The Inexorable Mouths of Snails

The pattern I've been working on for over a year, a screen-accurate copy of the red shawl worn by Saffron in Our Mrs Reynolds, is nearly ready! Watch this blog for updates regarding the release.




Thanks go out to my volunteer tech editor and the brave test knitters in the BigDamnKnitters group at Ravelry.


This pattern will be a free PDF download, available through Ravelry and my document shelf at Scribd. I will make announcements here, on twitter, at my public blog, and on Ravelry.

A wonderful friend gave me my own set of the DVDs. Between that, and our dvd player and tv, I have an updated list of things I've observed about the shawl. A lot of this post is aggregated from a couple of posts on the thread over at BDK on Ravelry.

I had little success the last time (I have a whole card full of photos that really don’t give me much info), and having the DVD set (I had it on my DVR which isn’t really HD) and an okay little DVD player with digital upconvert and a really good ZOOM made a huge difference. I also put a fresh projector bulb in my digital projector tv, and that helped a lot.

I took a whole bunch of photos with my phone, because, of course, the battery was dead in BOTH decent cameras. Between fiddling with brightness/contrast on the tv and saturation on the phone, I got a couple of really decent shots of the back of the shawl. For blurry phone pictures of highly zoomed almost pixelated paused DVD video.. Argh.
I’ve spent hours pausing and zooming and inspecting the still images of the first 15-20 minutes of the ep and I’m pretty sure of several things about it.

• it is for sure a top-down traditional (starts from the center of the long edge) mitred triangle
  
• it has a double-eyelet border knit on or into the long edge
  
• the pattern is a vertical open-chevrons-in-stripes pattern, with repeats of three chevrons and a wider solid chevron marking the ends of the repeats
  
• there is a solid “stripe” between the chevron motifs that is 2-4 stitches wide
  
• the chevrons point down and echo the border points
  
• the openwork chevrons are made with 7 eyelets, with one at the point
  
• the angle of the pattern when viewed from the back is not 45 degrees, so it’s probably a slightly shaped triangle/butterfly if laid out flat
  
• it has a knitted on bottom border that is in pattern (the points of the border line up with the points of the chevron motifs creating an illusion that the border is not knit on)
  
• there appear to be 15 21 points, including the three points of the triangle
  
• that means there are 15 21 tassels or fringes (since there are so few, I am calling them tassels)
  
• the tassels are tied on and appear to be made with 2 or 3 strands doubled over, and the length is not equal (or they are very worn and have attenuated and been torn over time)
  
• it is made with a large singleply (like lamb’s pride worsted) or a very smooth/worn multi-ply
  
• it is probably a wool or wool blend yarn, because the shawl looks like it has fulled a little bit due to age/wear or possibly deliberately during washing/blocking to stabilize the pattern (since it is so large)
  

I’ve ordered 2 different wool yarns from Webs to make the shawl. One of them is bound to be a better fit than the other: Nashua Handkints Creative Focus Chunky in Copper Carmine and Nashua Handkints Creative Focus Worsted in Brick.


Hope this makes things that I think I’m seeing clearer, I scanned some of my notes (not nearly all, just the most relevant ones).

Overview of my notes:


This is the scarf I made for the firefly-themed swap I was in recently, and which really helped with working out the borders and she spacing of the motifs:


Here’s an incomplete (doesn’t include the foundation row that the two halves point out from - it’s grafted in the middle) chart for the scarf above:


and rough charted notes from making the scarf (NOT the shawl!) for the corner of the sideways worked border (purl rows aren’t shown):


SO, that's where we are at this point.

ETA: Got the shawl charted. Took HOURS. Even using a spreadsheet program. The border is different than the scarf border, the shawl has a 1 stitch line between chevrons, I am not writing out the instructions until I have worked any bugs out of the chart, and I'm not quite sure how the double eyelet band is going to work as I have it currently charted, but we have a workable, testable pattern chart! WooHoo!

Okay, if anyone tried that swatch with me last night, they most likely came to the same conclusions:

1) Design is WAY too small. Might be good for a mini version, but SO not for the real thing.
2) Rib separating the stripes was FAR TOO WIDE. it needs to be maybe 4 stitches wide.
3) I need to proofread.

So, I got about halfway through the swatch last night, thought all these things, made a grumpy face and frogged back to the eyelet border. Then I had a Moment of Inspiration and just played around with the yarn for a bit. I'm going to wing a full repeat, while making notes, and then I'll put together a one-width scarf pattern for those who want it, just to tide folks over until I can produce a pattern that makes sense.

At this point I'm thinking it's a double YO (that's purled/knit on the ws row, not treated as a single stitch), because I tried that last night with good effect. It looks almost exactly right. BUT... I haven't done a whole repeat yet, and I don't know if it's shallow enough or wide enough.

what I got out of the swatching process so far, though, is a better idea of what I need to do to reproduce the stitch pattern used in the shawl.

I have some spinning to do, so it's time to get off the computer :)

So, I've got this wild hair ... to redact the shawl worn by the character who uses the alias Saffron in the "Our Mrs Reynolds" episode of Firefly.

Things I've figured out, so far:

Definitely knitted. some variation on Triple Chevron Lace (one version, another version). Most likely a top-down knit, from the stitch pattern. Scale suggests it either uses big needles or multiple YO to make the big eyelets in the openwork chevrons.

There is a 2-5 stitch rib between the vertical pattern repeats (on the "up" points), but no rib on the "down" points.

I think there are 15 tassels, but there may be as many as 17. I have to figure out how many repeats are in the shawl. Each vertical repeat = one tassel.

It has an edging/foundation of two rows of eyelets, possibly all the way around the shawl. I have to get crazy with the remotes and the zoom to be sure, but it looks like there are either two rows of eyelets OR a partial pattern repeat at the bottom (two chevrons instead of three).

Likewise, I need to examine the shots of the shawl to see if anything suggests a center rib, because right now I am thinking not. Even though it would make sense with this pattern. Hmmm.

Possibly not a pure triangle, just going on the stitch pattern and how it fits into the pure-triangle sketch I have made. Need to make another.

This promises to take ages, BTW. Suggestions welcome for what you see in the shawl, if you have any ideas!