Getting perfume out of vintage fabric

Today I thought I'd talk about how to resolve the downside of vintage fabric collecting, mainly because I've been dealing with it for the last two days instead of knitting or spinning.  Not that I'm bitter!
 

It wasn't the tea toweling I bought for our kitchen windows that did me in, but a vintage French linen sheet and some tea towels from a different, albeit just as nice, vendor: I opened the shipping box and it was like falling face-first into a meadow of fabric softener sheets.  I have a perfume allergy, so the fact that I don't particularly like that scent was the least of my problems; I also got a massive headache straightaway.

Obviously mt first reaction was to run my new purchases straight to the washing machine and dump them in. In hindsight that was the right thing for me to do because I'm in a condo with no balcony and my neighbours would probably not like it if I strung up a line on the shared upstairs terrace to air them out for a few days.  But seriously?

Air out perfumed fabric for as long as you can before you try to wash it. 

Next - unless you have a big soaking pail and a good place to keep it far from where you plan to breathe - wash the fabric, but not in your regular detergent (twice, like I did, with zero impact.)  Use Borax. (and use Borax in your soaking pail, too.)

Don't just run it through the cycle.  Let it soak in warm water and Borax for an hour or three before letting the machine go again, and when you get to the rinse cycle, pour some vinegar, maybe half a cup, into the fresh water.  Let that soak for a few hours too.

After you've done two or three of those wash cycles you might still smell the perfume, and simultaneously realize you've run out of vinegar.  But fear not! You can use baking soda in the rinse water, instead.  You can substitute baking soda for Borax too, if you run out of that.

If you've gone this far and still have terrible-smelling fabric, you may well be dealing with the effects of fabric softener.  In my various rabbit-hole research on this point between wash cycles, I learned the possibly incorrect theory that fabric softener effectively layers a thin coat of perfumed wax over every fiber in its reach.  Over time, the layers get very thick and your fabric loses absorbancy (which is one of the prime features of both towels and linen sheets, so if this is true it's an especially bad idea to use fabric softener sheets when you dry these two items.)

Sigh.  Isn't that red stripe beautiful?  But after about eight hours of washing, this fabric still stinks.  As does our laundry room.  AND the washing drum, I suspect because any perfumed wax that was stripped off the fabric was left on the metal finish.  So after I got the fabric down to about half as offensive as it was on arrival, and hung it up in sheer desperation because I had urgent clothing-related laundry to do...

I had to deodorize the washing machine as well.

If this happens to you, try filling the drum with warm water and adding more Borax.  Let that sit for an hour, then run through to the rinse cycle, add vinegar to the fresh water, and let that sit too.  Running through a cycle like this twice cleared enough odor out of our machine to allow me to wash clothes unscathed.

I'm not sure how many more runs I'll have to do with the Borax-vinegar-baking soda routine to get the rest of the scent out of the fabric, but I do know this:

The linen sheet is huge and completely unstained and if I can ever get it smelling clean it will be a great asset in the new house.  And we love the tea towels. 

Also: it's a really good idea to have a clothesline.  I wasn't planning to put one into the new back yard, but I'm going to now, even though I'm seriously questioning the wisdom of buying fabric online, at least until technology advances to sniff-o-vision so you know what you're getting into when you click Buy It Now.

I'm not at all blind to the terrible waste of water just to undo the damage caused by a chemical product but I don't know, is it worse to throw out the fabric?  I'll probably have a clearer answer to that after another day's wash, though I suppose at that point I'll have invested so much water and energy it would be a slap in the face of Mother Nature to throw it in the bin.

Arg.

Hope everybody who celebrated a big national holiday this weekend had a wonderful time and that all of you (holiday or not) got in some crafty time with a marked reduction in laundry-doing, heh.

See you tomorrow, if I get lucky with the next round of linen-soaking!

Running in ends

The other day I mentioned the trick Trish passed on to me about how to run in ends neatly after the fact - as opposed to dealing with them as you knit - but I couldn't find a picture of it.

Well, here you go.  Basically, you slip your needle diagonally through the loops of a series of purl stitches, and then turn to another angle and do it again.

