Blocking Yarn with Acrylic Content

Can it be done? My answer is yes. Should it be done? Also yes!

I teach a 3 hour blocking class and I am pretty evangelical about blocking. Blocking is the closest thing to magic I’ve found in the world of knitting (unless you count actual spinning – because fluff into yarn is pretty amazing). It is a very rare project that I would say “eh, you don’t need to block that”. I mean, it happens but not often.

Which brings us to acrylic content yarn. Acrylic is plastic. You can get it as wet as you want and there will be no penetration of the fibers. Wet blocking can clean acrylic projects but it doesn’t really do any actual blocking. And when you have blends with acrylic it really fights with you about the blocking. It inhibits the process. But I have read a bit about heat blocking acrylic and it fascinates me.

I received a fun blend of cotton and acrylic from Kraemer Yarns called Tatamy Tweed DK and I decided to go a wee bit mad scientist on it. It is 45% Cotton and 55% Acrylic, which makes it machine washable and that is a major plus for many projects. I knit four swatches and messed about with them a bit.

The first swatch is the “control” (proper sciencing here). I knit it and took it off the needles. Bing, bang, boom.

Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK Unblocked

The second swatch I blocked using a hot steam iron (no actual physical contact – that would be melty) to see if it would work and it did. But could I leave well enough alone? Nooooooo. I had my husband throw it in the washing machine and then into the dryer. I was not nice to this swatch. It received no special treatment. I think the dryer was on permanent press.

Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK, Heat/Steam blocked & Washed

It shrank a bit but overall it did hold out some of the lace and looks pretty good. As long as you take into account the shrinkage I think this is a viable care technique. You would probably get less shrinkage if you were more careful with the temp of the drying.

Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK, Wet Blocked

For the third swatch I used wet blocking. The yarn bloomed a good bit and drew back some after unpinning. I speculate that this is the acrylic content having a bit of an argument with the cotton about where it wants to be. But it looks nice. I am guessing it will have to be reblocked after each hand washing.

Kraemer Tatamy Tweed, Heat/Steam Blocked

And finally I steam blocked the fourth swatch on camera so that y’all could see how heat/steam blocking works! In short, you pin the knitting out to the final size you want and then use a steam iron to heat set the stitches. You hold the iron about a half of an inch above the surface of the yarn and allow the heat and steam to permeate the fibers. Move slowly and make sure the yarn heats up. When I unpinned it there was no movement and the lace stayed crisp and clear.

So there you have it. You can indeed block yarn with acrylic content. In fact there are several options. To see the heat/steam blocking in action and hear further analysis of my experiment check out the video on Watch Barbara Knit.

I called this Swatch Lab and hopefully it will be the first of many of this style of video. Please let me know in the comments if you like this idea and if you have any suggestions for future yarn experiments.

Secret Shopper Unboxing

Hmm, I hadn’t realized that I had missed blogging last week – things have been absolutely a whirlwind. If you have subscribed to my YouTube channel you will know that I have posed several videos since last we chatted. I am not going to put them all here but I will link them.

I added a tutorial on how to do the Cross Stitch Mock Cable featured in my Cross stitch Mock Cable Hat. And then we had a wee chat about how much I love Knitting Bags. Finally, for my release of a new pattern Corundum Ridge I uploaded a pattern tour (this pattern will get its own blog post later this week).

All of this is leading up to the video I posted today, which is another Unboxing video. I had a load of fun doing the first unboxing of my gradient yarn & beads and I want to keep doing this style of video. But I needed a twist.

So what I came up with (with help from my friend Heather Zoppetti) is the idea of doing a Secret Shopper. What happens is that I have a friend shop for a knitting related product that they think is awesome and have it secretly shipped directly to me. And then you get to see the surprise at the same time that I do!

I don’t want to spoil the surprise before you watch the video – but I am beyond pleased with my first shipment. What do you think?

I will have to recruit additional shoppers for future months, I am going to try and do one of these every month (I would do it more frequently but that would get pretty expensive). If you have any ideas of who you would like to see shop for me (within reason) I would love to hear them.

