Clue 8: India II

Winterchild on the KnitPicks catalog!
Lucky me, KnitPicks chose to feature my Winterchild in their May catalog, and they took some gorgeous pictures to boot. Here's to show that a vintage look can be worn with a modern twist. For those that joined the 2010 KALendar, the motifs in the center panel belong to the December section, and the edge is one I was considering but discarded in favor of an easier pattern. When I was working on the swatches for the edge, I put together these two patterns, and it was just too pretty to let go!
Here is the link to the IDP page, and you can also buy it in Ravelry.

 

Tutorial: Nupp Increases
After my little brag, we move on to the promised tutorials for the India clues without further ado.
The explanations will refer to the square shawl (round knitting), but they are easy enough to translate to the triangle (back-and-forth knitting). Apologies for the fuzziness of some of the pics, we had some camera malfunction and it would not focus properly.

In the previous row, we set up our nupps in the usual manner

Making a increase to the left of the nupp

Pass the right needle through the first SIX loops of the nupp

K6-tbl to make a slighly smaller nupp

Knit the remaining loop by itself

Now you have a smaller 6-loop nupp, and an increased stitch to the left

Making an increase to the right of the nupp

Separate the first of the 7 loops and knit it regularly by itself

then knit the remaining 6 loops as k6tog-tbl

And voila, an increased stitch to the right of a smaller, 6-loop nupp

Why bother with these increases?
Above is one of my test pieces when I was trying out things. You will see that some of the nupps lean one way, some to the other way - make the increase in the wrong spot and the nupp leans the wrong way (there are several of the leaning the wrong way here). Besides the lean, this also tightens the nupp to the increases, and it makes the stitch curve, thus resembling the sun shapes of the Indian henna tattoos or Mehendi.

Tutorial: Placing beads on yarnovers
This is just one way to place beads over yarn overs. There are easier ways - usually pre-stringing all the beads. I also suggest that you work a regular yarn over on the odd rows, and place the beads on the even rows. However, if you don't like pre-stringing or you just like to have your plain rows to rest the brain, here is how to do it:

place a bead in the beading hook, and hook a loop of the free working yarn with it

slide the bead from the hook and onto the loop of yarn, pushing it a bit ways down

place the loop above the bead on the right needle

give a little tug to the working yarn to tighten the newly formed stitch

keep on knitting, and here it is: a yarnover with a bead

The beads tend to obliterate the yarnover partially, and achieve the same effect than the nupp increases above.

New clue release dates!

• Clue #9 (China): Saturday June 4th (that is next week!)
• Clue #10 (Japan): Saturday June 25th (3 weeks apart)
• Clue #11 (USA): Saturday July 22nd (4 weeks apart)

My intention was to release clue 11 3 weeks apart but it appears that I will be away at a virtually Internet-less family gathering.
Thought the official date of  release is on Saturdays, my intention is to try to release on late Friday so you can have the whole knitting weekend to play with it. So make sure that you get your previous clue downloaded and stored away well ahead of time. You snooze, you lose.

See you all next week, look forward to the very lovely (and nuppless) China clue.