CAMO TEE REBORN
Friday’s post on twisted joins in circular knitting seems to have hit a chord. Go back and look at the comments because (beyond commiseration), there’s good advice there.
On another note – I ripped back yet again. I had about eight inches done when I decided that the tube I was forming – even with some augmentations I was planning, would not be wide enough for my purposes. It flashed nicely, being only two repeats of the original skein’s circumference, but to use it to fit me, I’d need to steek and cut both sides and introduce a large vertical strip of some other yarn. Kind of like this:
I thought about how that would look on me, and I decided that I’d probably look like a filleted iguana. So I’m going for a three-repeat tube. It will be roomier, but the flash effect isn’t as crisply defined.
Why is the flash muddier? Because of the short runs of color in this skein and the fact that stacking areas are now three repeats away from each other instead of two (further apart in the skein when dyed means less match up strand to strand). Two or three stitches off cycle is enough to skew the flash into a narrow diagonal because most color segments are five stitches or fewer. Still, there is pooling and massed effect striping instead of one-row tweedy short-repeat randomness going on.
So one step forward, two steps back. Again.
THAT TWIST JOIN PROBLEM
Several people wrote to express surprise and/or commiseration that I was struggling with the join-twist problem on my camo-flash tee. It’s an easy problem to have, and one that’s not limited to beginners. I find some things exacerbate the chance of twisting:
- Having too many stitches for the needle’s circumference
If the stitches are jammed onto the needle they have a tendancy to ruffle the cast on edge, no matter what cast-on is used. Even more so if the cast-on edge is narrow. That’s why I ended up knitting several rows of stockinette in waste yarn. That gave my "cast-on row" some bulk and weight, and helped sort out the ruffle
- Using a circular instead of a flock of DPNs.
Now most people will disagree with me on this one. DPN fear runs deep. But I at least find it far easier to tame an in the round cast-on row if it has been done on several smaller straight needles than on one circ (or two circs). A couple of factors here get in my way with the circs. First, even if they’ve been carefully de-kinked using the hot water method, they still curve. Second, they are not uniform in girth around their entire circumference. Stitches twist more on the skinny cable part than they do on the fatter business ends of circs. Using DPNs all the stitches are held on areas of uniform thickness. I usually cast onto my DPNs in sequence, then lay the entire work out flat on the table, in a rough circle, making sure each needle’s cast-on edge is turned to the inside of the circle. On DPNs that edge stays where I want it, held in place by friction on the needle’s thickness. Circs aren’t as easy to sort out this way. The stitches on the skinny part twist every which way, and the springy cable parts themselves rebel at neat alignment. Keeping two circs in proper orientation is even harder.
- Lots of stitches in the absolute
The bigger the piece, the harder it is to keep the stitches in alignment. The hardest circular cast on I ever did was on a cardigan I knit for my grandmother. It was black, with an originalstranded pattern in white in the traditional Fair Isle yoke area. It was also in fingering weight acrylic (a slippery yarn) as she specified "easy care" for the gift. At 8 spi I had something like 340 stitches around. And around. And around…
So for the most part, I use DPNs to start off circular pieces. Even adult circumference sweaters. I do use a couple of tricks though.
First, unlike this piece, I do not often start out with a provisional cast-on. The need to go back and work the live edge later did introduce an element of complexity, and until I did the waste yarn thing, made an even more ruffly than usual bottom edge. This in turn made keeping it sorted out more difficult. For large circumference pieces, I usually use a tubular cast on, similar to the method Kris described in a comment on yesterday’s post. I use straights, and using a provisional cast-on, create half the number of stitches needed. I knit five or so rows in plain stockinette. Then I unzip the provisional cast-on and stick a second straight into the newly freed stitches, making sure that the points of both straights end up on the same edge of my now suspended strip of knitting. Next I fold the strip in half, and using a third needle (often in this case, a circ), alternately knit one stitch off the needle in front and purl one stitch off the needle in back. This gives me a sturdy and attractive edge, and enough of a bottom ridge that when joined into a round for circular knitting, avoids the twist problem on the first truly circular round. If people are interested in pix of this, I’ll try to take a demo sequence, but at this point I’m sure the tubular cast-on I describe can be found on photo how-to sites elsewhere.
My second trick is casting on using long DPNs. I adore Euro-style extra long DPNs, and buy them whenever I see them. My collection is far from complete, and the sizing and set numbers are a bit strange because many of my finds are yard sale orphans or even "antique" British needles that originally came in sets of only three. Even so, I do have several DPN sets in the 12-18 inch long range. Theyr’e very convenient for casting on, even if they end up being a smidge off standard sizing. A half or quarter size down is usually a good thing if casting on wool, to control stretch; conversely the same amount larger can be useful in casting on cotton or linen to introduce a bit more ease in a tight initial row.
