The main body of the scarf has a repeated lozenge lace pattern which becomes rather mindless after you memorize it. But then it all changes. After two rows of stockinette, you are instructed to make nupps. These are the little nubbins that look like berries or beads or peas set off by yarn overs. Often they are referred to as “lily of the valley” because they are somewhat evocative of that flower in bloom. Somewhat. I still think they look more like peas nestled in a pod. I digress, as usual.
A traditional nupp is created by knitting into the next stitch, but before pulling it off the needle, bringing the yarn in front, then knitting it again and repeating until there are anywhere from five to 11 loops of yarn on the one stitch. At that point, you may let the stitch slide off the needle. They are often followed or preceded by YOs. On the wrong side, you slide your needle into all those loops and purl them together, leaving you with one stitch encircled by a bundle of joy. Here are some closeups of nupps, wrong side so you can see the process, and right side, so you can see the result:
Now, here is where the inexperienced nupp knitter starts looking for a train track to nap on or a high balcony to leap over. The loops created by knitting and yarn-overing into the stitch must be very, very loose so that it is possible to get your purling needle into them on the way back. This fact in and of itself had me throwing my incomplete garment into a box and ignoring it for several months before I had the energy to face it again. After searching high and low online for a solution, I discovered what I should have thought of all by myself: insert a small crochet hook to pull the purling yarn through the loops. Then occurred one of those moments where I wanted to kick myself repeatedly for being so stupid.
However, while the crochet hook solution works, it is slow and probably not authentic. I cannot, in my mind’s eye, see grey-haired Estonian ladies in aprons pulling out crochet hooks whenever they have looped a nupp too tightly. So, there must be a way to do it so that implement is unnecessary.
My second nuppy item was “Lily of the Valley Scarf” from Nancy Bush’s Knitted Lace of Estonia. I made it from a cheap fuzzy yarn, Patons North America Lace, and it turned out quite well, as you can see.
My solution for the large loops was to wrap the initial knit stitch around my finger at the back, then pull it down with my thumb in front after pulling the loop through the stitch, and making sure that all my subsequent loops matched the one under my thumb. Of course, this is doable with English style knitting. I don’t know what a continental style knitter would do. For this particular yarn, because it was fuzzy and sticky, it worked very well. I had nupps which may even have been too large, but I’m not complaining.
I was so thrilled by my accomplishment that I made another Swallowtail Scarf, this time for myself. The yarn is 100% merino, Malabrigo lace. It was a dream to knit with, a nightmare to tink because it started matting as soon as it came in contact with another stitch, but that same sticky quality meant that my nupp loops didn’t change size on me when it came time to purl them. It was a success.
You can barely see the nupps in that photo, sadly. Just trust me that it turned out well. I get a lot of compliments on it.
I thought that that was it for me and nupps, that I had purled my last loops. Actually, I’m lying. I had no such intention. There are many patterns in Nancy Bush’s book that I would love to make, nupps or no nupps. And so, I volunteered to test knit a pattern by the lovely Mary-Anne Mace. This would not have happened if a friend in my knitting group hadn’t alerted me to the call for test knitters on Ravelry. I count myself as fortunate indeed that Mary-Anne chose me from the plethora of applicants for the job, because her patterns are gorgeous. She designed a crescent-shape, nupp-encrusted shawl incorporating her favourite Estonian motifs and I knit it out of a wool-silk blend (again a gift from my observant friend). Here is my version:
I confess that I did not do as error-free a job as I would have liked. The nupps were not so problematic as I anticipated, and there were a lot of them. There were sections that I let unravel and then knitted up again because I had messed up with yarn overs, or somehow had too many or too few stitches on the needles. But I completed it, made notes for the designer, and she was pleased. In fact, she asked the testers to reknit the shawl with a longer garter tab cast-on to try to alleviate the hump that one gets in crescent shawls.
At first I demurred. Enough with the nupps already! Then I changed my mind and started again with a different yarn, Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud, a very fine lace weight 2-ply in 100% baby alpaca. And here is where we come full circle. The yarn I used for my first Swallowtail was also 100% baby alpaca in a 2-ply lace. The horror of the nupps has come back to haunt me. I am beginning to understand that the material in which they are knitted is as important as anything else. It wasn’t just the nupps, either, that were affected by the yarn. Mary-Anne had designed gorgeous lilies using a technique where you knit three stitches at once, producing seven stitches on the needle, which are purled separately on the return row and then separated by YOs to make petals. Here’s a closeup from the first shawl (done in a wool-silk blend):
Here’s how they look in the alpaca version (I apologize for the poor detail and contrast; it was blocked against a pink blanket in bad light):
You can see that it is distorted in the softer yarn, the YOs pulled into the opposite of uniform shapes. This adventure has taught me much about Estonian knitting, especially nupps. Err on the side of loops that are too big; even if they are of unequal size, once you get your knitting needle through all of them on the purl side, you can always pull them into a homogenous bundle. If you are barely getting the point through the stitch, while the loops are themselves at the very point of the left-hand needle, you have no such wiggle-room options. It’s a good idea to spread them out as you go, pulling down on the bundles so they lie flat instead of hanging like bleeding hearts.
In the end, I am not displeased with the new FO. It is soft and delicate and I will wear it or give it away with pride. But it has been a learning experience, and it will also be some time before I take on another Estonian lace shawl.
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