Knitting -- a Summer Victory

Just in time for your summer knitting in cotton blends or linen.

I've been trying to find a pattern for knitting a sleeveless top, top-down, without raglan sleeves, knitting in the round, so as to use up some leftover cotton yarn. Google search doesn't turn up anything like it, not even on Pinterest or Ravelry; the patterns want you to knit a front, knit a back, and sew them together. Well, part of my mantra is "when you're done knitting, you're done" to the maximum extent possible. 

So I finally buckled down and invented it myself. 

Sleeveless, boatneck, with selvages at the armholes and optional mid-back elevation.

This top does not have the gap problems at the neck that you get when you knit bottom-up and knit the shoulders together. You don't knit the shoulders together, you make shoulders with stitch increases under the neck rib.

I used the classic Basque stripe pattern that kids used to wear for play shirts when I was actually a kid. The two versions are here.

http://freevintageknitting.com/spool194/5201-basque-shirt-and-socks-pattern

http://freevintageknitting.com/childrens-clothes-patterns/spool175/basque-shirt-and-socks-pattern

I like the Joan and Tommy pattern with 8 rows of neutral base color and the light and dark of any colorway -- 4 of light color, 2 of dark, and 4 of light again. You can reverse the light and dark colors if that uses your leftovers up better. The more contrast between those and your base, the more this pattern will pop. Or you can use any two colors that contrast with each other and with the base. 

I have calculated (sport/DK) and [fingering] stitch counts below but not tested them.

These materials and stitch counts are for a top that fits a 40-inch chest. Don't change the count for casting-on; you will need that to fit over your head. Don't change the number of rows in the armholes (before you join the round to finish the body). You need them so the top doesn't bind you under the arms.

The target stitch-count at the hem is 200 for worsted, 240 for sport/DK, and 280 for fingering. If you need a smaller size, stop doing increase rounds when you get to the stitch count that is good for you. You may want to do two knit rounds between increase rounds, to get the shoulders broad enough (like for a husky guy).

I think it took me 30 hours to make the first sample after I worked out the stitch counts for the increases.

7 50-gram skeins or balls of yarn. I used Comfy Worsted which has a nice drape and hand.

            4 in your neutral base color, especially important if your selvages will be in base color

            2 in the 4-row color

            1 in the 2-row color

1 size 5 (4) [3] 24-inch circular needle

1 size 5 (4) [3] 16-inch circular needle

Use long-tail cast-on to a 16 inch needle for 140 (147) [154] stitches. Make sure your stitches are not twisted, then join using a SLST/PSSO and put the slipped stitch back on the left needle for a smooth join. 

2.                 Work K1/P1 rib for 6 (6) [8] rounds, setting a marker at the start and weaving in the loose tail of your cast-on. For more flexibility in the neck, you can use KTBL instead of just a K.

3.                Knit one round to stabilize the neck, setting evenly spaced markers for the side “seam” and middle front. In worsted, these go every 37 stitches; in sport/DK or fingering they will more like 38 stitches apart.

4.               Work an optional mid-back elevation: K14 past midback, wrap, turn; P28, wrap, turn; K47, wrap, turn; P66, wrap, turn; K85, wrap, turn; P94, wrap, turn, knit to the mid back.

5.               Change to a 24 inch circular needle.

For worsted weight yarn: 

Increase into every 20^th stitch. Knit a round, 147

Increase into every 21^st stitch. Knit a round, 154.

Increase into every 22^st stitch. Knit a round, 161.

Increase into every 23^rd stitch. Knit a round, 168.

Increase into every 24^th. Knit a round, 175.

Increase into every 25^th. Knit a round, 182.

Increase into every 26^th. Knit a round. 189.

Increase into every 27^th. Knit a round. 196.

For sport/DK do the following:

Increase into every 21^st stitch. Knit a round, 154.

Increase into every 22^st stitch. Knit a round, 161.

Increase into every 23^rd stitch. Knit a round, 168.

Increase into every 24^th. Knit a round, 175.

Increase into every 25^th. Knit a round, 182.

Increase into every 26^th. Knit a round. 189.

Increase into every 27^th. Knit a round. 196.

Increase into every 14^th. Knit a round. 210.

Increase into every 15^th. Knit a round. 224.

Increase into every 16^th. Knit a round. 238.

For fingering weight:

Increase into every 22^st stitch. Knit a round, 161.

Increase into every 23^rd stitch. Knit a round, 168.

Increase into every 24^th. Knit a round, 175.

Increase into every 25^th. Knit a round, 182.

Increase into every 26^th. Knit a round. 189.

Increase into every 27^th. Knit a round. 196.

Increase into every 14^th. Knit a round. 210.

Increase into every 15^th. Knit a round. 224.

Increase into every 16^th. Knit a round. 238.

