Love of Knitting Blog

I have been diligently working on my Honeycomb Swing Sweater and I am quite pleased with my progress.  I have passed the half way mark, and I am still hopeful that I will have this sweater finished in time for Valentine’s Day.  The easy cable pattern and larger needles has made this sweater a very quick knit.  I love projects that give you a sense of progress every time you work on them, and although I am a huge fan of socks I often feel that I have knit for hours and not gotten very far when I am knitting socks.  But that is not the case with the Honeycomb Swing, I feel like I see it grow each time I pick it up, and that is all the encouragement I need to keep knitting!

What about you? Have you completed the back yet?  Did you have any difficulties with the provisional cast on?  If you need any help, please feel free to let us know either here or on our Facebook page.  Remember we are here to help!

I love New Years’ Eve.  The anticipation and excitement created for the New Year; the endless possibilities and adventures waiting to be experienced.  A new calendar always feels like a fresh start to me, a blank canvas to fill with ideas and plans to make this year better than the last.

My knitting plan, for this year, is to finish more projects and work one project at a time.  I have never been a monogamous knitter.  I find a pattern and yarn that I love, cast on in eager anticipation for wearing the finished garment (socks, hat, sweater, whatever the pattern happens to be for) and then half-way through I am wooed away by some other beautiful pattern or yarn.  But this year, I am going to be faithful.  I am very excited for the knit alongs we have planned for Love of Knitting, and I know that by knitting together we can keep each other on track and finish everything that we start.

I am hopeful that my goal to finish everything I start new will also translate over to me finishing one of my many WIP’s (works in progress).  Perhaps I will be so faithful that for every new project I finish I will be inspired to go and finish an old project as well.

What about you – do you have knitting goals for this year?

 Last New Year’s Eve I started working on a wrap from Knitted Lace of Estonia.  I converted the pattern from a lace weight yarn, to match the worsted weight yarn that I had selected.  On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day 2011, I happily knit away on this vibrant and soft yarn, only to become distracted by life and work over the last year. 

At some point early in the year, possibly last February, I put this project down and forgot about it, until we started receiving yarn to be featured in our online yarn reviews – 52 Weeks of Yarn.  Week 11 features Loftyby Kollage Yarns, and this fabulous vivid red yarn reminded me of my wrap that I started last New Years’ eve.  I was inspired to find that fantastic project and finish it, and I was also inspired to design my own matching hat.  I can’t think of a better way to start the new year than with a knitted gift for myself.

I have selected Berroco Peruvia for my Honeycomb Swing sweater and I am in love with the deep red color. This yarn does have a slight halo, but I am expecting that halo to give my cables a soft focus appearance, enhancing the beauty of the pattern.

I initially cast on using  US size 10 needles, but with this size I have a gauge of 3.5 stitches per inch.  The pattern requires 4 stitches per inch, so I changed to a US size 9 and was able to match the required gauge with the US size 9 needles.

After checking my gauge and determining that I needed to adjust my needle size, I knit 4 rows of garter stitch (knitting every row) and then changed to the smaller needles.  These
4 rows of garter stitch created an easy to see line marking the place where I changed from the larger to the smaller needles. I recommend this technique, instead of starting a new swatch each time you change needle sizes.  It enables you to quickly change to a bigger or
smaller needle to match the gauge requirements and it allows you to easily compare
how the fabric looks with each needle size.

After comparing both gauges, I prefer the fabric created on the size 10 needle, it appears fuller and the fabric has a bit more drape to it.  To compensate for using a larger gauge than the pattern requires I am going to use the stitch counts for one size smaller than my size, but I will use the measurements for the correct size.  For example, I am going cast on
122, the stitch count for the smallest size, but I will knit until the piece measures 10 inches, the measurement for the medium size.

What about you? Have you completed your gauge swatch?

