Crepe, also about 116 yards per 50 g ball: the only price I saw on the net worked out to less than $4 US. There’s also Filatura di Crosa Millefili Fine; the label claims DK weight, but it’s actually sport weight (the label also denies machine washability) — this yarn used to be cheaper in Canada than the U.S., I don’t know if that’s still true, although elann had some on sale a little while ago. I’d even cite Butterfly Super 10 DK or Classic Elite Provence as suitable cost-effective substitutes, but they’re a bit heavier than DK weight despite their labelling. Incidentially, Classic Elite’s retention of Provence is probably the only thing preventing me from cursing out Classic Elite as a wholesale sellout with all their snootily expensive luxury fiber lines and jazzy novs.

(By the way, don’t take this as a list of suitable yarn substitutes for Morrigan. I would consider sport-to-fingering weights to be better substitutes.)

On the whole, then, the only raison d’être I can see for June is… better profit margins? Better colour ranges? Better control over the quality of the finished yarn? I have no idea. It seems to me that the end user is no better off with this yarn as a substitute for a mercerized cotton. By contrast, when acrylic fibers are treated as a substitute for wool, it makes more sense: the easier care, the allergy issue. Rowan Calmer is a cotton-acrylic blend, but it plays up the softer and not the harder, mercerized-cotton-substitute side of acrylic, and has a chainette structure.

So, as I said, we went with Calmer. By this point, I had already tried some sample cables. Some were worked in wool. (This green yarn is discontinued Classic Elite Tapestry, which is wool and heavier than Calmer.)

But what colour? In real life, my colours of choice are black and earthy greens (with some grey and brighter, nearly chartreuse greens, thrown in for variety). Those are not Amy colours, and they wouldn’t have been good colours for a book project anyway. Since Shedir, I had started to develop a taste for just the right shade of ballet pink… but that particular pink that was used for Shedir had since been discontinued. And in fact, there wasn’t anything in the current Calmer colour card that would fit within the parameters of the book, and suit my taste. Oh, well.

This was the prototype shaped side panel of as-yet-to-be-named Morrigan, swatched in the round and then snipped open (always fun). And don’t worry, the “bald spot” in the middle of the swatch is not in the final version.

We guessed that 15 balls would be enough for whatever size I’d wind up making. While waiting for the yarn to arrive (or perhaps even after the yarn had arrived, I can’t remember), I madly sketched out charts, trying to work out a cable arrangement that would likely arrive at the right circumference based on my swatches. The intention was to have a number of narrow panels that would make grading the pattern easier. As well, because this sweater was meant to be a nod to the traditional cabled sweater, I wanted at least some of the cable panels to make reference to traditional patterns. The reference is obscure, but it’s there: one of the twisted stitch panels is a reference to X, and another to O.

So, with charts plotted and a bag full of yarn and promises, the real work started… sort of.

To be continued

*The registrant of this domain name was probably kicking himself. The only permanently relevant domain name, after all, is this — clever woman.

Incidentally, the discovery of the dwarf planet Eris was only formally announced in July 2005, after the publication of this. However, the dwarf planet was not actually named Eris until September 2006. What prescience! But whatever scary powers I might possess, clearly they are not strong enough to subdue a pile of Calmer.

Worsted weight silk-wool twisted single + 2.5 mm needles + lots of twisty little stitches, all alike = not very clever.

Since, of course, silk-wool singles like this — while they may not pill as soon as you look at them — do tend to at least fuzz up to some degree while they’re being manipulated on the needles, I planned to knit the yarn at a denser gauge than its weight ordinarily called for.

That was only half-clever, because the increased handling as a result of the denser gauge (and the texture design) seems to have negated that advantage.

And possibly adding to the problem is the fact that forming the traveling stitches can remove the twist from individual stitches, making it harder to catch every last fibre in the strand. Especially when you don’t use a cable needle.

Not to mention the twisting of the individual stitches themselves, since all the RS knit stitches are through the back loop. That undoes some of the twist, too.

Still, I love the feel of this yarn when knitted up. I just wish the texture didn’t remind me of the tasseled cords used to tie back my parents’ living room curtains, circa 1977 (mmm, rayon tassels!). At least the colour’s not the same.

[It's a cardigan. Never mind her working name, because she doesn't look like her name. Tubular cast-on to 1x1 rib, extends to small cables leading into ogee arches. I've been working at it on and off for a few months, and I'm not even done the short row shaping to bring the back and front to the same depth before reaching the shoulders. Because of the shaping, the repeats actually vary in size -- smallest in front, and larger in the back. They work up into having the same width (i.e. stitch count) by the end of the short rows, but have different heights. Estimated completion date: uh, whenever.

The yarn is eggplant over brown aran-weight (I call it worsted weight) silk-wool blend from Sundara. I have to sit on my hands when she updates her site. I go so far as to compose an e-mail listing everything I want to order, and then I tell myself sternly that I have plenty of yarn, and I usually listen and delete the message. I don't feel bad, though, because when I check back ten minutes later, the yarn is all gone.]

(There’s a magnification feature for the pictures, but regrettably the feature seems to just resize the original picture, which isn’t at a high enough resolution to begin with to allow you to see the stitch definition up close. Drat.)