Increase into every 17^th. Knit a round. 252.

Increase into every 18^th. Knit a round. 266.

Increase into every 19^th. Knit a round. 280.

Knit from the mid-back to the first side marker and cast on 5 stitches. Turn and work P2/K1/P2 into those stitches and purl across to the other side marker. Cast-on again and turn. After this turn is where you will start your Basque stripe if you're using it.

7.               Work the rest of the knit rows as K3/P2, knit across and work the last 5 stitches as P2/K3. Work the rest of the purl rows as P2/K1/P2 in the first and last five stitches.

8.               Working Basque stripe. When you cast-on for the second selvage, start your Basque stripe; you have already worked 8 rows under the neck rib in your base color so start with 4 rows of your light shade, 2 of your dark, and another 4 of your light, followed by 8 in your base color.

You can work the selvages the same color as the body.

If you are going to work the selvage in your neutral base color, first, have a separate ball of that color for each selvage or use up leftovers from the ball you used to make the neck and shoulders. The alternative is to carry it across the row and that’s a waste of yarn.

When you go back to your base neutral color, work a purl and knit row with one of your selvage balls and then use the other to work the next purl and knit rows (or knit and purl, whichever). This, too, avoids carrying yarn wastefully across.

Be careful to lock stitches of the base and other colors at the body side of a selvage that is in your base color. Use your Fair Isle locking techniques. I can't find a good video so if you've never done color work before, put a comment here and I'll help you out.

9.                Work 50 (55) [60] rows of the back in the flat, ending in row 4 of the 8 rows of your base color. Leave a couple inches of tail and cut the yarn. Weave this in when you start knitting the body.

10.            Now make a slip knot in your yarn and with the right side of the front facing you, put it on the right tip of the circular needle. Pass the end (knitted) stitch over it. Turn and cast on 5 stitches. Turn back and work K3/P2 to the body and knit across. Now cast on 5 again, turn, and work P2/K1/P2. Here is where you will start the Basque stripe for the front. Purl across and P2/K1/P2 at the other selvage.

Now work 50 (55) [60] rows of the front in your Basque stripe ending again at row 4 of the 8 rows of the base color.

Join back and front by knitting. At the armpits, working from the right side, knit from the front underarm across the selvage of the back underarm, and when you get to the other side, knit across the selvage of the front underarm to finish joining into a round. Count stitches and add at the underarm "seam" until you have 200 (240) [280].

11.            Work Basque stripe in the round for 95 (110) [130] rounds ending in 8 rounds of the base color. If you run out of the contrast colors, use base color to finish so you don't have to buy more yarn and end up with more leftovers. This is what the photo shows. If I hadn't run out, or you buy your yarn fresh, there would be another band of color above the hem.

  , and  Do K1/P1 rib for 6 (6) [8] rounds. Bind off in rib with one difference. Pick a knit stitch at each of side seam, mid-front and mid-back. K into the front but do not remove; K into the back and pass the front stitch over, then P the next stitch and pass the rest of the knit stitch over. This will make 4 stitches to loosen the hem, otherwise it could be hard to get the top off.

13.          Now go back and sew together the selvage at the shoulders.

In the photo you can see the armhole with the selvage on the left. 

I often use Lindy Chain for summer tops; it is thinner than Comfy Fingering and linen is perfect for the DMV's hot muggy summers. I have some leftovers to work with and will post again when I have the counts right, but you should probably cast on 220 stitches, work 10 rounds of rib for neck and hem, do increases (start at every 22nd stitch and do two rounds without increasing between every increase round so that the shoulders are wide enough) until you have close to 300 stitches (or your target for the hem), 90 rows above the armpits and 140 below them with 10 rounds of hem rib. (I also have a vee neck tank to work in Comfy Fingering or Lindy Chain.)

You can work a Breton stripe instead of a Basque one, with 4 rows of white and 4 rows of French or cadet blue.

You can use 7 skeins of a single color and work lace in front as I did for a bottom-up top a long time ago, or beads and sequins. You can add university emblems with duplicate stitch.

If you use wool, you can work Fair Isle, houndstooth, cable (including Aran or Celtic Knot), and British (gansey) or Bavarian twisted stitch patterns, making vests to go over button-down shirts. (I also have a vee neck vest pattern.) Make sure to increase the target hem stitch count for Fair Isle and houndstooth; the fabric has less give and you need a wider garment to get it on and off easily.

So now, I hope, I've made you crazy to start knitting for summer and get rid of stuff in your stash or leftovers bin. At 30 hours per top, only your real life stands between you and working one top per week between now and the warm weather.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- DH and the "old words"

A long time ago I pointed out that one problem with DH was its claim that P used words no older document used.

I came across my own counterargument to this while re-reading my study Narrating the Torah. On Exodus 6:2, I said that DH assigning this verse to P has no basis in the text.