I find this approach to be sort of hypnotic and meditative.  And I like the subtle scar left when the end is neatly tucked behind the knit stitches, like arms behind one's back, whistling, and pretending all is well when actually it's chaos in the kitchen. 

(I wrote that specifically for people who enjoy a good mixed metaphor.)

(ha.  actually that is the sort of misstep I would normally edit out and didn't this time because I liked the image of a stick person with scars for arms doing a suspiciously innocent whistle.)

(but as my dad used to say, Don't apologize for the food, they might not notice, so I will stop calling attention to myself now and get back to this technique for running in ends.)

If you do it right, you may see a bit of contrast colour on the purl side, but it's invisible in the front.



Related news: the long-suffering fingerless gloves. 

In addition to being totally sidetracked by my briefly hectic social life - another story for another day - I got Trish to try on one of the finished gloves and it was a bit snug for her (her hands are larger than mine, which is why I got her to try one on.)  So clearly I need take a few extra hours and do three sizes for this glove.  Can you stand it, how awesome this pattern is going to be when it's finally done??

I wore these ones out on Sunday.  They were FABulous.  I could go on and on... but then I wouldn't be knitting, and I'm super excited about something else I'm working on so I'll stop here and see you tomorrow!

Knitting in the round: how to hide your cast on

Have you ever noticed that the best thing about knitting in the round is the cause of the worst thing?  You don't have to sew up a seam, but because each new round starts a layer higher than the stitch that came before it, the start of the round always shows.  Bleah.

When I design hats or cowls, I look for ways to hide that jog, and when I'm running in the cast on and cast off tails I try to weave them in to hide the gap at the edges of the piece.  Before I share my pattern for the hatcowl later this week, I thought I'd show you today how I do that in case it's a tip you can use.  And if you've got another approach, I'd be glad to hear it!

Essentially, I embroider a fake stitch into the cast-on border with the tail, before running in the end.  You can click on this photograph if you need a closer look at where I place the darning needle, but what you're looking for is the midpoint of the bottom of the first stitch to the left of the tail.

When you slip the needle through and pull the yarn snugly, and certainly after you run the end through the back of the work, you can't tell there was ever anything different about that patch of stitching.

The cast off gap is often a good deal worse, as seen here:

But it's an easy fix.  Again, use your cast off tail to embroider a fake stitch that runs to the midpoint of the next stitch, but this time, you're choosing the one to the right of the tail.

Pretty, yes?

Here you can see there is a little hole from how far apart the stitches were stretched, but that's easily hidden by the tail when you run it through the back.  Frankly I'm still impressed, even after all this time, at how much better an end looks after you do this little trick!


In other news, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend?

I spent part of mine admiring the huge new condo (which, as I may have mentioned, is larger than our entire house) and the other part realizing that every single room in it needs repainting and not just the two or three I thought were too tired to go on.

After which I made my choice between hiring painters or having a bathtub in the master bath (because the previous owners removed the one that was there, tiled over it, and put a storage cart in the space.)

And then spent what was left of the time off trying to convince myself that I really can pull off painting all that cavernous space, plus Christmas knits, plus my usual workload, plus the start of the design stage for the renovation, all before December 20th or so.

I didn't quite swing it, but I've decided to go in optimistic and think of contingency plans while I go on as best I can.   Pretty good philosophy for most situations, don't you think?

Hope you don't have to lean on it today though - have a fun day instead, and I'll see you back here again tomorrow!


 

Shawl pin to the rescue

You'll recognize this beautiful grey and pink shawl, I'm sure, from its longtime presence on the Hugs banner:

It's 'Sugared Violets' by Rose Beck, and I'm going to shock you: I almost never wear it.  I know - crazy, right?  I used my very best cashmere-blend yarn for this shawl, and I worked hard to get the lace absolutely perfect, and I just don't wear it.  I will sometimes throw it on to keep my neck warm under a winter coat, but never to show off.  Because I can't keep it on me.

