[Repost of material appearing on 15 August 2006]

I think I’ve hit on one of the reasons so many people despise DPNs: insufficiency of length.

I love DPNs. I use them happily with no problems whatsoever. I have employed up to 15 or so at a time on larger projects for which I had no equivalent circ. And that’s what I thought was going to happen with my red doily. I have about three sets of the unusual 2.5mm size. Give or take for previous losses. 2.5mm sits somewhere between a standard US #1 and US#2. Addi Turbo’s standard equivalent of a US # is 2.5mm (that’s what these are), while most other makers label 2.25mm as a 1. Needle size comparisons across makers here.

My problem is that my 2.5mm needles are stubby, little six-inchers. They’re the only needles I have of that diminutive length, probably bought for glove projects long ago. I normally consider eight-inchers to be the absolutely minimum usable size. I routinely seek out longer ones when I can find them.

My problem with the teeny needles on this project is that I have large hands for a fem. That coupled with too many stitches has meant that I knock the stitches off the butt ends as I work. Yes, I know I could use needle end protectors, or introduce more needles, but I don’t have time to fiddle with point protectors on both ends of 12 needles (I’m up to 12 now). This a new empathy-building experience for me, as I never have this problem. Last night I spent as much time recovering dropped stitches as I did creating new ones. If only I were using needles of my favored length, I wouldn’t be having this ultra-frustrating problem!

Now on to the second half of my dilemma. I don’t have a 2.5mm circ of any length. Nor the time or inclination to track one down. But I do know that I knit more loosely on DPNs than I don on a circ, and i do have an overly long 2.75mm circ. So tonight I knit all my stitches off those little DPNs and onto something safer.

A quick answer to the question about that silver stitch marker in yesterday’s photo. It’s marking the beginning of the round. With 6 or more needles in the work and tiny stitches, plus a pattern that migrates left a stitch or two as it progresses, I find it convenient to idiot-proof my beginning point. Aside from assorting stitches so that the round begins mid-needle it’s impossible to use a standard marker on the end of a DPN round. So I use something slightly different.

When I was on a business trip a while back I happened on the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. I went into a booth selling silver fittings, pieces, and beads imported from India. There I got a bunch of tiny dangles all set with semiprecious stones, plus a half-dozen tiny little silver earrings. The kind that people wear by the half dozen, marching up along the edge of their ears, or through an eyebrow piercing. The whole lot was amazingly inexpensive, even considering that neither the silver nor the gems used are the highest grade. The result:

Stitch markers that can be clipped anywhere I need them. The one shown yesterday is the leftmost of this lot, and one of only three I have left. The others have all gone out into the world as gifts. If I ever get to the gem show again I’m heading back to that tent and stocking up. With luck I’ll help subsidize a village of people who spend their days working on these tiny bits of filigree, and not just the middlemen who haul it across oceans to sell in the desert in January.

Technorati : knitting

[Repost of materail appearing on 16 July 2006]

No, not a knitting-related math question (for a change), but an idle query. Check out this – a UK art student has knit hersef a car. I hope she gets a good grade on the project!

Technorati : knitting

A weighty topic for String.

I’ve been contacted recently by several publishers and manufacturers.  Each has offered advance copies of books or free product samples, with the hope of seeing a review of those items posted here or on wiseNeedle. This to me smacks of buzz marketing.  I have turned them all down.

Buzz marketing is yet another "latest thing."  In buzz marketing a vendor engineers a campaign that seeds mention of their product such that the word seems to come spontaneously from unaffiliated individuals – all talking (or writing) about the product in their own words.  One of the ways to start a buzz campaign is to seed the product out to influential (or prolific) people who know lots of other people interested in new items or ideas.  Prolific bloggers or podcasters are excellent pipelines for getting the word out.  Giving them goodies for free is one low cost way to spread buzz to other leading-edge consumers.  At this point I suppose I should be flattered to be considered either prolific or influential.

So.  What’s the catch?  Why not accept freebies, try them out and then post the results, good or bad? 

Mostly because I am uncomfortable with the ethics of the base idea.  When does accepting free samples begin to color one’s thoughts?  At what point are one’s opinions compromised?  At what point does one become a mouth organ for others rather than oneself?  Yes, I know there are magazines that accept freebies and test samples – even paid ads, then turn around and totally blast bad or defective products, regardless of prior considerations.  Computer Gaming World is known for having dissed the deserving on the page opposite an ad for the product being criticized.  But there are far more specialty coverage venues that avoid any semblance of criticism of advertisers  or sample providers. 

