Hemlock Ring Lap Blanket

Pattern: Hemlock Ring Doily (1942 vintage pattern), modified into a blanket by Jared Flood
Started: March 1, 2008
Completed: March 17, 2008
Materials: Cascade Ecological Wool, latte, 2 skeins
Needles: US 10 / 6.0 mm (40" circular)

At most recent count, I am one of 963 people making Jared's modification of the Hemlock Ring. That's on Ravelry alone! The current project count is here for any curious Ravelry users.

I like the pattern. I like the idea. I'm not completely smitten with my finished results. I opted to take it to a dry cleaner to be professionally steamed and blocked, but I don't think they blocked it quite as aggressively as it needs. There's still some rippling in the feather and fan section, and the edges are pretty frilly.



If I had the stamina for six to eight more rounds of increases, the finished piece would be closer to the size I fantasized wrapping myself in on cold days. While I wouldn't exactly call it tiny, it's definitely a lap blanket. To give you a sense of scale, I took a a full-on picture the likes of which I normally would never do. Here it is on my 54-inch diameter table:



See what I mean?

The fact that the center medallion didn't lose all its texture makes me really happy. I like the three dimensionality. Pics like this make me feel all warm and gooey inside:



Deep inside, I know I'm going to have another go at the blocking. I have a professional steamer, so I think I ought to be able to do at least a little good. I'll try to leave the texture in the center medallion and just straighten out the feather-and-fan section.

I do like it! It's warm, and it looks lovely on the back of our comfy chair upstairs!



I'm curious how many more people will make this pattern with the modification. I'm not sure the project really merits all the interest. I'm not sure I'd make it again.

If I had to take a guess at what, exactly, draws so many of us to it, I think it's a sense of being part of something larger than ourselves. We've all seen and knit lace patterns before. There's a comfortable, conventional way we go about it. We use delicate yarn. Doilies are doilies. Shawls are shawls... and so on. But Jared repurposed the doily. He defamiliarized the familiar — made it strange. In theatre, thanks to Bertolt Brecht, we call this kind of defamiliarization Verfremsdung Effekt. And in making the familiar strange, Jared caused us all to start looking at things differently. What other pattern types might we work with a radically different fiber weight than is called for? Are there other doilies that can be expanded endlessly?

It's not enough to simply see the results of Jared's experiment. We need to try it, too, so we can learn the same lessons Jared learned but in our own hands. So we can carry that knowledge, through our fingers, into our own experiments.

The experiment itself may not produce the results we desire, but it's a worthy experiment. It's a learning process, not just the fetishization of someone else's cool project. Jared creates learning opportunities with many of his projects. Just think of all the sweaters being turned into cardigans these days thanks to the influence of his modified Urban Aran.

I think we pick up his projects because they give us new ways of seeing and knowing through the craft of knitting. Well, that and the guy has killer taste!

As for my final take on this particular pattern, the flower attracts me the most. I plan to design a project sometime in the future that makes use of the central medallion in another way, perhaps setting it into a square rather than continuing in-the-round. The wheels are turning... !

Busy Hands

Finished the Hemlock Ring blanket last night. Took more than four total hours to complete that bind-off row! Not one to stay idle long, I started two new projects right away. The first: a Berroco pattern called Sacha's Slippers.


I had picked up a few skeins of Berroco Suede at a deeply discounted price a couple weekends ago when J and I were hanging out at the Acorn Street Yarn Shop during C's Irish Step lesson. (A dangerous habit we indulge weekly!) I had no idea what I might do with the yarn, but I liked the color, I wear a lot of suede, and I trusted I would find something. A little searching turned up these slippers and a lariat necklace in a leaf motif. I think I have yarn enough for both!

It's been ages since I’ve worked on straights or done a two-of-a-kind project one at a time. When I saw that the pattern requires you to join a second skein to work the sides, I didn’t feel like dividing skeins. So here I am with a single, partially finished slipper!



The slippers seem to move quickly. The pics show about 2 hours’ work while watching TV (WWWTV). Right now I think it looks more like a Barbie dress or a flamboyant man's tie than a slipper.

The second project is more of an adventure than anything. I've been interested in the idea of recycling yarn from thrifted sweaters for awhile. Last spring, my MIL and I felted some thrifted sweaters for various projects (including a nifty laptop case for me!). So I popped by Value Village on my way home from work Wednesday to see if there were any good potentials. There were. I could have brought home a dozen things. I decided to play it cool and pick one, safe bet to see if I liked the endeavor. $9.99 later, I walked out with this:


A nearly new crew-neck in black New Shetland Wool. This morning I set about deconstructing it. Seam ripper in-hand and website tutorial in front of me, I fearlessly set to work. Just taking the pieces apart took a little longer than I expected. Even though I had "good seams" to work with, I had a lot of trouble seeing the crochet line at the seams so I could just unzip it. As a result, I did a lot of piece-by-piece cutting. I mangled the neckline, too, but figured that was ok since I could cut that off without creating a bazillion little pieces like would happen if I were working on the side seams.

And, hey, I only gouged myself with the seam ripper twice!

I checked gauge on the original knit before beginning:


Looks like 6 stitches and 7.5-8 rows per inch to me. You?

The yarn is much more delicate than I expected. It's definitely sport/light worsted or DK weight, if not fingering. Looks like it gets 14-15 wpi.

Things I learned:

Try to get sweaters with heftier fiber until I get better at the reclaiming process.

This job is messy! My goodness — the yarn dust floating in the air while I frogged the thing was amazing. Like a mini storm in my dining room. Not only was I covered with the stuff, but later that night I found myself blowing black dust out of my nose. It was almost as bad as when J and I removed cork from the solarium walls at our house in Ohio!