Truly.  The ends look so cute and curly until one slides off the back of my shoulder - and one always slides off the back of my shoulder.  I've tried tying the ends, but they just look lumpy and awkward and don't do credit to my knitting or Rose Beck's pattern at all.  So unless I have the whole thing stuffed securely under a coat, I don't bother taking it out of its cubby in the first place.

Until the other day when I really needed something warm and pretty at my neck for an outing, and I remembered this:

Cue the chorus: It's A Shawl Pin, which I also almost never wear.  I mean, I love it, of course.  I bought it from Churchmouse Yarns and Teas because I'd been in love with this design for a few years and by the time I decided to treat myself to it from the first place I'd found it, it was long since sold out.  But I don't use it.  So on this particular day, I decided to try it out.

So, so perfect.  I still got the curls, and I didn't have to deal with the flapping ends or trailing shawl.

I realize I may be the slowest person on the block but - do you have a shawl pin that you actually get around to sticking into your knitting?  Because if you do and you don't, I can highly recommend taking that extra step.

You'll get so much more use out of your scarves and shawls if you do!

Extending the life of a sock

The trouble with knitting socks for small people is that their feet grow.  Which may not be trouble really - it's quick to knit small socks, and if the feet are small enough, the person who operates them may forget about handknit socks by the time their feet are large enough to need a new pair.  Also, there may be upcoming small feet to take on the use of the socks until they are, finally, more hole than fabric.

But if you are not mindful, and over-generously knit socks for a cold-footed not-so-small person with a sibling who will inevitably also want a pair, you may find yourself with a pair of Sock Monsters.

And then, when their feet outgrow the socks you made them last winter and the weather is already growing cold for the next one, you might find yourself sitting down with scraps and some scissors.

Now, I don't know that I recommend trying this.  My original plan was simply to take the socks back once they were outgrown (I only knit them in the first place because they both happened to take my own sock size - it's not like I have a heart or anything) and really, even light wear inside winter boats is going to produce enough felting on the inside of the sole to make ripping out and reknitting the foot a bit longer, more than a bit of a chore.

But it's such an interesting chore.  And much faster than knitting an entirely new pair of socks with ribbing (because the monsters' legs are too narrow to hold the socks up otherwise.)

Basically, you have to rip out the grafted toe of a top-down sock - if you were the slightest bit sloppy about how you ran in the end after grafting, the tail is easier to find - and peel back the yarn to the start of the toe decreases.

Then, you get the live stitches back onto needles, placing them carefully so the heel gusset lines up with the original needle arrangements.  Otherwise, you'll have an off-centre toe.

I found that picking up the stitches with a set of very sharp tipped needles a size down, and then shifting them onto the original ones, makes that job much easier.

After all that you just knit onward, in pattern.

I added an extra 10 rounds, which put the final sock length at the outside border of what currently accommodates the relevant sock monster (and, coincidentally, the outside of what always fits me - because I am not doing this again to these socks; I don't think the yarn could stand it, never mind the knitter.)

I do not, incidentally, recommend knitting the new length with the old yarn.  I did it for this sock and will have to do it for its mate, but the stitches don't lie as neatly, and as I mentioned - the yarn is a bit tired after the previous winter's use.

When it's time, start a new toe.

And when that's done, say YAY! as loudly as you can...

... and get on to the next three socks.  le sigh.

Knitting setup: time well spent

When I was away at university I had one of those friends who really transform you.

She knew about stuff I didn't, and she was fearless about doing stuff I wouldn't even consider, like successfully sewing her own expensive silk blouse for a fancy party with her parents' wealthy friends even though she only had the floor to cut the fabric out on and a community sewing machine that rarely worked.  She introduced me to the New Yorker, which I still read compulsively, and she once made me buy a pair of steeply discounted striped linen dress pants she had seen in a designer outlet earlier in the day and which felt were perfect for me (I was unconvinced but she was right: I wore them constantly for years.)

She also took one evening every few weeks to look after boring details, like mending or hemming or using an intensive facial mask or whatever.  The practicality of that approach - just book the time and put things in order, never mind trying to find a few minutes here or there, or while scrambling at the last minute - has really stuck with me. So I think of her whenever I do what I call...

