KNIT REPAIR
Today I document a Good Deed.
A co-worker, all puppy eyes and pleading, brought his favorite sweater to me yesterday. He bought it in Ireland, and practically lives in it all winter. He’d caught the elbow on something sharp, and cut a strand. And then the snag started to run. He asked me if I could fix it.
The sweater is of good quality, rustic finish wool. It looks like it was knit from two strands of sport or guernsey weight. The seams are machine-sewn, and there’s a nice “commando collar” – double thick ribbing, inset in a V, with a low turtleneck finish and center zipper. I’m not a machine knitter, so I’m not really up on what can and cannot be done using one, but the cables are not deeply embossed. They’re all formed by traveling stitches rather than multiple-stitch cable crossings.
Still, it’s a particularly nice and obviously beloved item. So I brought it home to fix.
Fixing hand knits with runs in them should be second nature to most knitters. First, you want to identify the break. Then if a run or ladder has developed, you want to spot the bottom-most good stitch that sits below the run. That’s the one that needs to be secured, and the one that you’ll use later in the repair. In this case, I secured it temporarily with a safety pin so it wouldn’t ladder down any farther.
If the yarn has broken, the ends need to be secured. Since this is a nice, sticky, traditional finish wool, the stitches left and right of the broken one hadn’t raveled side to side. (A plus for working with real wool). I reinforced them gently on the wrong side with some darning yarn of the same color, taking care not to let my repair show through to the front. Then I smoothed out the lumpy ladder, separating the rungs. Obviously there was one rung missing – the one that would have been formed by the broken strand. I laid some long stitches across that spot with my matching darning yarn until I had approximately the thickness of the original yarn built up.
Then I took a crochet hook and starting with that stitch at the base of the run, I re-formed the knitting stitches. I did this by pulling each rung through the stitch below it. Luckily this particular repair occurred in a plain stockinette area. I didn’t have to deal with crossed stitches or purls.
Once I had re-built all of the stitches, I had one top stitch that needed to be secured. Again I was lucky. This particular column of stitches “dead ended” at a traveling stitch cable. I used my darning yarn to take a tiny stitch, securing the loose loop to the side of the cable at the point where it would have been eaten by the decrease that formed the cable’s movement.
Here’s the result (not that my lousy photography skills and a charcoal gray subject make it any easier to see):
The formerly broken bit is in the top center of the sleeve that lies across the body, roughly below the zipper slider. You can’t see it, but take my word for it – the repair is totally invisible.
So, today’s morals are:
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Don’t toss damaged hand-knits in a corner in despair. You can use your knitting-developed skills to rescue some of them. and
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Ease of repair down the road is yet another reason to use the best quality materials you can afford.
SOCK DEMISE AND MORE SNAKES
While I’m still under deadline pressure here and have not gotten to the Spanish Hat, I do have some knitting-related musings to report today.
The first is sock yarn wear. I have knit pretty much the same sock in terms of fit since shortly after I began knitting socks. This is especially true for socks knit with sock yarn or fingering weight yarn. I’ve also stuck to a group of sock yarns that are a mix of washable wool and nylon – the standards, Fortissima, Socka, Regia, and Melienweit – all major labels and not house brands or knockoffs. And I’ve not changed the way I care for them. I still do the soak, spin, air dry thing rather than subjecting them to more stressful full machine washing. AND I am always knitting more, increasing the numbers of pairs I own, so that individual pairs are worn less frequently.
So why then are my socks wearing out faster?
This is a big mystery to me. I have several pairs of Fortissima and Socka socks that are pushing their 10th birthday, and were among the first I knit. They’re fine. A bit floppy, but not significantly abraded or worn through. I have other socks knit in the past year that are already showing holes at the ball of the foot.
There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between yarn maker and sock failure. Nor does the failure seem to be related to gauge, since all the victims were knit on the same size needles.
So. Is anyone else experiencing this? Or is it just me…
The second is a product of the need to do mindless knitting. I started another Snake Scarf, knit from an extravagance – Schaefer Yarn’s Helene. This yarn is next-to-skin soft, with all the luster of silk. It is however an Aran weight/light bulky weight single, and like all singles spun from soft yarns, has a tendency to split. I suspect that it will also catch a bit. But it’s lovely stuff, and giving the scarf away will be difficult to do. I can’t identify the exact Schaefer color combo my Helene is (I bought it over a year ago and lost the tag), but it’s mostly navy and raspberry, with hints of brown. The color repeat is however quite short, and does not produce the eye popping striped effect of longer color run yarns. (I’ll be posting a yarn review of the stuff soon).
