Notes on the Nature of Yarn, both Superwash and Non-

As I mentioned the other day, the Moyen Age is all done.  Since that post, I washed the sweater and "blocked" it.  (I say "blocked" because it didn't require any stretching or pinning; I just laid it out and smoothed all the wrinkles and left it to dry.)

This was on Sunday afternoon.  By Tuesday morning, it was clear that the sweater, post-washing, was too big.  I tried it on, and yep.  There went that careful fit.

So what did I do?

I threw it in the dryer.

No, really.

We are all taught that the dryer is death, danger, and disaster for yarn, especially non-superwash yarn.  But the truth is that the dryer itself is not the enemy.  The enemies of untreated yarn are heat and agitation, which cause it to shrink and felt and turn that expensive cashmere sweater into a cat bed.  Judiciously applied, however, heat and agitation can help you achieve your goals.

In this case, I knew that the sweater fit when it was dry, before the stitches had relaxed.  (Silk will do that.)  So what I needed was just a soupçon of felting, essentially; I needed the stitches to shrink up a bit so they would fit properly again.  I removed my dryer balls (eco-friendly alternative to dryer sheets!) and in the sweater went.  My dryer doesn't have a specific heat setting, but the last ten minutes are a "cool down" stage, so I set the time for about fifteen minutes so I would have a few minutes of good heat.  Then I let it go for about seven minutes, pulled out the sweater, and voilà!  Perfect fit.  (Apparently I am French today.)

This got me thinking.  I have a cardigan I knit last summer that needed washing (I wore it to bake in, flour EVERYWHERE), and I already had the bowl and everything out.  So I plopped that one in to soak and went back to my busy schedule of haunting the Ravelry forums.  Once it was nice and clean, I dumped it in the washer.

No, really.

See, unlike the Moyen Age, this is worsted-weight 100% wool, which means it soaks up a ton of water.  I could roll it out in a towel, but why bother when the washer is right there?  So I put it in the washer and ran it on the spin cycle for about a minute.  "But wait," you may be saying, "heat and agitation!"  First, no water means no temperature change, and second, the agitation caused by the spin cycle on a washer isn't the kind that will cause felting in the short term (the fibers don't rub back and forth on each other but are pressed together by the motion).  And third, this sweater is superwash, so I have even more confidence that it won't felt.

In fact, after I took it out of the washer, I popped it right into the dryer.  As superwash tends to, this sweater stretches when wet, and I want it as small as I can get it.  So I put it in a lingerie bag to protect the buttons (I'd already turned it inside out before putting it in the washer, too) and threw it in for about an hour.  Then I took it out, laid it out on the table, and let it dry fully overnight.  Easy-peasy.

These solutions won't work for every sweater or knitted item, of course.  But they're worth considering if you need to get the water out of something or shrink it up just that little bit.  Don't fear your tools!

And here, have a picture of the sweater.  (The Irishman is a terrible photographer.  But it's a nice sweater regardless.)

Green Is Happening

Pattern: Mystery KAL from my LYS


Yarn: Knit Picks Shimmer (70/30 baby alpaca/silk), 440 yds/50g skein, colorway "Shallows."


Needles: US 5/3.75mm.


Modifications: Two extra repeats of clues 4 and 5, shortened the smocked mesh section and went directly to the picot bind-off instead of working the ruffled hem.

Model: one of my obliging housemates. They're very used to my oddities by now.

Year of the Sock: March

Well, I'm technically a day behind, but that's not bad at all. At lunch today (after the menus and before the food), I finished the second Twisted Angles sock.


Yarn: Malabrigo Sock (440 yds/100g, 100% superwash merino), colorway "Archangel."


I made several alterations to the pattern. I felt the Malabrigo was so soft and loosely plied that it needed to be knit at a very tight gauge. Since I'm a loose knitter, this mean size US00/1.75mm needles. For the same reason, I substituted a slip-stitch heel for the regular garter-bordered heel written in the pattern.


Since the feet were biasing so badly, I used a French toe. It alleviates the problem by dividing the foot stitches into thirds instead of halves.


And a fabulous pair of socks. Happy birthday to their lucky recipient . . . who shall remain nameless for now!

Sweater Frustrations

I'm trying to knit myself a sweater. And it is not going well.

