“All The Angles” by Stephen West

How-to Questions
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Has anyone made this? It’s gorgeous, as Stephen West things always are, but oh, how I wish the instructions just did one simple thing: they refer to sections 1, 2, 3 and 4, but nowhere in any photo (there is no schematic or diagram or anything) does it tell you which section is which, and what bit you are actually on. So I emailed the support address on Westknits and they very kindly added numbers to a photograph so I could see which bit I was doing. Which made a massive difference, but absolutely nowhere can I see what/where/ is section 4!!! I’ve looked through dozens of Ravelry photos and every one shows three distinct sections. I can only imagine that section 4 is a part of one of the three??? But why not say so???!! The Pengweeno baby jacket that I’ve just finished has photos of the back and the front, all with numbers on that refer to the numbers in the instructions. So you know exactly where you are, and there are about twelve sections in that jacket. If ONLY the same could be done for any of the other patterns.

If anyone out there on the forum has made this “All The Angles” shawl/wrap I would be so grateful to hear from you which bit is section 4!!! I’m only half way through section 2, and maybe all will be revealed as one struggles on, but why oh why not make life easier with the addition of just 4 little numbers! I am trying to ‘say yes, don’t stress’ but just a little bit of help would make that a lot easier!!

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Beautiful, delicate shawl!

You could get back to Westknits support since they have been so responsive. I’ve looked at the projects and it seems that Section 4 is picked up from the initial cast on. One knitter used a provisional here so that it wasn’t necessary to pick up sts.
Section 4 joins to section 1 although it may join other sections as well.
The rows get shorter as you knit Section 4.
Sometimes it helps to message one of the recent knitters on Ravelry who finished the scarf or who has otherwise helpful notes. I’ve found them generally helpful.
And as you say, these things are sometimes clear once you get to that part of the pattern. Let us know how it’s going!

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Here’s another ‘how to’ question, Salmonmac: Is there a mechanism for nominating a Mod Squad member for something serious in the way of an award?? You are SO swift to respond and SO helpful in those responses!

I have written again (they’ll be sick of me!) to Westknits, but your answer has probably solved the problem. I do think it’s a question often of just waiting and seeing what transpires, but that can make for quite a stressful experience where a tiny bit of a pointer-in-the-right direction might help make the whole thing so much more enjoyable. I’m beginning to realise that, with really complicated projects, the first attempt should be seen as the tough rehearsal, and then one can move on to Take 2, where it becomes relaxing…ish! I think what can be a little disheartening is, when reading notes/experience on Ravelry, hardly anyone ever admits to having a difficult time of it - they all say, ‘oh, SO easy, I SO enjoyed making this’; well, that’s easily said as soon as the learning part is over and the pain of it forgotten - childbirth springs to mind! (Not that I’ve got any children, but hey, I’ve got friends!) We have good reasons to forget pain, and anyway, sounding clever about how easy something was is something I daresay we all want to do. Of the many, many notes I read on this project I didn’t see one that said “why can’t they say which section I am on??”, or “gosh, this was tricky, but I got it in the end and then it seemed really easy”; all of which would make one feel a little less hopeless in the endeavour!

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That very kind of you to say. Your words are more than enough.

Yes, I agree. The person you need to go to is the one who struggled to figure it out, found a work around and took the time to post their solution.
It’s good to find a designer or team that truly supports their patterns. It should be a given but sadly, it often isn’t. Good luck with this scarf. I’m sure it will be a triumph!

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Interestingly, Salmonmac, your advice is right and Westknits have got it wrong in their kind email to me! You correctly read the instructions to say that Section 4 comes off the original, Section 1 cast on. Westknits clearly marked that section in their very kind annotating of a photo for me, as Section 3. Section 3 must be the continuation of Section 2 where it turns into a short rows section. I think!! I’ll find out, I guess, when I get there and discover I’ve got it all wrong again! I’ve re-emailed Westknits to ask if it could possibly be that Section 3, as marked by them, is in fact Section 4. I think it’s got to be. Honestly, you’d think with only 4 sections it would be relatively easy to mark them clearly….wouldn’t you?!!