My 13-year-old daughter recently announced that she would like to learn to knit socks. Knowing how swiftly she can change her mind, I quickly seized this idea and sat her down with a stack of sock books to selecta pattern. The one she chose is for a bulkier sock, knit with worsted weight yarn and size 5 needles, and I thought the bigger needles and yarn would make her first pair easier. With pattern in hand, we turned to my stash for yarn. The pattern calls for Wool Cotton (which I have in my stash), however, she didn’t like the color and instead picked a wonderful soft gray yarn that just happens to be a cashmere blend (of course).

Finally with yarn, pattern, and needles in hand, we sat down and casted on, using the magic-loop two–at-a-time method. My daughter is quite a good knitter. She has knit several hats and understands knitting in the round, but the socks were a bit of a challenge. After asking me to check her work after the first few rounds, I was sure that she had the hang of it and was on her way. Unfortunately that was not quite the case.

After knitting the required seven rows of ribbing, she brought me her socks for help with the next step, and I realized that we had several problems. At first glance the socks looked wonderful, the rib lined up and the stitches were neat and tidy.

Upon closer inspection I realized that the rib lined up on three sides, but one sock had a funny rib pattern on one side.

My initial thought was to easily solve that problem by walking the stitches down and picking them back up in the proper pattern. Until I realized that we had a bigger issue.

Both socks had a tremendous gap at the join, and one of the socks actually appeared to be twisted at the join. I think that she worked one row in the round and the next row was turned and worked back, or at least that is the only idea I have come up with to explain the gaps in the sides. I have no idea how the twist happened.

Sadly the only way to fix the problem was to rip back and start over. My daughter, being an excellent knitter, met this announcement with a very stern “No, I don’t want to,” (because isn’t that how we all react to frogging?) at which point I offered to re-knit them back to the point where she stopped.

Last night I finally was able to re-start her socks, and she is now happily knitting away again, this time taking care to make sure that she is only working in one direction. She plans on wearing these socks at Christmas; I just hope I don’t end up knitting them for her!

There’s more to Knotty Knitting than disasters involving the swift and ball winder! Some of my biggest Knotty Knitting escapades involve four furry feet. We all love our pets, but sometimes pets and yarn just don’t mix. Over the years my two cats Pinecone II and Rosalie (who is a boy, but hey, my daughter named him when she was 4) have learned to respect the skeins, but it wasn’t always that way.

For some reason, above all others, these cats love alpaca. Any bag, box, or container that once held skeins of alpaca yarn is like catnip to Pinecone and Rosie. They will jump inside, sniff around, and generally act crazy. So it’s not surprising what happened the day I got up to answer the phone and didn’t put my alpaca shawl project back in my knitting bag first.

When I left the room, the cats were fast asleep on the other end of the house, or so I thought. As I chatted on the phone with my mother, they crept, unnoticed, into my knitting room. A few minutes later I returned down the hall, and was met by the sight of Pinecone running from the room with a skein of alpaca in his mouth like a sausage. Rosie followed behind, struggling to carry a wound ball of the stuff. I chased after them to retrieve the yarn, and was relieved to find it was unharmed, just damp. Then I walked back to the knitting room.

That’s when I saw it. My delicate lace shawl, spread out on the floor, with a great big hole in the center. They had somehow managed to shred it in such a way that I had to rip back to the first inch, and being a shawl, those rows are very short. It was weeks of work down the drain! I was furious.

Years have passed, and now I can see the humor in it (the reknit shawl turned out beautifully, by the way). The funny thing is, my daughter, who was barely 5 years old at the time, still brings up the incident from time to time!

What madcap Knotty Knitting disaster has happened to you because of a beloved pet? Share it with us {http://www.loveofknitting.com/contests/knotty-yarn-holiday-contest.html} before November 21, and you could win a fabulous prize!

I had hoped to have my Gypsy Lee sweater (featured in the summer 2011 issue) finished in time to wear to the Taos Wool Festival. Unfortunately the sock weight yarn took much longer to knit than I had ever imagined, and much to my dismay, I found myself still knitting the sleeves on the drive to Taos. I diligently worked away the entire 5-hour drive down on Friday, and I was back at it when we returned to the hotel after dinner later that evening. Saturday I was again knitting away before and after dinner. The entire weekend I repeatedly tried my sweater on, asking my traveling companions, “do you think the sleeves are long enough? Should I cast off yet?” Only to hear, “they don’t look long enough to me” as the response each time.

