Crown Prince Shawl Border: Alternative

Lovely border on the Crown Prince Square Shawl by Nancy Bush, but I couldn’t stand the thought of

• casting on that many stitches
• knitting it
• THEN sewing it on, including “easing” around the corners.

I somehow don’t think I’m alone.

I’d like to be able to just knit this border right off like the Modern 16/24-Round lace edgings that are also in this book.  So I’ve deconstructed the chart, with frequent references to the picture, and have come up with a reasonable alternative that can be knit right off.

Crown Prince border alternative

The stitch count calls for multiples of 12 (for each repeat) PLUS 13 pattern edge stitches (6 on the right and 7 on the left.  Please note that I have added 4 stitches at each end of the sample in seed stitch -  in addition to those required by the pattern.

Worked over 24 rows, but easily extended if more dramatic points desired.

A traditional Estonian style bind-off with doubled yarn finishes it off nicely.

Download the chart for the Crown Prince Alternative Border.  Any errors, omissions or suggestions always accepted.  I’d particularly love to hear suggestions on how this design might mitre around a corner?

Crown Prince Shawl: a Faroese style variation

Nancy Bush’s “Crown Prince Square Shawl” is beautiful – a masterpiece.  It also seems to be many knitters’ nemesis!  All those nupps are daunting at the start of a project and they aren’t the easiest little things to knit, either.  No matter what you think of the technique though, the pattern itself is intriguing.

As my skills as a knitter evolve I’ve also discovered the joys and disappointments of different shawl shapes.  A square shawl is not really an ideal shape – it needs to be really large to be useful as a shawl.  My first foray into alternative shapes was the half-square (two triangle) style shawls.  Again the result looks lovely but it needs to be really long at the back if it has a hope of wrapping you up.

My next effort was the 3-sided shawl, simply an extension of the first effort, but 3 sides of a square (3 x triangles) – such as the “Spider’s Web Shawl” by Jane Sowerby.  Much better result as you don’t need the depth to get the width.  A nice and wearable result, but it still needs to be tied or pinned.

Then I discovered Faroese style shawls and made the lovely lace version by Myrna A.I. Stahman.  Now we’re talking shawls!  This style of shawl is made uniquely wearable by the introduction of two things:

1. a gusset inserted in the centre, to create a back panel; and
2. darts in the form of increases on the shoulders.

Ms Stahman’s variation on the Faroese style shawl is also very knittable because it starts at the top with a small number of stitches, which means you are not plagued by a massive cast on, and you can regulate the length of the shawl.

So now I arrive at the amalgamation of lots of my ideas – can I make a shawl in the Faroese style using the Crown Prince motifs?  Well, I think so.

Yarn (Stash)

Several years ago I had the opportunity to buy some Indigo Moon Natural Muga Silk lace-weight in a mushroom-pink.  Luscious is the best word to describe it – very soft with luminous colours.  I have about 1200 to 1400 metres, enough for a good size shawl, but NOT enough to make anything large with lots of nupps.  Besides, this yarn is just a bit too soft to hold the shape of nupps, I think they would sag a bit on the fabric.  The colour and quality of this yarn has an heirloom feel to it – I couldn’t just make any old shawl – it deserves to be used for something spectacular.  That’s probably why I’ve had it for a few years now until “the right” concept comes to mind.

The Plan – Shawl Wings

Next step is to deconstruct the elements in the Crown Prince pattern.  When you look at this pattern closely, it’s not all that difficult.  I will use the main body (lattice) pattern for the sides of the shawl because it lends itself to starting at a point (by using just the centre of the lattice) and increasing evenly with the addition of a two stitches every right side row.

But ….

… without the nupps.  Some ferreting in my stash room (yes, I have a room, not a box or a bag) finds me coming up with some tiny luminous white triangle beads I’ve had for a while.  Using a 0.6mm crochet hook, these beads can be hooked onto a stitch!  After some experimentation I discovered the best placement for the bead in the Crown Prince lattice pattern is to ignore the symbol to make the wraps for the nupps (on the right side) and just knit them, but on the wrong side where the instructions say to knit the wraps together, place the bead just before you purl.

My first efforts at putting the beads on at the right side were not successful as you cannot keep good tension if you put the bead on after you have knit it; and it is slightly mis-placed if you put the bead on before you knit it.

So the deconstruction is:

• Right side:  do the increases, decreases and yarn overs, then
• Wrong side: place the beads

The lattice is going to “grow” out of the shoulders of the shawl, so you will always be knitting the oblique edges of the border, so it grows outwards in a continuous line.

The pattern then becomes very intuitive and easy to follow.  The bonus is that it takes a lot less time to place a bead than it does to make a nupp, so this shawl probably won’t take anywhere near as long to make as I first thought.