Plus, once this practice becomes widely known the whole issue of trust surfaces.  Paid endorsements are something else again – everyone knows Tiger Woods gets megabucks from Nike.  His integrity isn’t an issue because the link between them is so public.  Formal public endorsements aside – can you trust the opinions of someone who even with the best of intentions may be an unpaid shill?  Isn’t entering into this sort of arrangement both a bit exploitative on the part of the marketer, and duplicitous on the part of the shiller?   I see a slippery slope here.  Accepting freebies to me is the first baby step on a continuum of ethical compromise – the same continuum that in its most egregious manifestations pops up in bribery, kickback, and blackmail scandals.

Where does that leave our little world of knitting and knit blogging?  Good question. 

Is accepting freebies for the purpose of (perhaps) writing something about them an ethical challenge for other people?  Is it any different than wearing a branded item – an Izod shirt, or carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag?  Your thoughts?

More questions from the inbox.

Sport weight = 5 ply gansey weight?

Not really.  As the "5 ply" weight designator implies, Gansey/Guernsey is in between sport weight (6 ply)  and fingering (4 ply).  There are yarns labeled as sport that are on the thin side that work up nicely at the 6.5 spi Gansey target as well as yarns labeled fingering that are thick and also cover that gauge. But not every sport or fingering can be used as a sub for it.  Plus Gansey weight usually imples a classic smooth finish, dense yarn that supports superior stitch definition.  Wendy/Peter Pan still makes traditional Guernsey 5-Ply, now a superwash.  It is labeled at 7spi, but is denser than fingering/sock yarn at that gauge. 

Washing yarn in a front loader washing machine with a wool cycle?

Front loaders are known for gentle action compared to aggressive water-hogging top loaders, so I suspect that you’ll be able to wash the spinning oil from loosely wound hanks using one.  I know people who complain about the flip side of this problem, that it’s impossible to get their front loader to full yarn for felted projects.  BUT there are caveats.  The machine has to have settings that control water temperature in both the wash and rinse cycles, so that you can set the same temperature for both.  It has to have the ability to retain water for soaking (some use very little water and getting a a pool for the yarn to sit in may be problematic). 

One other challenge:  it also has to have controls that let you either eliminate agitation, or that let you advance the cycle past the agitation stage of the wash to plain old drain then spin.  If the machine relies on side-mounted flanges on the inside of the drum to churn the contents as the drum spins, it will be impossible to eliminate agitation-like movement of the stuff being washed.  I don’t have a front loader, so I can’t speak to whether or not the agitation inherent in that type of action would allow washing yarn with no risk of fulling.

As for pre-programmed wool cycles on all machines,  I’m very skeptical about them.  My own top-loader has an alleged wool cycle that’s pretty much useless.  All it does is put the wash through a shorter (though not less vicious) agitation cycle.  It does nothing to govern water temperature, and the rough treatment although shorter is still enough to induce fulling.  I wouldn’t risk using my machine’s wool cycle for finished items, and especially not for more vulnerable un-knit hanked yarn.   I know some of the more expensive European washers handle wool extremely well.  Experimentation here is warranted.  Since seeking reliability of results in knitting always leads to a pile of swatches somewhere, here’s a chance to put them to constructive use.  If you want to determine the usefulness of your washer’s wool cycle, gather up a bunch of swatches then put them through a cycle and observe the result.

It’s been a week of yarny goodness here at String.  Not only did I go on a shopping expedition on my own, but The Resident Male went on a trip to Arizona and brought me back a present.  Now this is a Big Thing because althogh he’s been supportive of my needlework obsessions over the years, he’s never before been a direct enabler of them. 

So I am picturing him at the knit shop he found out in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He says he went in and asked the committee sitting around the back project table for help selecting something unusual.  He was shown a pile of various foofy/fuzzy/overadorned novelty yarns, and being observant knowing that I rarely use them, insisted on something less "demonstrative" but still unique. 

The committee came through.  He ended up buying this:

It’s a hank of mercerized 100% cotton, hand-painted in blues, teals, and greens, with a touch of a mauved brown.  The effect when wound is a ball reads "camoflage."  It’s got a house label on it (no brand name), stating that it knits to Aran gauge (4.5spi on a US #8), and that it’s got 997 yards total.

Looking at the stuff though it reminded me of Rainbow Mills Crayons Lite, the yarn included in their "Grandma’s Little Darling" toddler sweater kits (shown here on Younger Daughter when she was three):

Sure enough, a side by side comparison of my leftovers from the sweater above and my new yarn shows that they’re near identical.  Amazingly enough not only are they structurally the same, the wind-off hank diameter is the same, and the hues of the teal, brown and khaki in the two are spot on identical (the toddler leftovers includes magenta and orange in addition to all the colors in the new stuff).  I wrote to the yarn shop, and they confirmed that the base stock for this yarn is the same as the Rainbow Mills product.   I haven’t seen Crayons Lite sold outside the toddler kits, and having a known weakness for variegated yarns, I’ve always wanted to use it again. 