Staging Knitting

If you like knitting and you have the materials for more than one project in your house, chances are you have a bit of a mess on your hands at least some of the time.  And if you like to have knitting with you for long car trips or doctor's office waiting rooms or to help you wind down in the evenings, you would probably benefit from starting several projects and then setting them aside so they're ready when you need them. Not only does it ensure you have a steady supply of projects, it really takes care of that mess.

Staging your knitting might involve choosing patterns and swatching with different needles to get your gauge right.  Just finding needles is often a biggie.  You might choose to cake some yarn you'll need soon, even if you don't have time (or free needles) to actually cast on yet, because this is the hour or two where you'll have time to get to your swift and ball winder.  Staging isn't just casting on, though it is the best part, if you ask me.


Here are some types of knitting you may want to have on standby:

Mindless knits: also known as 'emergency knitting' to deal with stress during an unexpected medical crisis, mindless knits don't require you to look at them much and are fantastic for watching a movie, catching up with a friend, or enjoying the scenery on a long car drive.

Gift knits: one thing that makes it especially great to be a knitter is that you can give truly one-of-a-kind labours of love to the people you care about or the people to whom you owe a lot of thanks.  Having a few giftable knits set by in advance is ideal, because you don't have to wait to mark the moment.  You can just be spontaneous.  Or, if you know you're knitting for a particular person, you can do some of the work during an event that is or might be special to that person. I often work on mindless gift knits during concerts, to build some of that beauty into the finished product.

Lately my perpetual 'gift knits' are scarves, woven on my loom at home.  I try to make sure I get a new one set up as soon as possible after I've finished the old one, just in case I have a few minutes here or there for weaving.

Comfort knits: this is the kind of project that makes you feel better.  It might be the softness of the fabric that soothes you, or it might be the way the colours blend, or it might be the motion of your hands as you work the particular stitches the pattern requires.  Regardless, comfort knits are an important resource for any knitter and you never know when you will need one.

Challenging knits: sometimes what you really need is to sink your teeth into a project, or you want something you can show off at big yarny gatherings.  Maybe it's time to push your limits and see what you can do with two sticks and a ball of string.  That's when you'll turn to a project that's challenging to you - cables, lace, colourwork, a new technique, whatever.

Travel knits: this is the one thing I always have to have ready - a compact project to throw into your bag so you're always equipped with ways to pass the time, no matter what the day throws at you.  One week I might not touch my travel knit, another I might work on it so much it's practically done.   And at that point, I've got to have another barely-started project to take its place, fast.

Obviously, some of these categories will overlap for different knitters.  And there are probably lots more categories to consider when setting up some knitting for later.  Is there a particular kind of knitting on your Must Have list?


(the purple cuffs are tops of a pair of gift socks I'm knitting in Twisted Fiber Art's 'Boreal' colourway from an old club collection, with the complementary purple for the cuff, heel and toe.  I've put them into play now so you'll be seeing a lot of them here - I hope you like the colours as much as I do!)

Handknit hats: colour matters

Picture this: dark-haired girl + tangerine handknit chevron texture hat in a crunchy farm-type wool.  Sigh.

I'm sorry I'm making you do that work instead of showing you a photograph but I couldn't randomly whip out my camera as she walked past me one day this past winter - I was too busy restraining myself from taking that hat off her head to examine the stitch.  The combination of colour, texture, and yarn was so flawless, I can recall it perfectly even now.

Anyway the image isn't as important as this insight: if you're going to knit a hat, make the most of the opportunity and pick a colour that is fabulous for you.

Fabulous colour, slightly itchy yarn: the not quite perfect hat

Or for whoever is going to be wearing it, of course - shouldn't assume you're like me and knit for yourself all the time, heh.


My Former, Illogical Hat Philosophy

There are so many schools of thought on how to accessorize an outfit, and I've never been able to master even one of them completely.  Matching your purse and your shoes - that's a rule-to-be-broken that I understand but haven't got the closet storage space to serve, beyond sticking to black shoes and black purses for safety.