Every single word in this verse appears in another Torah verse that DH has assigned to an older document like J or E. In fact it uses both elohim and the Tetragrammaton, so it can't be assigned to J or E unless it's a conflation of two verses, one from J and one from E. 

What's more, elohim appears in Amos, a Judean work from the 700s BCE which should, according to DH, use the Tetragrammaton everywhere. And the latter appears in Hoshea, a northern work from slightly before Amos' time which should use elohim everywhere.

With both names, this verse says that Mosheh was a bad writer in the estimation of Jean Astruc -- but since Mosheh took down Gd's exact words, that makes Gd a bad writer. Say what?

It also makes a liar out of Astruc for saying he only worked with Genesis. This verse is not at the start of Exodus and therefore plausibly misplaced from Genesis (which obviously closes with Joseph's death). It is six chapters into Exodus and the actual Egress will happen eight chapters later.

It's been six years since I finished posting about DH but obviously I didn't include every last detail that blows it up. For those of you who missed it, here's the start of my destruction of DH. It starts out with math and logic, and then it goes into details like this one from Exodus 6. It's about 50 posts long and each post is about a page worth in Word. Whether you never heard of it, or never liked it, or just didn't know what a pile of crap it was, you have a chance at learning the truth.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Behold! A Second Witness

One of my projects for some years now has been trawling the Internet for articles about the Akrotiri explosion that have bearing on the Exodus.

The relevant Bible verses are Exodus 10:21-23, the palpable darkness that fell on Avaris but not in Goshen across the border. This palpable darkness is characteristic of the Plinian phase of a volcanic eruption like Vesuvius in 79 CE or Mount St. Helens. The Akrotiri eruption was 20x that of Vesuvius in 79 CE which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

The dust streamed SSE on a ruach yam, a sea wind which, for Egypt, meant it came from the NNW. But did it happen in the spring?

Well, it happened before autumn and studies from multiple perspectives have pegged it more and more closely. Examinations of charred insects in jars of fava beans show that the beans came from the prior year's harvest; it contained all stages of the insect's metamorphosis except eggs, which are laid in spring. This pest never develops in stored beans. It can only develop out in the fields. So the beans were picked after they were infested, stored up and left behind when the dust clouds sent people scurrying from Akrotiri, accounting for the lack of human remains. They probably assumed things would blow over and they would come back for the stored food. Instead, KERBLOOEY.

Another important indicator was olive remains found in the ash deposit. This included branches, leaves with parasites on them, and olive stones. The question I always had was, did they find any way to tell if the olive flesh had started to develop yet. Finding bare stones with no trace of even charred flesh would put the disaster in early spring; finding any remains of even charred flesh sets the date closer to summer. The leaves are not enough; olives are evergreens. I haven't found the answer to my question yet.

Now comes an article on the Babylonian Venus Tablets of the reign of Ammisaduqa, containing records of observations of Venus as well as the meaning of the various phases and things. In addition to phases, the tablets record an issue called conjunction. Twice a year Venus disappears into the glare of the sun; there is an inferior and a superior conjunction and you can google about the definition of those terms.

What the tablets record is that in 1627 BCE, the dates of the superior conjunction could not be determined from observation. About 25 April, Venus should have been visible as "the morning star", then reached conjunction and come out by 5 October as "the evening star". But they never saw "the morning star". There's no explanation of unusual storms, the rain clouds of which would have hidden Venus. But given the year, the explanation probably turns out to be dust from Thera. 

It would have taken months for this dust to get thick enough to occlude Venus. American Meteorological Society data shows that historically, the most common wind in Mesopotamia came from the NNW. Ancient maps of cities put this direction at the top and free-standing buildings were oriented to keep out the wind and its dust. The main component coming from the north would have limited the amount of dust coming from Thera, which was located to the WNW. 

Avaris, on the other hand, is about half the distance from Thera as Babylon, and the prevailing wind out of the NNW at that time of the year promoted the volume of dust that produced the plague.

The article on the tablets has another suggestion to make, an eruption of Aniakchak in Alaska. However, this has the same problem as the eruption of Krakatau that I discussed for Gildas. It's thousands of km farther from Babylon than Thera. It's to the ENE. It's just another example of how academics don't take all the evidence into account (like distance and prevailing wind), or don't look outside their pipeline (such as to see the resemblance to the Krakatau claim). 

And now another example of how you can't rely on what people say. I found three tourism websites, all parroting the same text about finding flowers in the remains of the Thera explosion. I contacted one and they told me they had no data to back up that claim. So if anybody tells you that olive flowers were found at Thera, ask them for the archaeological report. I doubt they'll be able to give it to you; Google didn't find it for me, though it did turn up the paper on the Venus tablets.