Cabling without a Cable Needle

I love wee cables. Something about the texture and sinuous nature of only a couple of stitches wrapping around each other just makes me happy. Possibly it is just part and parcel of a general attraction for cute little things, but whatever – I own it.

The cables on the edge of In Uffish Thought are a perfect example.

What I don’t like is doing lots of small-ish cables using a cable needle. All that picking it up and putting it down? I end up with it in my teeth, or jammed into my hair, or stuffed in my cleavage … you know how it is. So I don’t. Use a cable needle that is. I cable without a cable needle, seems like an obvious solution, eh?

And you know what? It isn’t hard or scary and it is the subject of my latest video. If you would like to learn how to do it yourself (or just see if how I do it is different from how you do it) check it out!

If you have a technique that you would like to see me demonstrate, please drop it in the comments of the video or this here bloggie blog.

The Norwegian Purl – Watch me knit

As promised, I have managed to upload a video on how I purl.

It went live this morning at 8:00 am because I wanted to make sure I understood how the “scheduling” feature of YouTube worked. You know, on the off chance I ever get really motivated and get ahead of myself. Yeah, yeah, you can stop laughing at me.

Back in the day, when I was first learning how to knit, I really despised purling. It was slow, cumbersome and it broke up any flow I had going. It was so frustrating that I was getting to the point where knitting wasn’t fun anymore. Anything I was working on was languishing and I was on the verge of moving on to something different. But before I could abandon knitting altogether I stumbled across a mention on Ravelry of the Norwegian style of purling.

Of course I then went off to search the web and watched a dozen different videos on YouTube on how to do the Norwegian purl. One of them finally clicked and I found it much, much easier than a traditional Continental purl. I don’t think it is particularly “better” per se, there is a great deal more movement and I don’t know that it will increase your speed – but for me it is easier.

With this video I figured out what was going on with the black bits along the edge and I addressed that problem. In the next video (whatever that turns out to be) I think I am going to try and add some subtle music. Not for the whole time, I don’t want it to be distracting. But I thought that at the beginning and end might be nice.

Any requests for what you would like to see in a video?

Anatomy of Cable Abbreviations, part two

I seriously had to resist naming this post “part Deaux” or  “Abbreviations Reloaded” or “The Cable Strikes Back” … I am just full of the silly.

Onward and upward!

Cable/cross two right

Diving right back into crossing cables – we are now looking at Right and Left cables.

To start off with, these are 100%, absolutely identical to the Front and Back cables in execution, we are just looking at different nomenclature. Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe as one says. Now for the break down

1. C – once again letting you know you are fixin’ to cable or “cross” your stitches. This is the same as understanding that ‘k’ is telling you to knit and ‘p’ is telling you to purl.
2. A Number – nothing new here. This is letting you know how many stitches are involved in your upcoming cable. In this case you will be crossing 2 stitches, but how? (As usual, if the number is even it is assumed that you will split the stitches evenly.)
3. Direction – here is where things are changed up. With Front and Back you are being told what to do with the stitches. Left and Right lets you know what the end appearance of the cable will be after you have completed the stitch swap. Yeah. I know. It is time for a picture

A Right Cable

 

 

What you see to the right is a Right crossing cable. The black arrow represents the stitches moving to the front and the brown arrow is the stitches moving to the back. Right is referring to the direction of movement of the stitches that are held to the front of the work. The arrows show the directionality of the stitches. When considering the constituent stitches of the cable (here there are a total of two stitches) you are moving the left-most stitch to the front and over the right-most stitch.

Try to remember: in a Right cable the front stitches move from left to Right.

Cable One over Two Left

A left Cable

As in the Back/Front cables, you can also have an uneven number of stitches and the abbreviation works pretty much the same way.

1. C – I think you might have this by now. C = this is a cable. You, dear knitter will be cabling before you know it!
2. A Number – remember, this is not a fraction. The / symbol should be read as “over”, so this tells you that it is a one over two cable. If you were passing two stitches over one then the number would be written 2/1.
3. Direction – this is a Left cable so you know that your end result is a cable where the front stitch(es) appear to twist to the Left. In the case of this stitch you already know from the number that your single stitch is passing over the other two stitches. Because this is a Left cable that means that the first stitch is held to the front, you knit the next two stitches and then the held stitch. The single stitch is passing from the right to the Left. If you follow the diagram to the right you can see the black arrow representing the direction the front stitches move.