When it comes to hats and scarves though, it's always seemed easy.  You either match something in your coat with a solid colour, if the coat is a print or a tweed or something, or you contrast it with a different colour or a stripe or print if the coat is a solid colour.  Or if the coat has some big design feature like contrasting buttons, you can match those.


The Trouble With Simplicity

By this logic, I have for many years worn a black coat so that I could do whatever I wanted with my hats.  I worry about whether the hat is a nice shape, and whether it's warm enough, and that's about all.  But this past winter, I started getting compliments on that crazy huge handspun hat I wore to survive the cold.  I almost never get compliments on my hats, no matter how many I knit, and this particular hat, as I've mentioned more than a few times, looks like a partially deflated Yorkshire pudding.  I couldn't understand it.

And then I looked at myself in the mirror one day and all was revealed.

It's the colour.  The crazy big hat is green, and so are my eyes, not to mention the frames of my glasses.  I'd gotten so used to the green hat I hadn't noticed, but the day before I'd been in front of a different mirror wearing my favourite grey cashmere floppy hat.

And I looked awful.

Even though it's a stunningly beautiful Viola yarn with hits of brown in it, they don't show at the front.  It's just kinda grey and white.  So instead of looking subtle and lovely, the grey clashes with my hair, which (in spite of encroaching grey there too) is still mostly brown with bits of copper in it.  It didn't do anything for my glasses either, which in addition to the green have arms of that same coppery shade.  My skin tone is more pink than anything, and the grey just washed it out.  Bleah.


Solution

Back in the day, everybody I knew was having their colours done, and afterward they chose accessories with aplomb.  Maybe it's worth doing that, and buying (or spinning!) hat knitting yarn in the best possible shades?

Or maybe it's enough to pick up your eye colour, or favourite lipstick colour, or maybe even whatever you picked for your glasses, assuming they're not just silver metal.


Conclusion

I love my grey hat, but I have a feeling I'm going to be waiting for the rest of my brown hair to turn white before I go wearing it again.  Which, with luck, will not happen in time for the next round of cold weather.  And you know what that means: it's time to knit more - and more colourful - hats.

Like... oh, I don't know... tangerine ones?

Maybe when this round of crazy schedule is done.  For now: this is enough colour talk from me on a Monday morning.  Go have a lovely day knitting something gorgeous and flattering, and I'll see you back here again on Wednesday!

Warmest knits for coldest days - a primer

Converting your knitting time into the production of the warmest possible hats, scarves, mitts, and socks is a really good idea when you are working your way through a seriously cold winter.

So today, let's talk about how to knit warm things for yourself and your loved ones (maybe not even in that order.)  Pattern category links are all to search results at Ravelry, for your browsing convenience.

note: my green hat is improvised from handspun yarn, pattern not yet available but coming soon! and the details on my twined mitts are here.


A Warm Knit Primer
 
After you've dealt with coverage - open-tipped handwarmers will never be as warm as actual mittens, for example - there are two ways to get a warm fabric.  One is fiber, and the other is technique.


Technique

The first rule of warm fabric is that thicker is better, so for cold-weather knits pull out your bulky yarns and hunt up some very dense stitch choices - cables combined with ribbing, for example.

Look at doubling up your yarns, or stuffing unspun fiber into your stitches as with a thrummed mitten.  Another option is twined mitts or hats - this approach to twisting two strands of yarn between each stitch produces a very dense fabric that traps heat in toasty little pockets all over the wrong side.  Fair Isle and other stranded knits, with their yarn floats running along the wrong side of the work, are also an excellent choice.

Look at reducing your needle size too - the smaller the space between your stitches, the warmer the fabric will be.  And remember, when it comes to making the spaces smaller, nothing beats felting your fabric.


Fiber

Wool is warm, but it's not the warmest fiber you can choose.

If you have the disposable income, you can go for qiviut: it's 8 times warmer than wool and about as much more expensive.  Sometimes you can get it in a wool blend, which is good compromise on price and function because qiviut has virtually no elasticity and wool has plenty to spare.

Angora is affordable but still a lot warmer than wool- 6 times warmer, in fact.  It can also be blended with wool for elasticity.  I like the merino/angola blend from Toots LeBlanc.

