Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tessellated Fish Testing 1, 2, 3

I've been working on finding the best way to attach my tessellated fishes (fish-a long) together without sewing. I think it's a good idea to knit the fish in strips. To do this you knit two fish, but do not bind off. (You will needle multiple sets of needles to do this.) Then with right sides facing do a 3 needle bind off. You now have two fish, tail to tail. You can then pick up the stitches at the mouth of the fish and continue on ...

I have learned a few things in knitting the fish and this one point is very important. When knitting your fish you HAVE to make sure you knit the slipped stitch very loose. Almost to the point of an exaggerated looseness if you get my drift. The fish will not lay flat if you knit too tight. This was difficult for me. As you can see my test fish are pretty much rejects, but they were good for me to test out the joining. Now that I have shown you my results they will end up in the frog pond.


The first thing I tried was knitting them together...picking up the slipped stitches on the side and bind off. If you want to see closer details, just click on the photo for a closeup.






It's ok, but it did leave a ridge on the back, which I'm not crazy about. You can see in this photo how much the fish is buckling. The fish I am now knitting are nice and loose and flat!






The next thing I tried was knitting the fish and attaching it at the same time by picking up a stitch at the end of every row of the fish.







The back is nice and flat. Not bad at all...I rather liked the way this turned out.




Then the last technique I tried was Cathy's (Bits and Bobs ) braided crochet. Cathy's blanket is what led me to the fish-a-long! I can't tell or show you how to do this. If you are interested be sure and join the Bits and Bobs group!
Why do I like this one? A chain forms in between the ridges of the slipped stitches. Here I made the chain in blue -same color as one of the fish, but on my future blanket I'm planning on using a contrasting color. I think it will look similar to this. Note this blanket is the original tessellated fish blanket (Fish Blanket from Knitter's Magazine issue 51 (Summer 1998)). I'm using Knitting Arrow's pattern.



This is the back...nice and flat with no ridges. This is definitely how I'm going to put my fish together!



Now, back to work. I'm really having a hard time keeping up with emails and blog visiting. Please be patient with me....I'm working on it. I really thought once the boys were out of school I'd have more time...now that's another story!

Happy knitting and fishing :)

15 comments:

  1. Your fish look wonderful. I am waiting for you to perfect the sew free thing before I make one. Summer vacation has drastically cut into my knitting time, but it is nice to have them around all the time.

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  2. Thanks for all the good info! Your fish look great to me! I know if anyone will find a clever way to join those fishies, it will be you! :)

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  3. wow! i'm really impressed by how patient you are in finding just the right method to attach the fish together! let's just say that, if it were me, it wouldn't look nearly as good...

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  4. The fish blanket is going to be very cute. I really admire your patience in putting them all together - I'm not sure I could!

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  5. Very fun. What a nice idea to experiment with various joining techniques! That Yahoo group sounds like fun, maybe I will check it out.

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  6. I don't know if you ever read Tracy's blog www.stringativity.blogspot.com. She's an esperimenter like you are, and with amazing results. It's people like you who figure out stuff, so we can follow finished patterns!

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  7. the fish look great and well, I'm super impressed by all the methods ;)

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  8. Very interesting...enjoy the fishing! All else can wait. :))

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  9. Wow, where do you find the time to try all these different techniques? I'm impressed...

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  10. Thank you for an example of math skills used in daily life!!! My daughter learned about tesselation in math a few weeks ago.

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  11. You're fish look great... I love how you've been 'researching' the best way to join them and then sharing that with all of us :-) Thanks!! I can't wait to see the finished blanket!

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  12. your fish blanket is going to be so cool!! I like the look of that braided crochet technique. I can't wait to see your finished blankie!

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  13. I went to Cathy's site and then signed up for Bits and Bobs, because I must learn how to do this. Very clever and pretty!

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  14. I can't wait to get started on the fish!

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Thank you all for your comments! I really appreciate them. I usually don't follow up with an email, but if you do have a question please make sure you include a way to reach you within your comment so I may answer your question. Thanks and happy knitting :)

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