Annis and Nupps

I am certainly in a shawl, wrap, scarf making mode lately.  There is something new to learn each time, even if it is patience and the need to slow down.

Recently I found the Hickory Madelientosh superwash yarn used to start a men's pair of socks last summer.  It was written about here.  That single sock was almost complete when I gave up using size 2 US or 2.5 mm needles because they were too small.

That partially completed sock hung around until about a week ago when I frogged it.  When I frog something too close to its creation there are emotional attachments, but when it is over a year the frogging takes place without emotions.  Here's a closeup of Hickory.

Image from Jimmy Bean Wools

In my current mode I looked for a shawl with something new to tackle.  Nupps, written about here, had not yet been knit successfully.   A little over two years ago I started Viaduct, a lovely triangle-shaped shawl using nupps, but shortly after the photos were taken I stopped.  The picking up of seven stitches to purl into one was very slow and I simply lost interest.  The square needles were removed from the project and the wool was saved for the future.

So motivated by the Hickory yarn I searched for an easier nupp pattern and found this shawl by Susanna IC, called Annis

Photo from Susanna IC design

This crescent shaped shawl uses fewer nupps because they are located only on the outer edge.  The pattern notes say only 150 nupps are used in that edging.  This shawl made with sock yarn was going to look quite different than the sample above made with lace weight yarn.  The idea was to practice the nupps and then move to the smaller yarn next time.

Hanging on the fence.  Wingspan is shown unblocked

This is what I created.  It is only 36 inches or just shy of a meter in length unblocked.  It will make a great scarf.  What I want to share are the different ways of making nupps that I researched during this making process.

First I read about knitting nupps in the traditional Estonia way here.  It talks about all the problems one can run into and how to avoid them.  Then I moved on to finding a way to use a crochet hook to pull the thread through 7 stitches at a time.  These discussions are found here and here and here.  If you click through the three of them you'll find three different ways to create nupps with the hook.

The traditional way is to knit on the right side and then pick up the 7 stitches and purl them together on the wrong side.  There are complications with this method, the most tricky is making sure you are purling the proper 7 stitches together.  I had to keep counting.  The parallel needle thing helped, but I needed a crochet hook to get the yarn through all the stitches correctly.

Using a crochet hook on the front to create and then complete the nupp is the technique I ended up using because for me it was the easiest to do.  But it does leave the nupps slanting in one direction which might not be acceptable to everyone.

Here's a closeup where you can see before blocking there are nupp problems in this scarf.

You can see one done properly at the bottom.  The one on the left is twisted and the top one appears to have missed a stitch.  This was a learning project indeed. I will make another Annis using lace yarn instead of sock yarn.  And I do believe the second time will be much easier to do correctly.