Some people swear by using a contrasting color for the cast on row. As you can see from my problems with this project, having a white row at the bottom of a mostly-green piece didn’t help much. So there you have it. Reasons (not excuses) why this problem plagues so many people at all levels of expertise.
FLASH DANCE – PART IV
Finally! Success!
Yes, yesterday I had twisted the join again. Like I said, there’s no procedure so commonplace that can’t be taken for granted and screwed up royally, no matter how many times you’ve done it before. (I also blush to admit that no matter how many times I’ve sewed something and regardless of how many times I check what I’m doing, I’ve never succeeded in putting in the second sleeve right-side out.)
So I gave in and idiot-proofed my beginning rows. I had the waste yarn cast on chain from my provisional cast-on already done (I’ve re-used it for every attempt so far). Instead of picking up and knitting my camo yarn in the round directly from the chain, I grabbed the same waste yarn and knit four rows of stockinette in the flat. I knew the correct number to achieve flash, so I just went with that – picking up and working my waste section to the desired width. Once I had a narrow band of stockinette done it was much easier to assort the stitches around the needle to avoid the twist-at-join problem. I knit one last full round with my waste yarn, accomplishing the join, then started in with my hand-painted cotton. If you regularly have major problems with twisting joins you might try something similar – knitting a sacrificial section in the flat so you can control around the needle wiggle before making your join. You can always go back and zip off the waste yarn section, then finish the raw edge with ribbing, I-cord, an edging, or a simple bind-off row.
As you can see, my predictions are upheld – the teal stripes anchor interstices in which the other colors play. It’s interesting to note the movement of the striping. I started off more or less stable, then hit a section in which color migration skewed strongly to the right. So much so that I did a couple of evenly spaced decreases about 3 inches from the hem (about 60% of the way up from the cast on edge). That will end up being at the waist, and a very small nip in there will act as a design feature rather than a bug. As you can see, the colors continued to migrate to the right even after the nip in, and only in the last four rows have stablized somewhat.
You can also see why this is a difficult yarn to flash properly. Yarns with longer, more stable color blobs work MUCH better. If for no other reason than it is easier to spot the beginning and eding of each color segment. The short repeats and random drop-outs of my camo yarn made spotting the flash effect very difficult during the first several rows when I was straining to make it all work out. One look at the mottled area between the two teal stripes at roughly the center of the photo shows why.
I’m quite pleased with the way this is going (now that it’s finally going). I’ll finish out the body tube, then figure out what depth sleeves to make based on how much yarn I have left. It just goes to show, if an idiot is knitting, it pays to idiot-proof the work.
FLASH MOMENT
Yup. You guessed it. Twisted again and back to square one. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’ve established my flash value. However I’m at the point where since I know my stitch count, I"m ready to knit several rows of waste yarn (twisting be damned), then start in on the good stuff.
My excuse? Too many stitches crammed onto too short a needle, and the fact that I usually take the lazy person’s way out. When I start a large circumference item on circs, I usually purl back the first round and join on the third (sometimes even the third or fifth for finer yarns). Having a larger bit done helps keep thnigs aligned when time comes to do the join, and cleverly done with the cast on-tail, the one or two row notch can be rendered invisible, or incorporated into the project as a design detail.
One final possible start again cue – I think the thing would look better knit on a US #6 (4.0mm) rather than a US #7 (4.5mm). Less leggy, more opaque. If so – it’s back to establishing a new flash value based on that new gauge.
Knitting is easy. It’s projects that are hard. But if it WERE easy, I woudn’t be tempted to keep at it.
FLASH DANCE – PART III
Well, I wish I had had more time to knit last week. Swamped as I was with a special crisis assignment, many things fell (again) by the wayside. Knitting was one of them.
Still in what little time I had I did find out that I had comitted two of knitting’s cardinal sins:
- I didn’t take enough time to gauge properly, relying instead on the hubris of previous experience, and some inconsistent partial counts.
- When I cast on and then joined my piece together to knit in the round, I introduced a half twist.
So what I ended up with was a piece that was both way too big and being twisted – unusuable. So I ripped back. It just goes to show that no matter how many times you do something, and how well you think you know it, every new venture is another opportunity to make the same old misakes.
In the mean time, here’s a photo of the yet-again cast on and two rows knit new start.
