Rowan, charts, social media and Separated at Birth

I have a kind of love affair with Rowan. It’s not just that I’m originally from West Yorkshire and feel nostalgic for the Dales form time to time, it’s that I love the magazine, pouring through the lusciousness of the British fashion they showcase and the lusciousness of the settings. I devour the magazines as fashion, fantasy and design as much as the knitting and crochet content.

But as far as incorporating dominant trends in how the handknitting community actually practices the craft?  Fuhgettaboutit!

Entering Rowan patterns into the Ravelry database?  Nope, can’t be bothered. Although, curiously, Rowan IS aware of social media and provides links on their website so you can interact with Facebook or Tweet about one of their patterns.

Bizzare, will someone please tell these guys that Ravelry is the social media network par excellence of the handknitting community!!

Construction in the round?   Sorry, the instructions for many Rowan patterns indicate even hats should be knit flat and seamed.

Basically Rowan is machine knit style for the ready-to-wear business. We’re lucky that they give us handknitters a taste of the knitwear business and high fashion.

For myself as a handknitter this came to a head recently when I purchased the recently published gorgeous magazine Rowan Lace.

I got this home and my eye alighted on the incomparable Fragile Wrap from designer Lisa Richardson. It had a distinctive and eyecatching circular lace element, but otherwise was not too complicated, a rectacular stole.

I turned to the construction pages. The lace motif is relatively complicated and repeats over 24 rows.

But get this people, there was NO CHART. not only was there no chart, but the written out pattern used very old-fashioned knitting language. This pattern uses three different words just to indicate the same thing; a simple yarnover – yfwd, yon, yfrn.

Somebody really needs to tell these people that yfrn (yarn in front of needle) is now a term used when we’re doing Brioche knitting.

I found this irritating, but I thought “Let’s at least give them credit for bringing back to life an old knitting pattern, even if they can’t be bothered to update it in a manner that is more accessible to the modern knitter.”

But then, I realized, I had seen this pattern before. In designer Shui Kuen Kozinski‘s Moonlight Sonata Scarf or Shawl, available from Elann. She acknowledges Barbara Walker who published the stitch pattern as Sunspots in the Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns – Charted Knitting Designs.

I have no idea if the Rowan people knew about the Barbara Walker pattern or not. They probably should know this as Barbara Walker is considered one of the giants of the handknitting craft in the English speaking world.

The pattern for the Moonlight Sonata Shawl adapts the stitch pattern into a top-down triangular shawl in a clever and beautiful fashion. It is available in both written and charted formats. The Rowan pattern is basically a giant straight-edged swatch, nothing of particular accomplishment in the adaptation of the design.

So here we have our latest in the “Separated at Birth” series:

Fragile Lace Wrap by designer Lisa Richardson, knitted on 2.5 mm needles in Rowan Fine Lace, and the Moonlight Sonata shawl from designer Shui Kuen Kozinski knitted on 4.0 mm needles with Elann Peruvian Baby Silk.

I have made my own chart adaptation of this stitch pattern as a swatch with no shaping bordered by 3 garter stitchs on each selvedge edge. Here is the chart, hopefully this will make the pattern easier for others to knit, if you’re like me and love charts. I’m going to enjoy swatching with this and seeing the pattern’s reversibility. I’d also be curious to see what difference it makes if the  center oval is St st rather than the garter st in the current design.