You may remember the beautiful alpaca I obtained in Kansas. There should be more than enough to knit myself a nice cardigan. If I can EVER get mother-loving GAUGE.

Gauge is one of the more frustrating parts of knitting for me. I'm a very loose knitter (here I must pause to say "hur hur" because the Irishman isn't here), so there's never any point in following indicated needle sizes. On a side note, is it just me, or are ball band instructions frequently from some other reality? I would never knit dk weight on a size 7 needle unless I was making lace.

Anyway, this poses a problem when it comes to knitting fitted garments, especially ones for myself. As I've mentioned from time to time, I'm a big girl. While I'm personally comfortable with my ample proportions, it does make knitting sweaters for myself a much more time-consuming task than knitting them for babies or skinnier friends (SQ I am looking at you!) I've only ever knit one sweater for myself (the Boyfriend Sweater from Hip to Knit).

So it's very frustrating to be putting all this time into knitting a single freakin' sleeve. First there was the gauge thing. I finally got a gauge I could live with, put together a nice little design, and started knitting a sleeve. I was probably six or seven inches along. Then, one night as I was drifting off to sleep, I had a vision.

And that vision said "garter stitch!" So I ripped the damn thing out AGAIN. Argh.

But now it is humming along. For the moment, at least.

(Incidentally, my vision lied. It meant to say "seed stitch!")

Not-So-Magical Möbius

I don't know if this happens to other knitters, but I'm perpetually promising knitwear to people in order to prevent them from making bad decisions. Me and my housemate were at a chain clothing store when he fingered a machine-knit monstrosity and said, thoughtfully, "I should buy a scarf." I hastily promised him a scarf just to keep this from happening . . . which of course meant that I then had to make one, really and for true.

The wool he chose was this (on the right), a gift from SQ back when she was living in China. (Incidentally, yarn gifts are always welcome, but they will be hoarded for years until I judge them sufficiently mature. I can't just KNIT yarn that I'm given, that would be wasteful. Somehow. In my head. I guess.) It's very nice stuff. But there isn't a ton of it, and I knew I couldn't get anymore.

Because said housemate is a theoretical physicist, I of course had to knit him a möbius. I mean, duh. But traditional möbius construction just wouldn't work for this scarf. Not enough yarn! So I had to cheat and graft the ends together. It makes me a little sad. Maybe I should knit another möbius the real way, just for the hell of it.

On the other hand, I like the look of this one, don't you?

The pattern is coming very soon, but in the meantime . . .

Yarn: Zhonghua Wool (60/40 wool/acrylic . . . we think, 100g/skein), probably about 150 yards. Needles: US size 8/5.00.

Solutions for Sock Snafus

I finished the Be Mine socks--aren't they gorgeous?

I'm quite a loose knitter, and I never swatch for socks. I mean, they're socks. By the time you've knit a swatch, you've knit half a sock anyway. This means, though, that my socks come out a little larger than the pattern would predict. That's actually pretty handy; I have big feet, so if I knit the women's medium, they're usually perfect for my high insteps. This can lead to issues with row gauge, however, and such was the case here.

I didn't care how long the calves turned out (after all, high socks aren't a bad thing), but I was faced with a problem when it came to the feet. I knew that two heart cable repeats would be too short, but three repeats plus the toe as written would be too long for me. (And by extension, the friend whose Christmas present these are. We have near-identical feet.) The solution?

A French toe! I love French toes. They're the best way to make sure you can squeeze in an extra pattern repeat, yet still make socks that fit. I especially liked how they looked with this pattern--see how neat and swirly? If I were to do things over, the only thing I'd change would be to continue purling between the front decreases all the way up to the end of the toe, which would have been some awesome design congruence. But they look quite fetching anyway, I think!

Yarn: knitswithsticks Wullenstudio (75/25 wool/nylon, 450 yd/skein). Size 2/2.75 mm needles.

Pattern: "Be Mine" socks from 2-at-a-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. Modifications: on feet, worked three cable repeats plus a French toe (from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush.)

It is so hard to take pictures of one's own feet. I enlisted the Irishman for the effort. He can't take a picture to save his life (I honestly don't know how; my camera is as basic as it can possibly be), but he does do his best. I love him anyway.