Yes I know it’s blurry, but you can begin to see the colors build. As I suspected, the larger teal areas are lining up nicely, with the browns and greens somewhat less regimented between them. A better photo of a bigger slice tomorrow. Unless of course I’ve managed to twist the miserable thing again and will need to begin all over.
Traffic here
Looking over the logs for last week I was amazed to see the traffic here spike up to almost three times the expected number of visitors. There don’t appear to be many new referral entries, nor can I think of any ready explanation aside from a growing fascination with the Kureopatora Snake scarf pattern. A couple of scarf exchanges seem to have picked it up as an item of interest. My own experimentation and that of the other knitters suggest that there are lots of yarns that work well with the basic idea – the main difference among them being to vary the number of stitches across, depending on the chosen yarn’s gauge and repeat length. You can make the thing out of any yarn from fingering/sock self-stripers all the way up to bulky weights (superbulkies might be a bit too thick for comfortable wear as a scarf, but that’s a matter of personal preference – not a limitation of the pattern itself.) Of course, it’s obvious that yarns heavier than DK will require fewer stitches, and lighter ones will need more. For me in this pattern, I get the best results using an even number of stitches, but that’s a mnemonic, not a hard and fast rule. If you can keep the K1, P1 rib working off an odd number stitch base, go ahead and use it.
My snake is fun in any yarn, even a solid color, but it become ssomething special in a long-repeat varieggated. My hard-to-find, discontinued Kureopatora DK weight works for the pattern, as do other long-repeat Noro yarns like Silk Garden, and Kureyon. I’d recommend reducing the number of stitches across in both. I find that for them, the 30 stitches I used for Kureopatora is too many. For example, my Kureyon scarves, were done on 26 stitches across. I’ve also heard that Daikeito Diamusee also would be a good candidate, although there don’t seem to be any local distributors of the stuff and I haven’t seen it myself. Other possibilities include Regia 6 Ply Crazy Colors, Lana Grossa Dasolo Stripes, Katia Mexico, Euro Mexican Wave, some of the long repeat as opposed to tweedy colors of Encore Colorspun in any of its weights (an economical choice); or for those with bigger budgets than I – Classic Elite Embrace. I am sure there are more.
DO NOT ADUJST YOUR SET
Yes, I know I’m missing. What’s happening can be explained in part by the fact that I haven’t finished digging my way out of a last-minute work-related crisis yet. At 1:50 am on a Tuesday I’m still at the keyboard. String will be back ASAP, once this new bit of chaos is beat into submission. And after I catch up on sleep.
One hint of what’s coming: it’s a "gang aft agley" moment on my flash project.
FLASH DANCE – PART II
Yesterday I wrote about establishing the flash value. Today I write about what might go wrong while you’re doing so.
First, there’s the gauge problem. When I do it, the gauge of the row that I pick up off the provisional chain isn’t exactly the same as my plain old stockinette gauge. The waste yarn choice or tension of how I knit that first row can cause all sorts of oddities. This is especially true for me when I use larger size needles (anything over a US #3). As I knit the second row I might find my color alignment drifting because there are too many or too few stitches in the pick-up row. Not many, but enough to throw things off. For example, row two might hit a designated color change point several stitches before that same spot appeared on the cast-on row. If that happens I might cheat on the knit row immediately following my cast-on. If I see the color repeat drifting too much to the right, I might knit two stitches together. Conversely, if I "over-run" a color match point, I might rip back a couple of inches, then do a make-one to add a stitch, bringing the target sploches into better alignment.
I do however have to take care if I change the stitch count. If you look at my parrot-color sweater, you’ll see wide swings where the colors lurch from side to side. That’s normal. Two things make the zig-zags happen. First, one’s tension is not always uniform. Most of us have near imperceptible changes in gauge as we sit through a knitting session. We knit more tightly when we sit down, then loosen up a bit as our hands relax. Finally when we get tired, we tighten up again. Tighter knitting migrates the colors to the right. Looser knitting migrates the stripes to the left. I knit my parrot sweater’s body in two sessions. They’re easy to pick out.
Hand painted yarns also have a playful imprecision in color placement. They are never as regimented in their color placement as machine printed yarns (sock self-stripers). That’s the second factor, and what makes the edges of the stripe so step-like. Color segments seep into the hank at different rates at different places, yielding different saturations and slightly different lengths of the color segments from strand to strand. And some blobs may not go all the way through the hank and may seem to disappear after several repeats.