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In answer to your sensible suggestion of finding someone who’s struggled and eventually figured it out, that might end up being me, I think!!! That is if it ever does end up being a triumph….hmmm! If it does, then I’ll plan to do a Really Useful Note on my Ravelry post and hope that it spares someone else the same angst, though you have already gone a long way to being my own saviour!

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The very nice person at Westknits did write back, and said that she had used an old YAL (?) version and not the updated PDF version….which is a bit mysterious still, mainly because I don’t know what YAL means…but also because no version of it would have made sense that way.

I had a bit of a disaster last night, knitting too late, too tired, not good enough light - lesson learned! This morning I unravelled about eight rows, having failed to put in a preemptive life line, BUT…I had a Brilliant Idea, another re-inventing of the wheel, I’m sure: I was looking up how to do a ‘reactive’ life line; there are lots of YouTube videos, and I went for one where you use a teeny weeny circular needle (well, my teeny weeniest is a 2.5mm, which worked fine) and thread it through the front leg of each (knit) stitch….easy peasy except when the stitches are so teeny weeny themselves that you just cannot see even which row you are going along (or at least I couldn’t), until I had a small eureka moment and got my blocking pins and mats, and stretched the bit I was working on out enough to see clearly where the stitches were, pinned it to the mat, and wove the needle along with absolutely no trouble. I’m sure lots of people will have done this, but I couldn’t find any YouTube video that worked on anything but very large gauge swatches where there wasn’t the problem of the teeny weenies.

Then you just rip back safely to the rescued stitches and knit with your normal size needles off the teeny one, and the stress levels go down again! I think it’s one of those things everyone has to go through, really, like a first computer crash (anyone remember the bad old days when those were such a disaster??!)

I stared at the disaster for a bit, wondering how on earth I could have made such a mess, debating whether anyone would notice it and if I could soldier on, and deciding fairly swiftly that I couldn’t live with it myself, and had to rip back; so there we are. Crisis over. Till the next one!

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That’s a wonderful tip to make inserting a lifeline much easier to see. Thanks, Lalla for posting.

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I like your tip about the life line.
I am rubbish at getting a reactive life line in line and when I have tried this I end up going right off track and spend ages trying to find my row and stitches. It’s a good tip to stretch it right out and to use a thin circular too.

I tinked back 18 rows of cable on both cardigan fronts just the last couple of days due to forgetting I was supposed to put armhole shaping in and not having the nerve to try a life line on cable rows. Stitch by Stitch, row by row… but just kept telling myself it really doesn’t matter, it’s all learning and I’ve improved my tinking skill another level.

Isn’t it funny how many of us respond to a knitting blunder in this way? Will anyone notice? I even asked this with regards to my missing arm holes ha ha ha, of course they’ll notice my arms will be trapped inside, that will be a poncho not a cardigan… hmm…could I make a poncho? No! Undo it!
We will happily knit hundreds of rows and yet question ripping back 8 or 18. An additional 18 rows in a pattern wouldn’t put us off choosing that pattern to make and yet undoing and redoing 18 rows seems like a trauma.
Trauma no more, I am a meditative tinkeress from here on in.

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Yes, I’ve often been willing (sort of!) to tink (text recognition prefers ‘think’, I prefer not to!!) back several rows because I’m too scared to let rip…the bit I really hate is the first and last stitches, where I’m never entirely sure what I’m doing, especially if there’s anything fancy going on like in this particular project, slipping two, one from the edge you are knitting and one from the selvedge you are picking up; or if there’s a K2tog, or something. Now, when I put in a life line (believe me, I am now putting in lifelines OFTEN!) I do so with the threading of the lifeline through the little hole in the needle, rather than trying to put one in with a tapestry needle; that way I know the line is going through where it’s meant to be going through, and not, either, catching into any of the working stitches by mistake. All these little things one learns on this knitting journey! I know it’s all obvious, and I guess many have stated all of this before. There is so much good information on this site. We are all at different stages of the learning journey, aren’t we - the rather wonderful thing about knitting, like any language - I see it as a language of the hands/brain - is that there is always more to learn. There are so many good lessons for life generally, like ‘be prepared to change your mind if evidence comes to light that there’s a better way’, like Stephen West’s “say yes, don’t stress!”, and my current favourite of his, “Embrace Your Pace”; I think I knit relatively slowly and am always trying to improve on that, but why?? If all I wanted was a cardigan, or some other garment, I could go and buy one usually far more cheaply than the combined cost of yarn and time! So it must be the actual making that is part of the addiction (it’s certainly an addiction for me!), in which case, why would you want to speed it up? The only time I try and do that (usually with awful results!) is if I’m trying to meet a deadline with the giving of a present to someone on their birthday or whatever. But then I think of my beloved old friend Douglas Adams’s wonderful line “I LOVE deadlines! I LOVE the whoooooooosh as they go by”.