The Plan – Centre Gusset

So what do I do with the centre gusset?  Some careful calculations and I can see that the actual Crown Prince border motif would look lovely here.  Perhaps broken up a little with leading/trailing diamond shapes.  And with beads of course!

The Plan – the Border

I think I can adapt the border used to become a simple “in the round” border instead of doing all that stitching.  In fact stitching knitted items is a bit like going to the dentist – something you have to do but will put off for as long as possible.  My plan is to turn the border upside down BUT to work in a mitred corner too, so it sits nicely around the shawl’s centre gusset.  More on that when I get there – I’ve got lots more knitting to do.

Update 17 Jan 2012:  Couldn’t resist it … I played with some pencils and paper then knitted a sample border in the knitted off style.  I think it will work quite well.  Details and download available here.

The Execution

To start, I’ve made a little tab using seed stitch across 7 stitches, long enough so I can have 6 x side stitches each side of my shawl plus 23 shawl stitches – 35 stitches on the needle when I start the shawl proper.

The objective is to start 2 x expanding triangles ON EACH SIDE of the centre piece.  These 2 expanding triangles are divided by a simple [yarn over knit yarn over] which becomes the shoulder dart.

Abbreviations:  yo = yarn over, k = knit, p = purl, m1 = make 1 by picking up a stitch between the left and right needles, k2tog = knit 2 together, psso = pass slip stitch over.

So starting with the 35 stitches:

Row 1: Border element: Slip 1 purl-wise with yarn in front, k1, p1, k1, p1, k1; Shawl wing: yo k3 yo k1 yo k3 yo; Centre gusset: k9; Shawl wing: yo k3 yo k1 yo k3 yo; Border element: k1, p1, k1, p1, k2

Row 2 (and every wrong side row):  Border element as for first row, purl to last 6 stitches, Border element as for first row.

Note:  Repeat the border elements as established for every row.  Border instructions are omitted from this point forward in the pattern.

Row 3: Shawl wing: yo k5 yo k1 yo k5 yo; Centre gusset: k1 m1 k7 m1 k1; Shawl wing: yo k5 yo k1 yo k5 yo

Row 5: Shawl wing: yo k7 yo k1 yo k7 yo; Centre gusset: k1 m1 k9 m1 k1; Shawl wing: yo k7 yo k1 yo k7 yo

Row 7: Shawl wing: yo k9 yo k1 yo k9 yo; Centre gusset: k1 m1 k11 m1 k1; Shawl wing: yo k9 yo k1 yo k9 yo

Row 9:  Following the established pattern, start the Crown Prince lattice from the centre point of a diamond on the Shawl wings – remember you are starting two for each half of the shawl, one each side of the centre dart.  If you are making nupps then start them on this row; if you are placing beads, place them in Row 10 (the next purl row).

AT THE SAME TIME continue increasing the Centre gusset until there are 19 stitches.  Consider how you would like to pattern the centre gusset and pattern that separately as you go.

Faroese Crown Prince shoulder dart detail

CONTINUE with shawl wings until you come to the next set of nupps or bead placements.  At this point it is appropriate to drop the shoulder dart and amalgamate the two sections into one “lattice” element on each side of the centre panel.  I did this by doing (slip 1, k2tog, psso) where I would have knitted the dart (yo k1 yo) – making a centred decrease once only.  This will give you the correct number of stitches so the 2 x pattern elements can come together by the end of the next “pattern section”.

This is very much a “work in progress” as well as a ton of fun.  I love taking the best bits of all the different knitting styles and making something new and different.

Progress #1: 15 January 2012

Please be aware that the notes on this page make the assumption that you already know how to knit lace, make starting tabs, etc.  This is just a germ of an idea ….

And for those of you who don’t understand lace, the images show the shawl in progress and BEFORE it is blocked.  Blocking will “define” the pattern and hopefully accentuate the subtle beading.

Moroccan Style Chicken Soup

Moroccan Soup

A real soul-warming soup when the weather is cold and gray.

Ingredients

• 12 good size chicken legs (or whatever other bits of chicken are going cheap such as thighs, maryland, etc)
• 1 litre chicken stock
• splash of olive oil
• 4 x large cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 x large leek (or 2 small ones), washed, halved lengthways and sliced finely
• 2 x medium onions, chopped finely
• 1 x stick celery, chopped finely
• 3 x good sized fresh, firm roma tomatoes, chopped finely
• 2 x carrots, chopped finely
• 1 x 800ml can diced tomatoes
• 1 x 540ml can chick peas, drained
• 1 heaped teaspoon ground cumin
• dried chilli flakes to taste (I used 1 smallish teaspoon)
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 1 x large potato, diced small – optional
• 2 x tablespoons tomato paste – optional

In a really large pot (le Creuset French oven is excellent) add the splash of olive oil and set the heat to medium.

Add the leeks, onion and celery and cook very gently until soft.  Add the garlic. Stir well.