Still, the subtle mottled effect doesn’t fight too badly with the scarf’s basic wiggly shape or stitch direction, so I’m pleased. On another note, I see that my original write-up of the snake scarf’s beginning is flawed. I’ll be correcting it later this week from my new working notes. Apologies to everyone who has been challenged by it. On the bright side, I only got one note from a confused knitter. The thing is so dead-simple that most people appear to have taken the error in stride and weren’t tripped up by it.
NOT GONE, JUST SWAMPED
One of the problems of writing a knitting oriented blog crops up when I have little or no time to knit. I’ve got a pile of ideas and things that are in process. Both sit, unattended. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends this week, consumed by work-related deadlines and kiddie holidays. My knitting languishes.
Now I have to say that I’m not so addicted to knitting that I break out in withdrawal symptoms when denied access. I can say that I miss my hour’s relaxation in the evening, tinkering away with string. But with luck, this too shall pass – although probably not for several weeks. Processing in yarn reviews and answering questions on the wiseNeedle advice board take precedence over idle rambling here. So please bear with me. String isn’t dying, it’s just overtaken by life.
REDACTION AND LIFE INTRUDES AGAIN
On the pattern redaction, Karen suggests that the 1892 pattern is the traditional Print o’ the Wave Shetland lace knitting motif documented in several places. The best example of it is in Sharon Miller’s Heirloom Knitting. The Eunny Jang wave stole pattern I just completed has a variant of it, too.
I reply that this pattern, although clearly of the same lineage, is different. It employs no double decreases, and minimizes the side to side movement of the wave element. I’m on hold noodling it out, between work-related deadlines and holiday preparations with the kids, I had no time to myself yesterday.
On the serendipitous end, the kids are finally old enough and use-specific tools have gotten safer enough to let them loose to carve their own pumpkins. Except for he icky scooping out the innards part (and rescuing the pumpkin seeds for toasting) they did them entirely by themselves this year.
So on hold right now are my Spanish hat; the repair, finish and block of the Wave stole; finishing the decipher of this pattern; plus beginning my holiday gift knitting. I have promised six pairs of socks plus several other small pieces as yet to be determined.
REDACTING 1892 INSERTION PATTERN
As you can tell from my intermittent posting of late, things are hectic here at String. Work deadlines intrude again into life, and promises made to family members in support of the upcoming costumed festivities eat up additional time. I can report that the mini-pirate costume is done (shown here during the family Halloween party sponsored by my kid-friendly workplace:
Gotta love those sneakers!
On the knitting front, I finished the edging on the Wave scarf, but was unable to do the final grafting and repair yesterday evening because we had no power at our house. Windstorms in our area took down trees and electrical lines. We were out from around 4:00 on. I also didn’t get a chance to burrow into my stash to look for the yarn I wish to use for the Spanish hat.
Instead I toyed with an antique pattern from Knitting Essentials: Knitters Historical Pattern Series Volume One. This is a reproduction edition of Butterick’s Art of Knitting, published in 1892. The editor for the repro edition is Melissa Johnson. Amazon’s on-line peek inside feature gives a good representation of the book’s contents. The particular pattern I was noodling with is on page 19. It’s called “Vine Pattern for Stripe.” In the book it’s described as “pretty knitted in cotton or wool…and may be used as an insertion or as a stripe for spreads, afghans, etc.” I’ve seen some similar things in other pattern books, most notably the zig-zag edges, but not in this exact combo, with the edging done on both sides of a faux cable.
When I saw it I thought it might make an interesting base for a narrow scarf. The directions are in this format, pretty standard for the time:
First row – slip 1, k 1, tho o, n, th o, n, th o, k 1, th o, k 2, n, k 4, n, k 2, th o, sl and b, th o, sl and b, th o, sl and b, k 1
Deciphering them isn’t too tough. slip 1 and k 1 are still standard today. “th o” is “throw over” – a yarn over. “n” is narrow – knit 2 tog; and “sl and b” is the abbreviation for slip1, k1 and bind off – the equivalent of SSK.
I graphed out each of the lines as represented and started in on the thing. But like so many old patterns, this one is chock full of errors. That’s probably why it hasn’t appeared in later pattern collections. And the engraving isn’t a literal interpretation of the directions. If you look very closely at the openwork zig-zags on the left, you’ll see they aren’t complements of the ones on the right. They look oddly twisted, without the neat chain like construction of the ones on the right. That’s because the person who knitted up the sample from which the original illustration was drawn used plain old K2tog decreases throughout. You’ll find this a lot in older openwork patterns – the left leaning complement to the right leaning K2 tog was not universally known or used.