For a Left cable try to remember that the front stitches mover from the right to the Left.

Now, I find the Left/Right naming convention to be considerably more confusing than the Front/Back, but to each their own. Whatever clicks the best in your brain you just go for it! If you need to draw parallels between the two styles of naming you can try to remember that Right = Back and Left = Front. My mnemonic for that is R&B. For some reason my musical nature always associates R&B together (Rhythm and Blues anyone?) so I can remember that R(ight) goes with B(ack).

Incidentally, this is the same way I remember how to work a Right leaning increase. When you want your M1 to lean right you pick the strand up from the back. R&B just go together (in my crazy brain). Do you have any knitting mnemonics?

Anatomy of Cable Abbreviations

My newest project has been working on cables. For some reason lace came instinctively to me. YO = hole. Big circle on a chart = hole. Even the basic increase and decrease abbreviations and symbols made complete sense. (Well, I admit to having a bit of difficulty remembering which of ssk vs k2tog leaned which way) But cables are a challenge.

Not precisely a challenge to actually knit , I can follow instructions just fine. But to truly internalize what all of the symbols mean – well, that has taken some time. And I don’t know that I can say with 100% certainty that I have got it. Hopefully I am close. While writing a pattern I have had to come to a concrete decision on one particular issue. Abbreviations. I have to pick a style and stick with it, and there lies the conundrum.

Are the two kinds of cable crosses Front/Back or Right/Left. They both mean the same thing but represent two different ways of thinking about things. To prevent any suspense, I settled on Front/Back because that is what makes the most sense to me. But there really isn’t a correct way of doing it. As long as I remain consistent I hope that everything will work out all right.

To the subject at hand. For now I don’t want to address reading cables on a chart. It isn’t that difficult to find guides to reading charted cables, but when I started really looking online to find somewhere that breaks down understanding the abbreviations used in written instructions for cabling – well, I came up a bit short. I am going to put this out there, and it is my understanding of how it all works. If I have erred at some point, please do not hesitate to let me know personally or in the comments. As I said, I have come to grips with cables through a difficult path and I might have miss-stepped along the way.

The best way to understand how to cross a cable is to read the instructions provided in the pattern. A good pattern writer will describe how you are to execute the cable based on the abbreviation they use. That being said, I would like to arm you with the ability to suss out what the cable means if you are in a situation where details are unavailable. Onward (allonz-y)!

Cable Two Back

This is what a basic cable abbreviation looks like. The specific cable illustrated would be written out Cable Two Back. The abbreviation can be broken down into three elements – which I have labeled as such.

1. C – this big ole c starting things off announces, “Hey, we are fixin’ to cable!”. Some say that the C stands for cable others that the C stands for cross. Regardless, when you see the C prepare yourself to cable.
2. A Number – the number tells you how many stitches are involved. (edited for accuracy, for original see*) In this example there are two stitches involved which will be crossing one over one. You could also see C4B – which would indicate crossing 2 over 2, C6B … and so forth.
3. Direction – this tells you whether you are crossing Front or Back. This letter can be one of four options B, F, R or L. For now we are sticking to F & B, specifically looking at a Back cross. When dealing with the Front/Back naming system you are being instructed what to do with the first stitches you come to. With Back this tells you that the first 2 stitches of your 4 stitch cable will be held to the Back of the work, the next two stitches will be knit (and therefore cross to the front of the work) and then you will knit the stitches from the cable needle.

If there is no number, meaning that you have run across the abbreviation CB or CF, then you can safely assume that it is a 1/1 cable. With CB you would hold the first stitch to the back knit the next stitch and then knit the held stitch. With CF you would hold the first stitch to the front knit the next stitch and then knit the held stitch. Pretty much C2B and CB mean the same thing. Capiche?

Cable One over Two Front

But what do we have here? There appears to be a fraction in the middle of my cable! Looks can be deceiving, there is no fraction (waves hand). It is a different kind of cable.

