Entrelac for Me, Entrelac for You
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
bout two weeks ago, I promised a post about entrelac, and now I’m about to get to it. But first, I have to ask a completely unrelated question. Why oh why do these tiny little shoes have to cost $50?
Yes, they’re cute and they’re Umi, but good god, after Labor Day she’s never going to be able to wear them again! Do they really need to cost $50? Alas, when your daughter has narrow little feet, Stride Rite will not do.
OK, now back to the matter at hand: entrelac.
As most of you know, I’ve been knitting for a very long time. And unlike some knitters, who shall remain nameless, Monica, that prefer to stay in the comfort zone skillwise, I’ve always been one who likes to push the envelope. When I started knitting, I went from a headband, to a scarf, to this sweater:
So, no, I don’t shy away from challenges.
I tackled cable and seed stitch sweaters:
Complicated patterns:
and even socks:
There really wasn’t much that daunted me…except entrelac.
Back when I was at my old job, I decided to do something fun and I started a knitting group. I promised that I could have anyone knitting within 10 minutes! It was great. New knitters were created. Beginners and intermediate knitters challenged themselves with new skills. And the experienced knitters had fun chatting and futzing about on their cool projects. And then one day, one of the members comes in with an entrelac pattern, looking to me for help getting started. I was forced to admit that entrelac was beyond me. It was the one thing that I just couldn’t do! I was so ashamed.
The good news was that Sharon, another experienced knitter, chose not to be intimidated by entrelac and ended up helping the woman get going with her project. But me, instead of trying to learn, I did one of my mother’s numbers and just decided that entrelac was too hard and I would never get it. I gave up without much of a fight.
But look at it. It looks hard, doesn’t it?
And look at all these pictures here: Entrelac photos
Yet, as I was to discover, entrelac was one of those things that looked much more complicated than it actually was…like cable knitting. How did I learn this? I finally broke down and took a class at The Tangled Web, my favorite IRL yarn store. As I sat there being my usual type-A Annie that Saturday morning, I finally realized that entrelac is really about following the pattern to make and join triangles and rectangles. It really isn’t that deep. Good lord, I was tripping over this?
So I went and ordered my yarn to take part in the Entrelac Market Bag Knit-Along. Piece of cake, I thought. No big deal. And then I accidentally screwed up. It wasn’t a that was totally FUBAR type of screw up, but it did necessitate a major frogging*. The good news is that I was able to find some help from the peeps in the Everything Entrelac forum on Ravelry, my new hangout. I was picking up stitches wrong (for entrelac) on the purl side. Now things look just fine:
It’s coming along.
Anyone want to join me in an online knit-along? I’ll get you the pattern and we can get our entrelac on over the next few weeks. Here’s a gallery of what the bag looks like when finished and felted: Market Square Bags gallery (Unfortunately I’m going to have to find someone with a top-loading washer for felting my bag since you can’t felt in a front-loader, I’ve discovered.)
Here are some great online resources for learning entrelac: All Aboard the Entrelac Express
Entrelac Scarf Tutorial
Red Thread’s Entrelac Tutorial
I will end with another digression, albeit one quasi-knitting related. Aren’t these cupcakes cool?
They were featured here: Knit Night Cupcakes