In any case, the pattern’s writer did make an attempt to use complementary left and right decreases. The only problem is that he or she didn’t put them in the right places. The pattern as written doesn’t form the neat lines shown, so further redacting on my part is needed. Stay tuned…
Now if only my days were 36 hours long, I’d have time enough to get everything done. And knit…
WHY (ALMOST) NO KNITTING GOT DONE LAST NIGHT
Smaller Daughter and I had fun last night building her robot pumpkin. She’s named it “Seven of Patch”. Today it heads off to assimilate the third grade pumpkin parade.
It was also a sewing night. The same daughter has her heart set on being a pirate this year. Most of that costume can be scrounged up from things around the house. But she needed a puffy white pirate shirt, and it had to be done before Friday (more on that below). So I hauled out my ancient 1962-vintage Elna SU (bought used) and clanked away. Even so a small bit of knitting did get done after I was finished wrestling the jamming bobbin case into submission. I managed to do another five inches or so of edging on the Wave scarf. I’ve got about a foot more to go and then I have the joy of fixing that nasty skip and run waaay back at the beginning.
Not tonight however. My kid-friendly workplace has invited employees children in after school tomorrow for in-office trick-or-treat. Employees are encouraged to dress up. I have tonight to figure out something that’s either easy to put on quickly or is not so distracting as to negate any possibility of actual work getting done before the kids arrive.
INTERNATIONAL WELCOMES AND IRRATIONAL KNITTING
First, welcome to the new influx of visitors here from Japan. Apparently the Kureopatora Snake Scarf has attracted attention way over there. It’s fun to see it blogged about so far from home, and in a language I can only barely read with Google tools.
Where do visitors to wiseNeedle and String come from? It’s no surprise that they are overwhelmingly from the US and Canada. Japan, Australia, China, the Ukraine, Brazil, and the UK. Germany, France, and Sweden usually are in or not far from my the 10. There’s usually a good sprinkling of people wandering through from non English speaking countries aside from those on the top 10. (I think that most come to use the knitting terms glossary.) I have often been amused to see reports of visitors from some of the less frequently seen countries on my list. Sometimes there’s a small spike from an unlikely place. For example, in addition to the large number of visits from Japan last week (not uncommon at all), I had a small jump up each from Senegal and Mauritius. Whether that represents one person visiting multiple times, or one person sending links to friends, I haven’t a clue. But I do wonder what they’re knitting.
Second, some irrational musings…
There’s a lot of edging to knit when you make something like the Wave scarf. That affords ample time for a mix of boredom and the anticipation of finally finishing to set in. I don’t know about you, but when I knit something interminable I develop irrational likes and dislikes along the way. There are rows I look forward to, and rows I detest. While on some patterns the single row with a particularly awkward stitch combo (like a P2tog-back) can inspire discomfort, even dread of a tricky row, in other patterns the development of my preference makes no sense at all. For example, in this edging some rows have a bit more stockinette, but no row in particular stands out as being harder than the others, and all patterned rows have a semi-awkward K3tog. But I have a clear favorite – row 5, and a clear least favorite – row 9. I will go so far as to either get ready to do my favorite row or “get over the hump” and complete my least favorite row before setting the work down.
I have irrational preferences about other bits of knitting, too. I detest sleeves. I don’t care how large or small they are, whether they’re done first or last, or if I’m working them side by side, or one at a time. I flat out hate ’em. Also buttonhole bands – especially the kind that are cast on with the regular width of the front, then placed on holders to be knit separately using a smaller needle, then sewn to the cardigan body. I know why some designers choose to do this, and I acknowledge that doing it can make neater, less “loving hands at home” looking garments – but I resent doing it.
On the other hand, I don’t mind winding skeins into balls. Some of my knitpals hate that part. While I wouldn’t make wool-winding my only hobby, I don’t mind doing it in the least, and except for the largest skeins of lace weight, usually do it by hand (sometimes assisted by a swift). I rarely haul out the ball winder.
Then there’s the foot part of every sock. The ankle bears a pattern or something of interest. But I don’t like wearing patterned knitting inside my shoes, and invariably knit my foot parts totally unadorned. I hate that part enough that it has shaped the entire way I knit socks. I do toe ups not because I want to avoid grafting, or that I think they fit the best (the fit well enough on me), but because doing so puts the chore before the fun. If I didn’t do those boring feet first, I’d never finish a sock.
And I vastly prefer lacy knitting to lace knitting. It seems I need to decompress with a plain or low-featured row in between more intensively patterned ones. I get annoyed or quickly frustrated by patterns that include massive amounts of increases and decreases on every row.
Collars? Did I mention collars? For me they’ve always been a challenge. I melt with envy when I see something like the bottom right hand picture here. In this case, the dislike is more understandable. We all dread showing our weaknesses.