Alpaca and llama yarns are at least 3 times warmer than wool, and I've seen stats saying it's up to 7 times warmer.  Bonus: alpaca can absorb a lot more melting snow than wool, before it sinks all the way through to you.

Other yarns that are at least as warm as wool - if not warmer - are mohair, silk, and cashmere.  Isn't it nice that silk and cashmere are so very soft?  I love that kind of a bonus.

A word about silk: I was always told that cashmere-lined leather gloves were the warmest dress-up option for your hands, but this winter the snug fitting silk-lined suede ones I bought from Madova in Italy for driving (link for online shopping provided) have been keeping my fingers more than satisfactorily warm even at temperatures just below freezing.  And that's especially interesting because...


Size counts!

The tighter the fit, the lower the insulation.  Air traps heat, you see, and the less there is of it between you and the elements the less opportunity there is for heat to build up.  That goes for the fiber itself: hollow core fibers trap more heat.

Choosing looser hat styles like slouches and roomy berets (just add in a little length before you begin the decreases) is a great way to trap heat around the top of your heat.

And if you spin your own yarn or have access to a very generous someone who does, look at using some of that.  It's no coincidence that the picture at the top of this primer of the warmest knits I own are both made from handspun: when you spin by hand, you build air pockets right into the yarn.


These tips may come too late for you to use this winter (forgive me if I hope so, because I'm so done with this much cold) but with luck it will help you be better prepared for the next one!

A knitting planner for 2014

Since we're already into double digits for this January, it's lucky you don't have to tie a planner or agenda to a particular start date.  All you really need is a block of time for going through your stashed yarns and fibers, and thinking of all the things you want to make.

Ready?

The Knitting Planner

I used my two weeks off over Christmas to good purpose on the sorting and the thinking, and came up with a customizable planner I think you might enjoy too - if not now, then perhaps someday if you start to feel overwhelmed rather than cheerful about your crafty progress, as I did.

The steps are all written out as I did them rather than as you might want to, for which I hope you will forgive me and not feel that this is an All About Me post... even though technically, it is. H'mmm.

At any rate, here's what I did.

The Preparation

1. I tore a piece of my favourite paper out of a notebook so it would be a/ nice to write on and b/ face out and plainly visible - the better to deter procrastination.  I wrote down all the things I knew I wanted to make at some point, including the still-unstarted tea cosy of course - and put it at my desk in an easy-access spot for when I thought of more.  It took me several days to remember everything, not to mention to find all the works in progress hiding out inside little cloth bags, but I did get there eventually.

2.  I looked through my stash and, on the back of the Wish List paper, made notes on all the yarns and fibers I know I want to knit with some day.  I wrote down what I wanted to make with each skein too, and if I didn't know, I either decided on a craft category - socks, scarf, hat etc. - or set it aside in a giveaway pile.  (okay, I didn't really do that part, because faced with that alternative it wasn't really hard to come up with a type of project.)

3. I assigned a number of hours to each of these project ideas.

4. I looked over the very messy page and panicked.

The Chart

At this point I decided to make a four-column table in Microsoft Word with the following  headings:

Item
Yarn/Notes
Hours
Due

Then I typed it all up.

Under 'item', I started with the type of project - 'socks', 'weaving', 'spinning', etc. so I could sort the data by that information later, if I want.

In the 'due' column, I assigned the number of the month I wanted to have the project finished - 02 for February, 12 for December, so that I could take advantage of MS Word's table sorting feature.  For non-urgent projects like the socks and hats from yarn I just didn't want to give away, I assigned 99 so that when I let Word sort the columns they'd land down at the bottom.

Using The Chart

Once you have that kind of data in a column, you have a lot more power over your queue and yarn stash than before.  In Word, you can sort columns any way you want, so it's easy to prioritize by date or type of project, not to mention that you can easily calculate how many hours you're looking by letting Word add up that column for you.

