DEPECHE OBSESSED by Tracy St. John

Depeche Mode

Amanda Muscha is a mathematician, and it shows. Her Depeche Mode shawl design is a number-junkie’s dream, stuffed full of formulas and methods and equations, oh my. I am not a mathematician. I occasionally need to take off my shoes to count to seventeen. When I was first getting to know this design, I was thinking that perhaps it would be one of those patterns that looks amazing, but appeals mostly to someone who is an engineer or statistician by day and a knitter by night. However, once I dug in and really started to work with it, I was so impressed with the clean simplicity of it that I forgot to be intimidated by the numbers and columns and logic of it all.

When Amanda sent us the initial idea for this design, she suggested that it would not only showcase handpainted variegated yarns, but would also be a great way to use up some of the ever-growing-multiplying-like-bunny-rabbits stash of leftover yarns which most of us have cultivated.  In the stash-busting spirit,  I used a self-striping sock yarn (which shall remain nameless) that I dug out of my closet when I began the test-knit of the design. I had a great time knitting the pattern, but found that the self-striper was not the best yarn choice; the color repeats in the yarn were much too long to properly showcase the little mitered squares in the design. In fact, it was so unattractive that I frogged it once I was sure the pattern was good to go. I didn’t even bother to photograph it, which I now regret because I can’t show you why it didn’t work out very well. Below is a photo of why variegated yarns work so well; the short color repeats turn the corners on the miters beautifully.

Tiny squares

One of the many new skills I learned with this project (besides counting past 10 without involving my toes) was to learn to knit backwards. These tiny little squares involved turning the work back and forth time after time after time after…..you get the picture. Knitting backwards is a little awkward at first, but once I got the hang of it I loved it! So much faster than turning and purling, especially when the squares were in the final stages with very few stitches remaining. Check out this video on how to do it……

I also learned how to competently pick up stitches purl-wise from the wrong side of the fabric, which was something I had done once or twice before, but now I consider myself pretty good at. It took a little practice too, but I have used this skill a few times since this project and found it to be useful. 

Today, I feel like I have graduated from the Amanda Muscha Mathematics of Knitting course. I highly recommend purchasing the original pattern because Amanda’s method for creating the edging and picking up and working the squares is so much fun, not to mention brilliant! Once you have made the original design, you will see how useful the concept is to adapt to your own applications. I have put my own new skills to use in an adaptation of her design, in which I truly am diving into the stash to make a blanket from the leftovers of dozens of socks. In addition to my counting phobia, I am also lazy, so I adjusted Amanda’s squares to a larger size since that meant fewer ends to weave in (You can take her square pattern and adjust it to any even number to make your squares any size you like. I am making my squares with 40 stitches on size 3 needles, and they are coming out about 2.5″ square). I am also working each square individually, starting and finishing each one wherever I want to place it on the blanket. This is a major departure from Amanda’s design, but once you have made the shawl you will see how easy it is to do it this way to make a more free-form piece. I am hoping to make this blanket large enough to use on my bed, and as addictive as it is to work on I think that will actually happen. It is so much fun to find each little ball of leftover beautiful sock yarn and add it to the edge of the blanket. It’s like a little trip down Yarn Memory Lane.

Obsessive-Compulsive Squares Blanket

 My blanket is now about 3 feet square, and growing a little more every day. While watching me work on it yesterday, my eleven year old son made the observation that I am even more like a crazy person than usual, and could I please put it down for five minutes and make some dinner or something. Who needs to eat? Sheesh!