So. How irrational are you? Do you share my odd likes and dislikes, or are you bound by an entirely different set of your own?
WAVE SCARF PROGRESS
Back from a business trip, I exhibit productivity.
I was able to get work in during the plane rides and layovers. I’ve managed to get quite a bit further along on the Wave scarf’s edging: Overall, if I were to do this pattern again instead of following it verbatim, I’d change the ratio of attachment to make it a bit less ruffly, and I’d up the rate of attachment at the corners to diminish the cupping that occurs at the corners.
These things might have been less in evidence if I had chosen a wool yarn for my stole. I used linen, with very little stretch. When you use an unstretchy cotton, silk, or linen yarn for a pattern written out for wool, you need to be much more precise in the rate of attachment and in working the corners because you can’t rely on natural elasticity to even out tight or loose bits.
Obviously aggressive blocking is called for here, even though it will be only partly successful.
As to where I went and what I did – if you saw a tall gal with glasses and short dark hair knitting on this project in Logan, Chicago Midway or Dallas/Ft. Worth airports over the weekend – that was me.
WAVE SCARF – ROUNDING SECOND
Back to the Print o’ the Wave scarf/stole. I didn’t have enough time to sit down and noodle out a hat last night. Invention tends to happen over the weekends here at string. Instead I continued on with the knit-on edging. I’m within an hour or so of completing the second side and working the second corner. At that point I’ll be about half done, as I began my edging pretty close to the first corner.
The thing looks wing-shaped because I’ve got a zillion remaining live stitches picked up around the circumference all on a single circular.
Aside from the error in the chart described before, I’ve experienced no problems with the edging. It’s taking forever, but if you’re a process knitter like me, that’s a design feature, not a bug. The only remaining debate about this piece is to whom I will give it as a holiday present.
WRAPPED SPANISH HAT – EXPERIMENT 1
As promised, here is my experimental foray at the wrapping technique used on the 18th Century Spanish hat from the V&A’s photo collection.
I tried out three different methods of making the floats. First, this is the second swatch. My initial attempt was working this in the flat. It was a mess. So I switched to working in the round, on the principle that the inspiring hat was probably knit in the round.
The largest section on the bottom (green arrow in the photo) was done using Tamar’s suggested method – bringing the yarn to the front of the work, slipping the stitches to be wrapped purlwise, moving the yarn to the back of the work, returning the slipped stitches to the left hand needle and then knitting them off. You can see that it works nicely, but has a tendency to distort the stitch immediately preceding the wrapped segment. This is most evident in the columns of wraps, in which the same stitches are wrapped on several succeeding rows to produce a vertical column. It’s still there on the area where I shifted the wraps to produce a diagonal, but it is less evident.
The second section (red arrow) was done using the method I first posited – moving the yarn to the back of the work, slipping the stitches purlwise, bringing the yarn to the front of the work, returning the slipped stitches to the left hand needle, tucking the working yarn behind again, and then knitting off the formerly slipped stitches. It has slightly different weaknesses than Tamar’s method. In this case, I seem to be more prone to drawing the loop too tightly, and there is also a slight distortion of the stitch immediately preceding the wrapped section. It does however look just a little bit neater to me.
The third method (blue arrow) was one that came to me while I was fiddling with the other two. I worked those final two rows of wraps not as wraps, but in two passes. On the first pass I brought the yarn to the front, slipped the stitches that I wanted to “wrap”, returned the yarn to the back, slipped the plain stitches after them, brought the yarn to the front, slipped the “wrap” stitches, returned the yarn to the back, and slipped the plain all the way around. This laid one continuous thread in a single loop around my work. Then I knitted off the entire row. You can see I had time to do this twice. This does make a neater line than the wrapped methods, but has other drawbacks. First and foremost – it’s hard to keep an even tension on the continuous loop as it’s carried around the entire piece. Second, having a single continuous loop limits knitting’s natural elasticity. While this might be a useful technique to help maintain tightness in areas you don’t want to stretch out (like on the cuffs of an all-cotton sweater), I don’t think it is optimal for a hat.
Now going back and looking at the V&A picture again, it does look like there’s slight distortion of the stitches immediately before the wraps, and the wraps do look more like the slightly bowed ones produced by both Tamar’s and my posited methods. Without seeing the artifact itself, it’s hard to say which of the two was used. I lean to mine, just because I can control the distortion a little bit better with it than with hers, but both are functionally equivalent, and I’d say both are possible use case candidates that can’t be entirely ruled out without actually seeing the artifact’s front and back, both close-up.
String-Or-Nothing 