Entrelac

When Lady Eleanor was making the rounds, I managed to miss the train. On Friday, some friends asked me if I could help them learn entrelac. I love to learn something new and help out, so off to the learning process I went. There are some good tutorials out there already (here and here) but I felt compelled to take photos of my process as I went along anyway.

Curious about how an entrelac scarf looks as we go along? It's kind of like sausage... you may not want to see the messy process but the outcome is all nice and tidy. And with that type of introduction....

I'm using Allison LoCicero's Entrelac Scarf pattern. Here's the process of my learning.

After casting on 24 stitches normally, you create three triangles to start. This serves as a bit of a set up "row".

One ...



This is where things are going to feel wierd to the newbie. You have 8 stitches caught up in the triangle and 16 stitches are just hanging out there doing nothing. Then it's time to do triangle Two ...



Now you start to see what's happening. You have little triange that are attached at the tail.

Then three ...



From here the patterns repeats two "tiers" over and over in alternation.

Tier 1 involves a triangle ...



then a square (or really more of a rectangle or parallelogram if you look closely) ...



then a second square ...



and then a final triangle...



You have a full width scarf now, but it doesn't really look like it. You really need to finish more to see the effect.

Tier 2 involves three squares knit one after the other, all the same...



Here's where I am with the starter triangle row, two Tier 1s, and two Tier 2s ...



You can definitely see the pattern clearly now and get a sense of what the final scarf will be like. An interesting technique with lots of depth.

It seems a little strange at the start with all the short rows and the incomplete sections (especially on the triangle row you start with and the first tier 1, but after you get the sense of where things are going, no difficulties. At first I had to pay alot of attention to when to turn and when not to, when I was to pick up and purl versus pick up and knit. Now, even after this little progress, it makes sense. I've even found myself not really needing to count rows. Once you know what's going on, the end of a square or triangle becomes obvious. The pattern is nice because you can follow the instructions literally until you get the idea then you can just use it as a reminder later.

Bring on the students!

Yarn: Plymouth Boku
Ravelry'd here