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Using the hole in the needle, usually interchangeables, is such a fast and relatively simple way to go.
I agree about knitting speed. I’m a slow knitter but I figure that if I finish this sweater I’ll just have to start another so, no rush.

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I’m so glad you are a slow-knitter, Salmonmac, although I rather think your definition of ‘slow’ may be different from my gastropod’s take on it! But I reassure myself that the snail’s pace stops me from making the kinds of mistakes that result in FAR longer to repair; so in the long run I may just beat to the finishing line the hare that keeps urging me to go faster. Well, that’s the theory, anyway, or the excuse rather!

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I KNOW it’s really a tortoise…!

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One other thing about speed: I do a lot of free motion quilting, and have learned that the ‘riding a bike’ analogy is a good one: if you hurtle too fast you fall off; but if you go too slow you wobble, and can also fall off. The crash landing might hurt a bit less with the wobble, but you’ll still crash.
With a sewing machine it’s certainly true that going too slow can end in tears, as can going too fast. I think that’s true of knitting, too? If you go really really snail (or tortoise) slow, you can ‘wobble’ and over-think yourself into a mess; the mess is usually easier to tidy up than if you rush through a whole row and then realise you’ve ‘fallen off your bike’, but it’s still a mess. So, as in most things in life, there is a happy medium, I guess?

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Lalla, knitting and free motion quilting. You are a force to be reckoned with!

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No, not so much a force, more an obsessive maker!

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Probably half way through Section 3, which turns out, as you surmised, Salmonmac, not to be Section4!! And, in my wheel-re-inventing guise, I’ve worked out a totally sanity-saving bit of help for myself that I’m sure lots of people must do, but somehow I had never thought of, before necessity drove me to problem-solving: when you have a relatively long already-worked section, plus a whole lot of stitches on a spare cable, with those little screw-on end-y bits, plus the tails of a lifeline, plus two (or more) colours going on…that’s a lot of stuff to tangle up and generally get in the way. Every time you turn round to work the next side you have to disentangle the two working colours, unhook the bits that have got snaggled up on the endy things, all that stuff, re-cross the working two colours…etc.

So here’s what I now do, and what has, I’m absolutely certain, been mentioned long since here, but there’s probably little harm in mentioning something useful again?

Find a small soft bag with a drawstring closure, like the sort of thing that travel hairdryers, or other such items come with. Shoe bags were, for my purposes, too big, though they might work for some projects? It helps if it’s a non-shiny surface, like the plastic ones that come with bathroom things such as electric toothbrushes, because the plastic ones are slippery.

Stuff (carefully!) the bit of the work that you are not working on into the bag, and draw the drawstring carefully closed over the whole mess-attracting lot of it! Tuck the little toggles on the closing cord into the top of the bag so you don’t have them to contend with. You need to be able to get at the stitches you are actually working on, of course, but there’s a whole lot you can get out of the way and into the bag. Non-slippery helps if you work on your lap, it saves the little bag skidding off all the time. And turning the whole thing after each row (or short row, in my case at the moment) is SO much easier with all that clutter tucked safely out of the way.

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Good idea! Stephen West’s shawls tend to be large so this is a good way to control the project and keep it out of reach of pets and small children. It would work well with blankets, coats, whatever. Thanks for posting.

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VERY happy you think it’s a good idea!!

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Hadn’t thought about pets, either, which is pretty silly of me as we are in the process of acquiring a new puppy, oh heaven!! At least it’s not a kitten….and my present dog, Cuba, is very peaceful and respectful of yarn!

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