Add the carrots and cook for another few minutes, stirring regularly.

Score the meat on the chicken legs all over with a sharp knife, so the chicken meat can cook off the bone very easily.  No need to be elegant. Add the chicken legs to the put and stir them into the onion and leek mixture.

Sprinkle over the cumin and chilli flakes.  Add the fresh tomatoes.  Stir well.

Add the chicken stock, then the can of diced tomatoes, juice and all; and the chickpeas.

Add the basil and stir it all together.

If not already bubbling, bring to a gentle boil and then reduced the heat and cover.  Cook over a low heat for about 2 hours.  The chicken meat should more or less fall off the bone.  Using tongs, remove the bones or pick off any additional meat back into the pot.

Serve with fresh basil and shaved Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy.

Get FileName from FilePath

There are all sorts of things out there that promise to do this, but the situation I am working in deals with “FileName.extn.DateTimeStamp”, but I want to present “FileName.extn” only to report viewers.  Sounds simple enough, except file extensions can be 2, 3 or 4 characters long, and the datetime stamp is also variable length (10 or 11 characters):

• QuinoaChocolateCake.pdf.0103946181
• Agreement2.docx.11171625162

This is how I figured out to do it in the t sql so I didn’t have to do anything more with it in SSRS:

LEFT(NameOfFile, (LEN(NameOfFile) – 1) – LEN(REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE(NameOfFile), 0, CHARINDEX(‘.’, REVERSE(NameOfFile), 1))))) AS FileNameToDisplay

Might not be beautiful or perfect, but gets the result.

Dynamic Chart Height

To have some sort of control over how a graph behaves in the real world (where we usually have no control at all), I’ve discovered the chart property of dynamic height.

The example below will give me a chart that is 14cm high if I have 20 or less items to chart; 20cm high if I have 40 items; otherwise it will be 28cm, which is as high as I can reasonably accommodate on an A4/letter page in portrait style:

=IIF(COUNTDISTINCT(Fields!ItemID.Value, “Dataset“) <= 20, 14 & ” cm”, IIF(COUNTDISTINCT(Fields!ItemID.Value, “Dataset“) <= 40, 20 & ” cm”, 28 & ” cm”))

 

Passing Multiple GUIDs in a List

Passing multiple selected values is always a challenge in Reporting Services 2008.  The concept of concatenating many values into a string is not new, but finding just WHERE to do so in Reporting Services was an even bigger challenge.

At the dataset that is to receive the list of values (in my case a list of uniqueidentifiers is being passed), click the Dataset Properties window, then select Parameters, and use the expression option to create your concatenated list like this:

= join(Parameters!IssueList.Value,“,”)

The @IssueList is a parameter of my report that has been populated by the user from a pre-defined list of issues before the report is run.

Use Expression Editor in Query Parameter Values screen.

Problem: Datasource Connection String Gets Wiped Out

How frustrating is this?  Every time I make a change to a report and sub-report, I keep getting this awful error.

The report definition element ‘ConnectionProperties’ is empty at line 13, position 9. It is missing a mandatory child element of type ‘DataProvider’.

The problem is in the XML, and fix it like this by Viewing the Code for the offending report and overwriting the element below in the Datasources section:

• Close the report
• Right click on report, select View Code
• For the data source recently changed to shared, change <rd:SecurityType>Windows</rd:SecurityType> to <rd:SecurityType>None</rd:SecurityType>
• Save report
• Close report

Many thanks to Network Steve for hammering this issue and coming up with a work-around.  I think it’s a bug too!

Problem: Read Only Parameter in Sub-report?

Getting just the right configuration for sub-reports can be frustrating.  I was getting the error message “the report parameter is read only and cannot be modified”.

After much trial and error, on the sub-report I set the main connecting parameter to:

• Allow multiple values
• Visible

Any additional parameters required to run the sub-report (such as the ID of the user running it) are also marked as visible.  The parameters of the sub-report don’t seem to appear when the sub-report is run from within the main report; with the added advantage that I can easily test the sub-report.

Expression: Format Currency

To get rid of the additional 2 x trailing zeros when source data is of type “money”:

=FormatCurrency(Fields!AmountRequested.Value, 2)  -  to show $1,000.00

=FormatCurrency(Fields!AmountRequested.Value, 0)  -  to show $1,000

SQL Server 2008 FDHost problem.

Received this error on a production server running SQL 2008 R2:

SQL Server encountered error 0×80070422 while communicating with full-text filter daemon host (FDHost) process. Make sure that the FDHost process is running. To re-start the FDHost process, run the sp_fulltext_service ‘restart_all_fdhosts’ command or restart the SQL Server instance.

Problem was resolved by starting the service “SQL Full-text filter Daemon Launcher (SQL 2008)” and modifying it to run under Network Service authority instead of LocalService.