Entrelac or "Go Jump in the Lake if you think this is going to be easy!"

 

"Oh that looks nice and simple, I'll give it a go!" are words that will come back to haunt you if you're a yarn-wrangler who thinks that every technique is there to be mastered, and will look exactly like the example pictures or videos on a knitting tutorial. 

Most of last week I found myself trying to knit Entrelac. This is a fantastic knitting method where alternate rows of squares are knitted at angles to each other. It starts with a set of base triangles (or woolly quavers in my case!) and involves some fairly tricky techniques to get things to look like they're interwoven (or interlocked, hence the name). 

The first thing I found when researching patterns is how many mistakes there are in even the best sites' versions of the Entrelac method. 

Not only that, there seems to be a distinct split between folk who like to start out on the knit side, and those who like to start out purling. 

I found my go-to site, Spruce Crafts had the best tutorial and pattern but yep even they lost the plot when

it came to the row counts later on in the pattern description (see section four as an example, the row count goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 4, 6 etc, eeeek!) And that would probably tell you all you need to know about this method - it is certainly not 'mindless knitting'. 

Some other patterns clearly wrote "Knit" when they meant "Purl" and vice versa. It's almost as if those who have mastered the technique wanted to keep it secret, so threw some clangers in there to catch noobs like me out!

I had four goes at Entrelac and as I started to understand the technique a bit more, it made me think about how difficult picking up stitches is unless you've got an entirely uniform edge. Also how difficult it is to undo a mistake if you get so far into the pattern and realise that as the fabric begins to take shape, you messed up a previous row. At that point it's unpicking time, because this pattern is very unforgiving (the example to the right there was one that just went totally haywire, looking like a badly made french loaf!)

Eventually though I persevered. I wrote the pattern out long form into my knitting and crochet notebook and begang to get better at keeping those triangles and rectangles uniform. 

The example to the left was probably my neatest attempt but even with this one you can see plenty of holes and gaps where the picked up stitches weren't quite bound tightly enough. 

I like this technique though. I doubt I'd ever have the patience to actually make a scarf or a blanket with it (god knows how people turn out the beautiful entrelac work that they do, they must have the skills of a ninja and the patience of a saint!)

Two things really helped me when using this technique...

1) Working on slightly finer needles seemed to keep things more tight, and looking better (the example on the left)

2) Religiously concentrating - and the best example was done on a day when my wife and daughter weren't around to interrupt my stitch counting! Can you tell?

The example to the right was my last attempt, this time going for multiple different colours to help those squares and triangles stand out. 

Unfortunately this makes all those mistakes and wonky bits stand out all the more, so again hats off to folk who make this look so neat and so easy. 

I used a combination of different yarns (mostly Paintbox) and again it pays to use half decent stuff because picking up stitches with anything too wispy and stranded is a nightmare. 

Overall I'm pleased with the progress here and I still keep thinking I'd like another go at this but for now I'm happy to just get back to some 'normal' knitting and crochet. It was quite a challenge.