For the record, to make the yarn flash in the toddler pullover, I needed to get 5spi on US #7s, and predicated the circumference on a factor of about 12.5 inches, then steek the armholes.  This sweater is done on 125 stitches (about 25 inches around).  I think that I’ll try to use my hank to make a short tee on 250 stitches, and see if I can get the same kind of flash.  I’ll use a provisional cast-on so that I can go back and add ribbing or edging later so I can maximize use of the yarn I’ve got on the body itself.   I even have enough of my coordinating (but brighter mix) leftovers to do the rib or edging, should I so desire.  If that doesn’t work and I come up short, I’ll see if I can do something on the same narrow strip principle as my Typeset Tee.

The upshot of all this is that Resident Male came back with just about the perfect choice:  a yarn that isn’t available locally, in colors that I enjoy, and in quantity that’s just right. 

Keepers, both!

I’m catching up on lots of things this week – appointments, activities, deliveries – plus I’m regaining equilibrium.  As part of my stress dissipation strategy I went to Webs.  Actually I went with my houseguest –  long-time needlework buddy Kathryn (she of "too many centries, too little time."). 

Of course no trip to Webs would be complete without an acquisition report.

The garnet yarn on the right is the 2/4 Highland Tweed 100% wool currently on special.  The website lists it as an Aran weight at 4.5spi, but to me it seems a bit light for that.  I have  this cone plus a partial – in total a sqidge more than 2.5 pounds total at 992 yards per pound, roughly 2,511 yards.  Thats way more than enough for a sweater for me at any gauge down to Gansey.  The twist is a bit soft.  It’s a nice deep color (not as tomato as the picture), accented with flecks of emerald, sapphire, turquoise, and topaz.  On the cone it’s a soft wool, but not Merino-gentle and is imbuded with a touch of spinning oil.  It’s possible that the spinning oil has flattened the stuff out and is making it look more like a DK, so  I need to either wind off some and wash it then knit up a swatch, or knit a swatch and then wash it so I can determine final gauge.  Based on the texture though, I am expecting this yarn to soften up considerably once it has been washed.  2.54 pounds is about 1,152 grams or roughly 23 50 gram balls.  My purchase works out to the equivalent of about $1.33 per equivalent 50 gram ball. This stuff is listed on the Webs site.  Mine is the cardinal color pictured there..

The yarn at the left is another back room bargain bin find.  It’s a 80% silk, 20% wool blend, in a fingering weight with a slight boucle texture, about 2,400 yards per pound.  It’s a nice denim blue.  I bought two cones, again just under 2.5 pounds total.   That’s a mind-boggling 5,928 yards.  Again using the 50-gram skein as a standard,  my purchase works out to 1120 grams,  about 22.4 skeins.  Rounding down, my 50-gram skein equivalent cost was about  $1.12 per skein.  My color isn’t shown on line although there was lots of it on the shelf.

Now.  What am I going to do with all of this?

The red should be pretty simple to use regardless of gauge.  It’s light enough in color and weight and not so busy that it can’t handle a bit of texture pattern knititng.  I’ve got enough that if I wanted to go hog wild with cables, I could.  I’ll be stashing it until a perfect idea emerges, although that Gansey idea is beginning to have a bit of appeal.

The blue however may be closer in terms of actual use.  Remember past musings on the compatibility between crochet and knitting?  About how crochet  needs to be worked in finer yarns to produce a fabric comparable to knitting?  Here’s a chance for me to experiment with that.  I’m thinking of doing a summer top that combines both.  I’d use this stuff single-strand for a classic crocheted yoke, adapted from an antique chemise or nightgown pattern, then using the same thread doubled, knit the body of the garment.  The weight of the products of the  two should match much better than trying to use both techniques with the same thickness yarn.  My only handicap here is that I prefer not to wear sleeveless things, so some additional adaptation may be in order if I wish to wear the final result myself.  Anything leftwover would make a nifty lace shawl.

I also got a bag of Rowan Rowanspun 4-Ply in Holly – an intense blued deep green.  I’ve been collecting colors of this stuff for a while, all in the jewel family. (notice a theme here?)  I finally have enough to do something spectaular.  What exactly, I haven’t a clue. 

So there you have it.  Skid marks on the old Visa, and depending on the sizes/gauges used – most or major parts of 3-5 adult size garments, all for about $80.  I’m stoked, I’m de-stressed.  Now on to the knitting!