I hate admitting defeat for anything. I loathe it but I just rage quit my test swatch of the Bixbite Shawl because I can’t figure out the brioche. Never done brioche before so yeah, that’s not helping anything here.
What project kicked your ass?
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but after… 12? 14? years of knitting, I was recently finally ready to make an adult-sized sweater. Picked out a simple design by Regina Moesmer (sp?), and after reading through the pattern, decided I wanted a folded, double layer collar instead of the simple ribbed collar in the pattern. I’ve done that on hats, how hard could it be? Couldn’t find the instructions for how I’ve done it in the past, so found new instructions and got to work. Seemed to go well, reduced to the number of stitches I needed to start the main body of the sweater. Tried to get it over my head, and it had all of the stretch of a 2 inch steel cable. Frogged and tried again. Same thing. Frogged and tried with bigger needles. Same thing. Frogged and tried with somewhat different instructions. Same thing.
Wtf is happening? I have hats that use the same technique, that will stretch to over twice their original circumference! What am I doing differently to make this fail so badly? The sweater has been in time out for months now, while I resign myself to doing the original k1p1 collar. 😡
What cast on are you using?
I used the one where you do a provisional cast on (I used crochet, I think… need to keep better notes apparently) with 2x the number of stitches you want to end up with, knit the first row, slipping every second stitch, then purling the next row, slipping the already knit stitches. When it’s the right length, remove the provisional cast on and k2tog all around. I could’ve sworn that’s how I did my hats. Do you have any idea of where that would go wrong?
Forgot to mention that you have my sympathy for that brioche shawl, lol. Is it one of the two colour ones? I tried that, just in a swatch, and gave up in disgust about 6 rows in. Fiddly lace is no problem, but apparently brioche and simple collars are too much, haha.
Haha, I forgot to respond about the shawl. It’s a three color shawl with different two-color brioche areas. It’s this one: Bixbite Shawl which appears two-color but it’s three-color.
It’s a stunning shawl and I haven’t given up completely yet. Learning the brioche is hard for me for some reason. I can’t even guess why it’s such a block, not that I think it’s easy or anything. But I feel like I’m learning knitting all over again instead of just a few new stitches. It’s bizarre.
I saw the shawl on Fraoc Knits vlog and fell in love. I had one skein already and bought more yarn that I don’t want to use for anything else. We’ll see how thing pans out.
It really is a beautiful pattern! Hope the next round goes more smoothly for you, it’s weird how sometimes our brains just say “nope” to a new technique.
I made some popcorn earlier to think about your dilemma. Crunching and thinking are a good combo for me. I kept thinking that, and I’m probably wrong, on a hat, you are binding it to more ribbing (maybe??) and so it was being attached to another stretchy fabric. Whereas binding it to stockinette stops it short of any further flexibility and the caston edge IS like steel really.
But if you were making a hat like a kep or other stockinette style, that theory goes right out the window.
Andrea Mowry has a good provisional folded collar video. I’ll edit this and link it here in a sec as I’m currently on my cell phone.
Andrew Mowry’s Top down folded collar join
I hope a knitting master chimes in with the cause because this is going to bother me and I want to know the answer.
Thanks, I should try again with that one. I don’t think the final result is any different than the way I was doing it, but clearly omething funky was happening! If I wasn’t so fed up with it, I’d take a close look at my hats to see if I could figure out what I did there.
Edit-The hats were just stockinette beanies, so there’s no difference there. It’s a puzzle.
As someone who has been considering trying to learn brioche for my next knitting project this will probably also be me in a few weeks. I have the rispen hat and cowl pattern that I bought years ago and have been too intimidated to start it. Please share if you find any methods or resources that work for you!
Oh, the Rispen are beautiful! Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.
All I have are the YouTube videos that apply to the specific stitches that are in my pattern but I’ll certainly let you know if anything of them help. I tend to like Andrea Mowry tuts and she has a whole playlist for brioche. That’s where I’m starting. A main sticking point for me is getting them to stay in my head. I feel like I need to sit next to someone to learn this but I’ll keep plugging.
Thank you! I am bookmarking this immediately! I’m going to start with a a practice square from a scarf pattern I found first I think since the tree shape in rispen is intimidating before I even know straight brioche stitches.
I have to finish my Free Spirit Hat first though which made me learn Latvian braids.
I spent part of the morning looking for stuff that made more sense to me. Turns out, Stephen West has some killer resources and two in particular help both you and I.
They are the first two vids in the playlist I’m creating here: Brioche Knitting
Seems to me that increase/decrease video is exactly what you (and I) need. Also turns out, I didn’t screw it up yesterday. It just LOOKED screwed up. Too bad I ripped it out hahaha! I’m going to start over.
I’ve heard the sentiment a lot that often brioche looks like it’s wrong but works itself out and you have to keep going so I’m both intimated and excited for my crafting perfectionism to either be a huge roadblock to learning or to give me freedom to mess up and not feel bad about it.
Thank you for the resources! I am going to take a look at these and hopefully start tinkering soon.
Please keep us updated on your project! Would love to see it when you’ve got it going again!
Stopping back to say I learned it. It was the Stephen West that did it. I paid for and downloaded his Brioche Soundwaves pattern and used it as my learning tool. It worked.
Now I’m just practicing, still using Soundwaves.
I have two sleeves to finish on my Dreyma and then it’s on to Bixbite.
Good luck to you!