1. Why hello there Mr. C – you are once again telling me that we shall be cabling forthwith.
2. A Number – but what a strange looking number indeed. When you see this notation it is telling you that you have an uneven cross. It is not a fraction but instead the number of stitches that you are working with (as above). This particular one is a One over Two cross. The number in the first position tells you how many stitches will be at the Front of the work and the second number tells you how many stitches will travel behind, regardless of whether or not it is a Front or Back cross because …
3. Direction – and here we have a Front cross. As I said above this tells you what to do with the first stitches you encounter. You will have to do a little figuring with this. You have a 1/2 cross which means that you know that you will need to be holding 1 stitch to the front of the work and crossing two stitches behind – but in what order? The Front tells you “Hey, the first stitch you come to goes to the Front!” so you would take the first stitch, hold it to the front of your work, knit the next two stitches and then knit the held stitch. The reflected version of this stitch is C1/2B. Reading it you would hear “Hey the first stitch(es) you come to go to the Back!” and since it is a 1/2 Cross (where you know the single stitch always goes to the Front) you would hold the first two stitches to the Back knit the next stitch, and then knit the two held stitches.

These uneven crosses are usually an uneven number 2/3, 1/2 but they can be an even number of stitches that are worked unevenly. You could conceivably run across a C3/1B, a 4 stitch cable where you have three stitches passing in front of a single stitch. At times you may also see a notation such as C2/2F which would mean the exact same thing as C4F – only more spelled out.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell. As long as you remember the 3 distinct sections of a cable abbreviation you should be able to be able to read a set of written instructions for a cabled piece.  I had planned on explaining the Right/Left notation and how it differs from Back/Front in this post but this has gotten a bit long and it might be enough to ponder for now. There will be a Part Two of this post coming in the next few days that will hopefully clear things up.

If you have any questions, please feel free to pipe up and I will do my best to figure it out! If I can answer the question in the comments I will, but if not it might show up in Part Two!

Part Two is live and you can read it here.

 

*Originally I had the following “If the number is even then it is actually telling you that the number of stitches that you will be working with is actually double the number shown. In this example the number is 2, so you will be making a 4 stitch cable – 2 crossed over two. (More on this in a wee bit.)”  Because I have see cables written like that. After CatBrown (thank you!) made her excellent observation in the comments I did a bit more digging and found that this is the less common way of doing things. As I said – the best thing to do is read the instructions in your pattern.

If that isn’t working out, consider the context of your pattern. If you have a picture take a look at it. If it looks like a big honkin’ cable and your instructions are C4F then most likely it is 4 over 4 as opposed to a 2 over 2. The lack of standardization can be frustrating at times!

Blog Love

I read a lot of blogs, no exaggeration needed. Enough that when I just went and opened up my Feedly window and it didn’t count them for me I realized that I didn’t want to count them.

Obviously I read a load of knitting/yarn blogs, but I also have about the same number of food blogs that I follow. And then there are the ones I have sorted into the “inspirational” category that are mostly fashion and design blogs. You never know where inspiration is going to arise, so I have things like but does it float, Design*Sponge, and NOTCOT that I peruse every couple of days.

If you have any knitting, food or design blogs that you think are particularly inspirational, educational, or fun I would love to hear about them in the comments!

With knitting blogs, I particularly like educational posts where experienced knitters pass on tips and tricks, I collect these on a Pinterest board named Knitting Stitches and Techniques that you might want to follow. But I thought I would share a couple of my favorites here too!

Some medium/advanced tips:

Needle Material Affects Gauge

This fantastic post from Alexis Windslow provides the best explanation and proof on how your needles can change what gauge you get. Bookmark this now.

Knitted on Border – How to

Miriam Felton provides a photographic, step-by-step explanation of how to work a knitted on border. You will be empowered after looking at this.

Yes you CAN

…fix a twist when knitting in the round! Wise Hilda works magic on working in the round, showing you how to fix a twist after you have joined to work in the round (but before you start your second round).

And a couple of simple, but awesome tips:

Use a Side Marker

A simple idea that can save you a boat load of time and frustration from Tamara Goff

Carrying yarn while switching colors

Not that the PurlBee needs any more traffic to their awesome blog, but this is something that is often taken for granted and rarely explained. When you carry yarns while knitting stripes – how exactly do you do that?