Awesome hat

I designed and knit this hat over the Thanksgiving holiday. It's based on one sold at Old Navy; I reverse-engineered that hat, but didn't have quite enough yarn to make an identical version. I improvised, and I think it worked out very well.

The yarn was a gift from Superquail when she was living in China; it's 100% acryllic in a super-bulky-weight. Beyond that, I know nothing. I ran short on that, so I rummaged in the stash and came up with leftovers from a hat I made for Aspen a long time ago. I remember that it was 100% wool (very similar to Lambs Pride in the way it knits up) and handpainted, but I got nothing else. I finished the top of the hat in that and then Swiss-embroidered it over all the knit stitches in one row to make it look like I'd done it all on purpose. Here's a shot of the hat in use:


I'm quite pleased with myself. Now to decide whether I want to give it away or wear it myself . . .

Adaptions

As you can see from the sidebar, this year I'm a member of Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Rockin' Sock Club. I finally got around to the January kit last week. (Don't judge me.)

The socks as pictured were gorgeous, but they were beaded. I'd started knitting the pattern as written (mostly) but was wondering if I would ever wear beaded socks. Then my friend B left a note on my Facebook page, saying she was thinking about fingerless mitts, "something like this sans finger bits." Cue lightbulb moment.

After a lot of trial and error, this is what I came up with:


I'd never knit with beads before, but I recommend it. It's fun!


On the trial and error note, I couldn't make head or tail out of the cast-on for this pattern as written. I don't know if I'm just dim or what, but after three or four attempts at it, I gave up and used my usual method.

Mitt two is on the needles, and I'm thinking of what to do next. So much knitting, so little time.

Socks, deconstructed

I thought Ily's comment about sock thickness on my last post deserved further discussion. She remarked: "I've always been a little confused by knitted socks, since all the ones I've seen are too thick to fit inside shoes. Did you manage to solve that problem?"

The answer is: yes, through the magic of weight and gauge. There are many "weights" of yarn, ranging from laceweight to super bulky.* Many novelty socks are knit in bulky or worsted-weight yarn, making them unsuitable for wear with regular shoes. (Socks knit with worsted are often called "boot socks.") The trick is getting special sock yarn, which is very, very small indeed. Sock yarn is the next step up from laceweight, a category generally called "fingering weight." Proper sock yarn is distinguished from regular old fingering weight by its blend of fibers. Compare the labels.

The Baby Ull is 100% wool, the Fortissima is 75% cotton, 25% polyamide. Even the most diehard, natural-fiber freak has to use a yarn specifically made for socks (or reinforce the chosen yarn with special thread)--otherwise the sock won't hold its shape or stand up to wear and washing. So proper sock yarn is a) fingering-weight and b) made of the right stuff. You can see that the Tofutsies I used for the Waving Lace socks is very skinny indeed. Here it's superimposed next to a random worsted-weight yarn.

The other aspect of making socks to fit is gauge. If you knit very light yarn on comparatively large needles, you get a loose, open fabric: the principle behind knitting lace. (More on this later.) In order to get a fabric that will work for socks, you have to knit sock yarn on the proper needles, which are very. very. small. The Waving Lace socks were knit on size 1/2.25 mm needles; most socks are knit on 0/2.00 mm, 1, or 2/2.75 mm needles. Here's a size 0 needle next to a dime, for comparison.

When sock yarn is knit on small needles, the result is a thin, dense fabric that holds its shape after washing. Yay, socks! Generally, these socks will be too thick for wear with women's dress shoes but just fine for wear with sneakers or everyday shoes. Fun fact: back when handmade socks were still the norm, many were knit on teeny-tiny needles, the equivalent of today's sizes 000/1.5 mm or 0000/1.25 mm.** And you thought socks were too fiddly to knit nowadays.

So, long story short, yes, these socks are thin enough to wear with regular shoes, and so are most that I make these days. My initial sock experiments were thicker (and quicker)--SQ's socks, for example, were made of a bulky chenille that couldn't be worn with shoes. (Or did you ever try, SQ? Inquiring minds want to know!)

*I may have to restrain myself physically from ordering when Posh Yarns restocks next week. Must . . . resist . . . laceweight . . .

**I got this from Knitting Vintage Socks, by Nancy Bush. If you mention it at a cocktail party and the next guy over happens to be an expert on antique knits or needle manufacture or something, tell him that that's what SHE says.