Finally after knitting the majority of the drive home on Sunday, I finally cast off the sleeves of my sweater and tried on the finished result only to find I wasn’t sure I liked it.

You can only image how disappointed I was, especially after considering all of the time that I had invested. I decided to block my sweater before I gave up.

I completely saturated it in water, blocked it flat, and oh my, what a difference! I wish that I had taken a before picture, but you can see from the after-shot that the blocking opened the lace and the finished result is beautiful (if I do say so myself).

My only concern now is the buttons. I love the ones that I have selected, but they are a bit too big to fit through the buttonholes, requiring me to pull the sweater over my head to put it on or take it off. That seems like a small price to pay for a sweater that I now love. I don’t know that I am going to tackle another sweater knit with sock yarn any time soon,
but I will definitely remember to block before I judge in the future.

Surely you’ve heard about our Knotty Knitting contest, right?  You can win some fabulous prizes, and all you have to do is share your worst tangled yarn story. Fun!

It happens to us all. I remember once I treated myself to one beautiful skein of 100% cashmere Classic Elite Forbidden. It was heaven in a skein. It was hands down the most expensive yarn I’d ever owned (though since I became the proud but terrified owner of two balls of Qiviut yarn. They live in my stash like a horde of jewels, unknit but certainly not unloved). But I digress. I was determined to actually use the cashmere. Sure it wasn’t much, only having one skein, but I wanted a delicious pair of cashmere mitts to wear. So I started winding.

Of course, at the time I did not own a swift or ball winder. I decided the thing to do was to rest the hank around my bent knees and wind. Bad idea. The entire experience was a disaster from the start. I couldn’t find the end. I kept getting tangled. My knee slipped out. You get the picture. At the end, I had a mess that looked like something you pulled out of a shower drain. Now normally I’m not one of those who has the patience to untangle a yarn disaster. I’ve taken out the scissors and literally cut my losses more than once. But this was CASHMERE, people!  So what should have been a quick winding project turned into an afternoon of cursing under my breath as I picked apart my beloved skein.

The next week, I went out and got a swift.

Your turn!  Share your most tangled experiences (e-mail to contests@loveofknitting.com), and hey, you just might win!

As knitters we have all had unexpected results with our finished projects. Occasionally our choice of fiber is not ideal for the pattern, and we might not realize our mistake until we are finished.  Gauge is important for size, but drape is affected by the fiber content of the yarn. Meaning yarns with the same gauge but different fiber contents can wear and drape individually. We want to help you achieve the ideal finish for all of your knitted projects.

To help you with your fiber dilemmas….

We are ecstatic to announce our new online feature 52 weeks of yarn.  Each week we will introduce you to a new yarn, and give you helpful hints and best use tips, ensuring that the next time you pick the perfect pattern you can also pick the perfect yarn!

Just in time for the knotty yarn contest, my newest winding story.

When using a ball winder, I wind too fast. I know that I wind too fast. I hope that someday  this realization will slow me down, but it hasn’t worked so far.

Wednesday morning, in an effort to get a ball wound in preparation for knit group that night, I began cranking my winder at warp speed. This caused the ball to go flying off the top of the spool (again), landing at the base of my desk. The trajectory of the flying ball encouraged the yarn to wrap around various objects in the flight path.

Luckily, this time it was a small hank (only 87 yards), and I was easily and quickly able to rewind the entire ball (still winding too fast). I now have a lovely yarn cake.

I didn’t have the same luck this past weekend with 600 yards of lace weight. That mess took me an hour to untangle.

I should have taken pictures of the lace yarn, but I was so annoyed with myself. I had to leave the room for several hours before I could begin the process of untangling, and when I returned, I forgot the camera.

I did remember to take pictures this time, and I wanted to share with you the mess I made yesterday.

I can’t wait to hear your stories!

Happy winding everyone!