 

 

Lifting strands with slipped stitches

I got a new program. It is a fancy pants type drawing program, not as fancy as Illustrator, but fancy pants enough for me. Hopefully it will help make my patterns better, but first I have to figure out how. This need to figure led to a good bit of experimentation last week as I decided to make some illustrations for a class I was teaching.

The LYS that I work at (Lovin’ Knit) offered a class on my Roller Coaster Cowl and it was as crazy as the name of the cowl. I hope that my students learned something, I certainly did. I learn everything from every class I teach and hopefully improve for the next one. For the class I decided to use my new program to diagram one of the trickier techniques in the pattern – which involves lifting the strands of a slipped stitch. Since they worked so well I thought I would put a portion of it on here for the edification of the interwebs. It isn’t everything because I can’t give away all of the cowl’s secrets, can I?

But, to make up for the cards I am not playing, I have come up with some additional content that hopefully will help a few people out.

Read from right to left we have 5 knit stitches and 5 slipped stitches

So, first of lets look at the basic concept of lifting the strands that are created when you slip a stitch. In the above illustration I have shown six rows of fabric knitted in stockinette with slipped stitches. Reading as you knit (right to left) you have stockinette and then slipped stitches. The line by line description of the above, worked flat, would be:

Rows 1, 3, 5 – k5, s5 with yarn in front

Rows 2, 4, 6 – purl

As you can hopefully see, when you slip stitches with yarn held to front it forms a strand of yarn across the face of your knitting. It is important to hold the yarn lightly with tension so that you do not buckle your fabric. Once you have finished these rows you can then go back and lift these strands to create a decorative effect.

This is the left hand needle, the right hand needle is not shown.

To do this you insert your needle under the strands that are floating across the front of the fabric and lift the strands so that you can insert the needle to make a knit stitch. Pull the working yarn through just like when you make a knit stitch, extracting the new stitch out from underneath the lifted strands. Make sure that the new stitch has the same tension as the proceeding stitches which will cause the strands to pull up and look like a butterfly.

Got it?

The Roller Coaster cowl uses a similar, if slightly more challenging, technique. I found the stitch in one of Barbara Walker’s stitch dictionaries and it is called the “Dimple Stitch”. It creates a highly textured and buckled surface while at the same time making an interesting reverse side – elements that attracted me to using it in a cowl.

First lets look at the differences in these lifted stitches. First off, you are slipping the stitches purl-wise with yarn held to the back of the work. The illustration above is how the piece looks from the Wrong Side of the fabric. You can see that there are 3 purl stitches and then 3 stitches that are slipped for 3 rounds of knitting. The line by line description, worked in the round, would be:

Rounds 1, 2, 3 – k3, s3

Rounds 4, 5, 6 – knit

You are looking at the Wrong Side of the work here.

This is repeated and then you are to lift the floating strands. You will note that you are lifting the strands over a significantly further difference, which causes the fabric to buckle. This is on purpose and creates the “dimple” effect. There are two places in the sequence of rounds where you are lifting stitches. The first time you are purling the lifted stitches into the first column where there are slipped stitches and the second go-round you are purling the lifted stitches into the 3rd (and last) column where there are slipped stitches.

Yeah, that is hard to grok isn’t it?

We have shifted our view slightly to see the framing stitches.

This is why we need an illustration. Above you will see that we have the reverse of knit stitches on either side of our slipped stitches (again, we are looking at the Wrong Side). In this illustration I am showing the needle inserting in underneath the floating stitches, lifting the stitches up and then inserting purl-wise from the wrong side into the 3rd column of the slipped stitch grouping.

To accomplish this you need to have moved the yarn into purl position, tilt your work towards yourself so that you can see the back side of your work, and then you insert the needle from beneath the lifted strands. You lift up those strands and insert the needle from back to front through the front leg of the stitch and pull through your working yarn. The final tricky step is to pull that stitch out from under the three lifted stitches. With the right twist of your wrist you can pop that stitch out, but it is equally valid to use your left hand needle to pass the three lifted strands forward over the new stitch like you were doing a PSSO. However you accomplish it, you should end up with only the purl stitch on your right hand needle – tensioned as the stitches that are already on your needle.