I used my ball winder to help move the frogging process along — and I highly recommend that. This yarn sometimes broke, though, when I was winding faster than the fiber wanted, so I have a higher number of skeins than I might have otherwise. Even with all my rookie mistakes and the pile of useless, too-short-to-mention ramen noodly-looking fiber littering the table, I got about 12 ounces of usable yarn broken down into one 3-ounce ball and several 2- to 1.5-ounce ones.

I still need to re-wrap into hanks and wash it.

What will I do with it? J's been thinking about making a cool monk's satchel, and this yarn fits the profile. I'll give it to him if he wants it. Otherwise, I think it will make up into a shawl and/or some dynamite socks — perhaps even a pair for J, who's asserted his belief that men only wear socks without color. [Sigh.] Enlightenment has its limits!

Neverending Bind-Off... [cue music] ahh ahh ahh

My plan to finish the Hemlock Ring last week and post pictures of the finished object over the weekend were thwarted by an anxiety-ridden job interview with all its related madness, a 17-hour post-interview sleep marathon, and a neverending bind-off. In my heart and soul, my priorities are straight. They really are. But in reality, I must finish the dissertation and secure gainful employment for any hope of repaying the horrifying mountain of student loans I've amassed since starting my PhD.

In lieu of a finished Hemlock, here's my WIP update. I've learned some things while binding off that someone might find useful.


I had grand visions of making mine a 7-footer like others I've seen who've posted off-the-charts extensions. I worked my way through Jared's chart but ended up stopping without going to the Extreme Hemlock chart. (A good chart is on Ravelry here: 3rd discussion post by MissPrint.) I knew I wouldn't be able to hold many more stitches on the needles, and I didn't want to crack into the third skein of wool if I wasn't going to use a goodly portion of it.


For the last 5 sections of the pattern chart, I made a minor modification, completing 5 rows of straight knitting between the pattern rows rather than 4. By the time I neared the end, it took me 30-40 minutes for a single row.

I finished my last round and started binding off around 10pm last night and expected to have the blanket off the needles around midnight. I expected the bind-off process to take about 2 hours. Boy was I mistaken! Since there are 17 (+bind offs) stitches to make for every 4 stitches on the needles, it's taking considerably more than that. By the time 1am rolled around, I had only managed to work my way around 5 of the 8 major fan segments — a little more than half way!

Understatement: I've still got quite a bit to do.


One trick I found really useful in the bind-off was removing the right-hand needle tip from my 40" circular and putting on the cable cap. (I'm using KnitPicks Options interchangeable needles. If you're not familiar with them, see my previous post here. The end cap is that purplish-colored thing in the picture.) This way I didn't have to turn the entire weight of the blanket back and forth as I was making the edge loops. Took a lot of pressure off my hands as well as the needles -- and I had been worried about the weight snapping the connection between the needles and cables. And I really appreciated the fact that it opened up the bound-off edge more for me to admire while I worked.

This is the first I've been able to get a real sense of what the blanket will look like.


See that glimmer in the lower-right area? That's the needle. I've already bound off the visible portion of the throw in this image, but the back half is still on the needle.

Not sure yet where I'm going to block it. I'd use the bed, but something tells me it'll need more than a day.


Until now, it's been an ever-growing amorphous blob that looked, alternately, like a giant Rastafarian hat and a wad o' pizza dough ready for tossing. Glad to be past that stage!

Locking in

Made the transition to Jared’s chart last night. Easy-peasy. Each row starts and ends at the mid-way point of the chart. Much more straight knitting from here on out.

Some people recommend placing stitch markers at the beginning of each repeat, then counting sections before moving on so they don’t get too far before discovering errors. That makes good sense, especially for less experienced knitters. At present, I’m only marking the beginning of the row because I’d rather internalize the pattern and work intuitively if I can. Judging from Jared’s chart, that ought to be do-able. We’ll see.

The Cascade Ecological Wool (used for this project and the Eco Urban Aran Cardi) may just be my favorite yarn. I love the way it works and feels. I’m thinking about trying it out in one of the Eco Plus colors. Have to come up with a pattern for that – or maybe I’ll do another one of these throws!



I love how mushy the center medallion is now and will be sad to see it blocked out. Well… sad and excited.

Tossing my Hemlock in the Ring

I've been itching to try the Hemlock Ring vintage doily with the modifications made by Jared to turn it into a blanket. It's been nearly 20 years since I knit anything resembling a blanket or afghan. (The last was a blue lace afghan for my sister, a Christmas present I made while I was an undergrad.) The only thing preventing me from casting on months ago was that I wanted to finish the Urban Aran for J. When I went out to buy the zipper for the Urban Aran, I grabbed yarn for the Hemlock. It really couldn't wait: The store was down to its last 3 skeins of Cascade Ecological Wool in latte, and I didn't want to miss them -- especially given that I don't know how long it would take to order more. Bird in the hand...



Isn't it pretty in its simplicity? I love how big and square the hand-pull gets!

Decided to start with magic ring on 40” US10s and shift to full-out circular when possible. That happened around row 40. There’s a lot of bandwidth out there devoted to getting people through tricky rows and/or correcting errors. I haven’t had any problems with the pattern as written to indicate that someone couldn’t get through it without all the help. Row 35 is fine as written as long as you are conceptualizing the sections/repeats. If you’re simply knitting stitch-by-stitch and not visualizing the big picture, you’ll have trouble no matter what. It’s like learning a new language and making the shift from thinking word-by-word to thinking in sentences.

So far so good!