You can see clearly, above. Look at the 8:00 position on my skein. There’s a spot of brown. It encroaches on the teal and bleeds into the khaki, but doesn’t do it uniformly through the hank. It’s most evident on the top of the skein. Underneath it looks like the teal touches the khaki directly, with no intermediary fling into brown at all.
This brings me to the second thing that can go wrong. Not every hand-painted skein is ideal for this type of knitting. The longer the repeat and wider the individual color splotches, the better suited a yarn is for flashing. My new yarn is borderline. I expect some parts will align nicely. The big teal areas show special promise. I am expecting the brown and khaki bits to dance between the teal areas because they are so short and so haphazardly sized. I am not going to get the clear zig-zag stripe of my parrot sweater. Instead I’m expecting something with more of a softer forest floor/camoflauge look.
UPDATE: The third factor that limits flash is generated by how the skein is dyed, in conjunction with the total garment circumference. Strands that are adjacent in the original hank when it was dyed are more likely to be close or near-close matches than are strands that are further apart. If you have a garment that’s small enough to be traversed around by only two repeats, the color stacking you will see will be much more in alignment than will a garment knit from the same yarn that takes five full repeats to complete one round. That’s wny it’s not uncommon to see flash kits for toddler sweaters but less common to see them for adult sizes. If I were into dyeing and wanted to aim for flashing yarn in an adult circumference, I might try winding my yarn into hanks that are significantly wider around than the sizes most commonly used.
Now after several fits and starts of my own project – all the result of the pitfalls outlined abouve (you have to be willing to rip out several times if you’re going to start a flash sweater), I think I’ve got the stitch count thing down. I hope to have actual pix of it in the next post.
FLASH DANCE – PART I
First a cool thing: stud earrings in the shape of the end buttons from old Susan Bates US #1 straights (bottom of the page).
Flash Dance
I’m working with my latest yarn present – the hand-dyed cotton brought home from Arizona by the Resident Male:
My goal is to turn it into a t-shirt that flashes. By that I want to have the color segments line up one on top of each other so that the finished product looks like it was painted:
Based on new yarn’s look and circumference, I’m reasonably certain that I can do this, but two questions remain.
- Will the final dimensions dictated by having to use full multiples of the skein length for each round of knitting be useful sizes. In other words, my final sweater size will be dictated by how many stitches it takes to achieve flash. Will that size fit?
- How does one go about figuring out how many stitches to cast on to achieve this effect anyway?
The two questions are closely related. This skein is similar to a yarn I’ve used before. In that yarn (not the one above), it took about 60 stitches to consume an entire repeat (give or take). At five stitches per inch, that works out to about 12 stitches of linear knitting per repeat. A flashing garmet knit from that yarn could be roughly 24 inches, 36 inches or 48 inches around. 24 inches would be too small for Younger Daughter, but a 36-inch sweater will Older Daughter. 48 inches will fit me.
But will my new yarn hit that target. Not closely enough to be absolutely certain. This skein is a tad smaller in circumference than the old one. (To determine the skein diameter of the old one, I took my balled up leftovers and wound some around my swift, lining up the color slices. When the colors aligned, I knew I had "reconstructed" the original skein’s width.) The old skein was about a full yard in circumference. This one is about 30-31 inches so I’d expect that the color cycle would be smaller. For a rough approximation, I divided 36 inches by 60 stitches. I get about .6 inch of yarn consumed per stitch. That seems a bit high but not outside of reason. 30 inches "eaten" at the same rate would result in 50 stitches. I suspect that my flash value will be somewhere in the 50-stitch neighborhood. Five repeats of 50 stitches and a gauge of 5 stitches per inch would yield a garment circumference around 50 inches. A bit big, but not outside of wearability.
Now all the math theory in the world can’t substitute for actual experimentation. Having done the base noodle work, it’s time to try it out. I know that whatever I end up knitting, I will want to be as yarn-economical as possible. It might be necessary to eke out my limited amount of flash yarn with something else for ribbings or edgings, so I’ll start with a provisional cast-on.
I like the crochet chain provisional cast-on, preferably worked right onto the needles to avoid the fiddly bit of picking up stitches in the chain’s back bumps. I cast on far more stitches than I needed because with the crochet chain cast-on, you can slide any excess off the needles (or not pick up in the bumps) with no adverse effect on the project. So using a plain old bit of cotton string for ease of removal later, I cast on about 270 chain stitches and set it aside.
Another complication. In a screamingly bright color combo like the parrot sweater above, it’s easy to figure out where a color cycle begins. That yellow is killer and can’t be missed. My new yarn however contains colors that are much closer in value. There are three repeating segments per full cycle: teal, khaki, brown. How will I know when I’ve gotten back to the beginning point? Having wound my yarn into a big ball already it is no longer obvious where the cycles end. An artificial flag is necessary.