The crazy thing is, this takes longer to explain than to execute. Once you have done it a couple of times it will be old hat. I hope that this might help some people out that might have difficulties with either lifting the strands for something like the Butterfly Stitch or who are wrestling with the Roller Coaster Cowl!

So, what do y’all think of my new program? Is this kind of thing helpful? Is there anything that you would like to see in the future?

Variegated

Pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but I have a thing for variegated yarns. In the skein they seduce you with their wild and beautiful colors and one must bring them home. Then they sit in your stash and you pet them lovingly, happy just to have them as part of your household.

Then you decide to knit something.

You wind them into something more usable and suddenly the beautiful skein has become a riot of colors, and you are wary. This is where the love affair frequently starts to go sour. You cast on and start to knit and everything is all wrong.  The colors obscure the pattern or the pattern is to simple and you get all kinds of wonky pooling.

It’s heartbreaking.

It’s why I started designing.

Lorna's Laces "Monkeyshines" is not everyone's cuppa ..

While I had knitted a prototype of Alia I had not yet knitted my own version of Lady Jessica. Once I saw the ones that my testers had finished – I had to have my own. When I went to the yarn store I decided to put my pattern to the test. I try very hard to design pieces that will look good in both solid and variegated yarns. Let’s see how I did?

The details - where variegated usually loses it.

Luckily I was pleased. This colorway is not to everyone’s liking – I have found that people either love it or border on hating it – luckily I am in the love category. Regardless of how you feel about the actual color, it will let you know if the pattern works in variegated. I have my own opinions – but would love to hear yours

A larger detail of the back

But what makes this work (assuming you think it does)? How can you look at a pattern and decide if it is a good candidate for a variegated yarn? There is no definitive answer, but I can tell you my opinions, what I look for. First off, if it is nothing but stockinette  you are at the mercy of the yarn – if it pools it pools and if it doesn’t it doesn’t – the only thing to do there is alternate two skeins of the same colorway (assuming you are working on a big enough project to need 2 skeins or more).

But do you know what looks pretty awesome in variegated? Garter! The texture of garter stitch breaks up pooling visually and really accents the beauty of the yarn, but all garter all the time gets boring. We want lace! But lace and variegated do not always play nice together.

Look at the lace – note the hole to fabric ratio. What do I mean by that? Well, look at the lace pattern – is the lace more hole than fabric or is it holes set into a bed of either stockinette or garter? For a variegated to look good you need to have at least a 50/50 ratio of hole to fabric. If you get more hole than fabric then you will start losing definition on your lace – obscured by the color changes in the yarn. You will do a whole lot of work for detailing that will not be particularly visible.

In Lady Jessica you can see that the lace gets pretty fine towards the bottom and I have definitely violated the hole/fabric ratio, but that was a calculated choice. One I could get away with primarily because I was working in Sport weight yarn. In fingering or lace it would not look as good. Then again, because it is only the bottom portion of the shawl, it worked out fine. If I had used that lace as an all-over design it would look horrible in this yarn.

OK, I have babbled enough for now. Of course I haven’t gotten into textured stitches or cables or such – each has it’s own set of considerations, but now you know how to look at a lace shawl and decide which member of your stash is at bat.

Twisted German Cast On

This is my favorite cast on. It seems silly to even have a favorite cast on, but there you are. This one has two specific traits which I find desirable; it is very stretchy and it is very stable. Many of the “stretchy” cast ons get their stretchiness from being very flimsy – barely there cast ons. I need something beefier, more substantial. Enter the Twisted German.

Which sounds very nefarious. Zee Twisted German Cast-on vill make you happy, Ja? But it isn’t. It should be something more like the Happy Swedish Cast  on – because it really is very easy. It’s only drawback is that it is a long tail variant, which means you have to pull out a length of yarn and hope that you have the right amount.

I know there are good ways to figure out how long to make the “tail” but I seem to muck it up every time. Luckily I use it for my crescent shaped shawls, and they only have a cast on of 7 or 8 stitches – so it isn’t a big deal if you are off by a bit.

Hopefully I have talked this up enough to make you want to try it out. If so – I made a video. It’s my first, so be gentle.