A few days ago, I pulled my half-knitted Exeter jacket out of storage to start knitting again. I was about a third of the way up the back when I put it away a few months ago. Exeter is a very densely cabled jacket. In addition to the cable pattern, which requires some concentration, the jacket has some slight A-line shaping. The perrenial problem I face when I try to start up again on a project that has been put away for awhile, is trying to remember exactly where I was when I stopped knitting. In the case of Exeter, the 16-row repeat of the cable pattern is fairly easy to read from the knitting itself; a few minutes of thought and I could figure out which row of the repeat I should be on. The decreases for the A-line shaping are a different matter. How many sets had I made? When to make the next one? Easy peasy. Here is the piece I was working on:
Perhaps this doesn’t seem revolutionary to my fellow knitters. Perhaps you have always been marking your knitting this way. However, this is a new thing for me, discovered about a year or so ago. This is the way I used to keep track of increases and decreases:
This is the system I used for years and it has a number of very big drawbacks associated with it. One – it means I have to interrupt the rhythm of the knitting every row to grab a pencil and make notations. (This is a bigger drawback than you may think. The rhythm of knitting is intrinsically pleasing and part of the reason I knit.) Two – I sometimes forget to write down a row. This can be disastrous. Three – it makes my knitting much less mobile as I have to juggle paper and pencil in addition to knitting. And four – if I lose the piece of paper, I am screwed. I cannot tell you how often I have done that – I usually make these scribbles on the backs of receipts, or on napkins, or other such scraps of paper.
It was about a year ago that I noticed (in a way that it sunk into my psyche) that the really good knitters whose work I admired on Ravelry always marked everything (increases, decreases, buttonhole placement, pattern repeats, etc) ON THE KNITTING ITSELF, rather than on a piece of paper. I bought lots of removable stitch markers and I have never looked back.
To me, these removable stitch markers are nothing short of a miraculous tool for the modern knitter. Why did nobody tell me this when I started knitting?
Now, I will indulge in what may seem like a sharp change of topic. (It won’t be, but you have to stay tuned for the punch line.) In June, we went to Lebanon for a fabulous family holiday. My husband is a second generation Lebanese-Canadian. His grandparents immigrated to Canada circa 1905. Doug has been to Lebanon many times to visit with his extended family there, and finally succeeded in convincing me and the girls to visit. (I have always been worried about the political situation there which I felt would not be safe.) It was the most lovely family holiday I can remember, with beautiful scenery, fabulous food, and lovely people.
Our cousin Amira planned a great day of extended sightseeing, which ended up in the late afternoon in Byblos (Jbail). Here is a snippet from the Wikipedia entry for Byblos:
Byblos is the Greek name of the Phoenician city Gebal or in Bronze Age times as Gubal (Greek: Βύβλος, Byblos Lebanese pronunciation: [ˈbiːblos]; Arabic: جبيل Jubiyl Lebanese pronunciation: [ʒbejl]; Phoenician: 𐤂𐤁𐤋, Gebal and Gubal ; Hebrew: גבל, Geval). It is a Mediterranean city in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of present-day Lebanon under the current Arabic name of Jubayl (جبيل) and was also referred to as Gibelet during the Crusades. It is believed to have been occupied first between 8800 and 7000 BC,[1] and according to fragments attributed to the semi-legendary pre-Trojan war Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, it was built by Cronus as the first city in Phoenicia.[2] Today it is believed by many to be the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Leah is fanatical about history and standing in Byblos was a magical experience. You can stand on the site of Phoenician, Roman and Crusader ruins, along a beautiful coastline. Among the ruins here are the Temple of Baalat Gebal built in 2700 B.C.E. and Byblos Castle, built by 12th century Crusaaders (from the remains of Roman ruins). Byblos is also thought to be the birthplace of the alphabet.