Just like I did to determine the skein length of my old yarn, I hauled out the swift again, and re-wound several turns of my new stuff, taking care to adjust the swift until I could align my color patches. I put a safety pin into the yarn at the end, and another into the yarn five turns (five full cycles) later, making sure that both pins marked matching spots in the cycle. I now had five repeats marked out. Starting with the point marked by my pin, I began to knit the loops off my provisional chain and continued until I cit the second safety pin. Counting up, I had about 260 or so stitches on my circ before joining. Or so? Why the imprecision? Am I ready to knit off happily watching the flash pattern grow?
Not exactly. Tune in tomorrow to find out why, and what I did next.
SPORT AND GANSEY WEIGHT; FRONT END WASHERS
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.
WASH FIRST/KNIT FIRST
Tracey asks if I plan on washing my Webs-acquired Highland Tweed before I work with it, or if I plan on washing the sweater after it has been knit.
I think in this case, I’ll wash my yarn first. A couple of years ago, I knit something in a yarn that like the Highland Tweed was full of whatever they use to make machine spinning easier It was a cone of some unidentified 100% wool I got at the old Classic Elite mill end store. I swatched it up, got gauge, washed the square, re-gauged and knit up Flor’s gansey pullover for my older daughter. (Flor’s pages are off-line, but the pattern can be found in the Internet Archive.) Then I washed the thing. I was never quite pleased with the fit. The yarn relaxed and fluffed out a bit, but looked "strangled" in the sweater. Proportions shifted slightly in unexpected ways. I’m sure if I had taken the time to wash the yarn first, then take a gauge on it rather than doing the lazy route, everything would have worked out better.
That being said – how to wash yarn? It’s easy.
I take my swift (or two chairs back to back in my pre-swift decade) and wind a fair bit off the cone. Then I’ll take some cotton string and loosely tie the newly made hank in two or three places. I note that many hanks I buy are tied in a two or three "stitch" manner rather than in one big clump. It looks like the person who did it took a length of tie string and looped it around the accumulated hank. Then, he or she bunched up about a third of the hank’s yarn and plunged one end of the tie string through the thing from top to bottom, and the other end through at the same spot, from bottom to top. Then they grouped up the next third, and repeated the process. The whole idea is to keep the yarn in an easy to unwind hank, but not tie it so tightly that the yarns rub up against each other and encourage fulling.
Once my hank is loosely tied, I’ll wash it the same way I wash my finished items. I’ll fill my washing machine part way with cool water and add a wash agent. Right now my favorite is Kookabura Wool Wash, but I’ve also used Eucalan in the washer. If I were doing this OUT of the washer in a tub sink or bucket and had no wool wash to hand, I’d try a liquid dishwashing detergent or inexpensive shampoo. Warning though, adding either dishwashing liquid or shampoo to a washing machine can mean a Lucy Moment as you deal with the resulting overflow of lather.
With the washer’s wash cycle off, but with the wash agent mixed well in the water, I submerge my hanked yarn in the tub and let it soak for a while. I might swish it a bit very gently in the water to encourage the process but I don’t turn the washer on, or otherwise squeeze, rub, or agitate the yarn mass. Once the yarn has soaked for a bit (usually about a half hour, or until I remember I’ve put it in), I advance the washer dial to rinse. I let the machine empty, then refill partway with the SAME temperature water in which I did the wash, but stop it before agitation begins. I let the yarn sit a bit in the cleaner water (again with perhaps the most gentle of hand swishes), then advance the machine to final spin. This time I let the water drain out and let the machine go through its final spin, to fling as much water out of the yarn as possible.
After the wash I take my hanks and loop them around plastic hangers, then hang the hangers somewhere to dry. Over the shower rod with a towel underneath is fine. The trick is to find somewhere out of direct sun that’s un-humid enough to encourage quick drying. My basement in this case is right out, as it is too damp down there for quick drying. On a very humid day I might direct a fan to blow at my drying hanks in order to speed the process.
Am I doing this right now? Not yet. I admit I’ve been sidetracked (the story of my knitting life). I’m playing with the nifty cotton I described yesterday, messing with gauge measurements and stitch count, trying to establish my flash dimension. It’s a bit harder than before because although the yarn has the right dimension and color placement to flash, the color set doesn’t have a wildly obvious marker like a screaming orange stripe. A visually distinctive bit helps eyeball where the repeats should overlap. More on this as I work the problem through…
String-Or-Nothing 