So: next time somebody points out to me that a cool mystery shawl KAL is starting, I can look at my due dates and see whether or not participating in said KAL is going to cripple me come December when I'm supposed to be wrapping gift knits.  And if I'm bored with what's on the needles right now, I can look at the list to be re-inspired to start something that's been languishing there.  I mean: it's not like there's not lots of choice.

I still get to play with pretty patterns on Ravelry too, because all I've assigned to certain yarns is 'Cowl' or 'Fingerless Gloves'.  I can knit any pattern I want and even change the type of pattern, as long as it will take about the same amount of time I've allocated for the knitting.

The Final Tally

This part really is all about me.  If I add up all the hours of all the projects I'd like to make with the yarn I currently have on hand - not counting any of the Vesper sock yarn because that way lies madness - as of January 4 I had 449 hours of knitting time ahead of me.

Of those 449, I want to have 301 of them done by the end of 2014.  Assuming about 11 months of knitting time is about 308 days, that's just around an hour a day for the essentials, with the other 148 being carried over to the following year to bump up whatever ideas I still have left at that point.

And if I knit an extra 7 hours per week... I'll be able to knit a dozen pairs of Vesper socks this year.

See what I mean?  All that knitting chaos that was stressing me out: gone.  All is manageable.


What would you like to do with your knitting time in 2014?

Casting on for matching stripes

Today I thought I'd share my trick for getting the stripes to line up on two socks knit from one skein of self striping yarn.  The same trick would work for gloves, or any other project that comes in pairs.

After I took this picture, I realized that the stripes don't look matchy here, because the sock on the right got nudged down just a bit more than the one on the left, but honestly this trick does work very well. Assuming you can spare a few yards of yarn to scrap and still have socks that are long enough.  Another factor is how consistent the dyeing is - I have the greatest success with Knitterly Things' Vesper Sock, myself.

First off, you need two cakes with the striping moving in the same direction.  For example, if the colour sequence is Blue, Orange, Green, Yellow, you want both cakes following it rather than one doing Yellow, Green, Orange, Blue.  (That would make a pretty cool pair of socks actually, but it's not the style we're talking about today.)

When you wind cakes from one skein of yarn and divide them in two by weight, you usually get a little bit more colour on one than the other.  In the case of this yarn, there is some red on Cake One that didn't make it into Cake Two.  So bearing that in mind:

Choose the first colour both cakes have in common.

In this case, the winner is dark blue.

Now, move up the yarn to the shift between the first colour in common, and the one that comes afterward.  I use a longtail cast on for this trick, and the key step is to ensure the first stitch for each sock (or glove) falls on the gap between those two colours.

When you use the longtail cast on with striped yarn, especially at the break in colours, it's important to make sure you have the tail in front.

Otherwise you end up with a weird colour shift.  In this example it would be a brown edge, then a layer of blue, and then a cuff in brown.  H'mmmm.  That would look pretty cool too, but if you're going for matchy you'd have to remember to do it twice.

Here's an extra trick I do, just to make it easier to cast onto four needles:

I cast on two or so stitches more than I need for the first needle, then slip those extras on to a second needle and cast on a total of two or so more than I need for it, and so on until I have four needles each with the right amount of stitches.  It makes the counting go a lot quicker and the tension stays even on the cast on edge, too.

When all the stitches are cast on, I usually work the first round plus one needle's worth of ribbing, just to be sure everything is secure before I pack it away for travel knitting.  Then I draw off about 10" from the tail - that's the most you'll need later for running in the end - and snip off the excess for tying up parcels or darning a hole.

And... you're done! Except for all that delicious* knitting, of course.

(unless you are Trish, in which case it would be delicious only if you were knitting gloves or mitts.)

Tips for Yarn Substitution

Yarn substitution: we all do it.

Whether we're doggedly working through our stash, or can't wait to find some pattern that suits the yarn we love, or simply can't afford to use a pattern's recommended yarn - you price out a small cardi and come up with $250 in materials, you're going to think twice - knitters quickly outgrow the idea that they have to use the yarn the pattern says to use.

Plus, part of the point of knitting is to put your own stamp on a thing.

But every yarn has its own qualities, and designers take those into consideration when they pair one with their idea.  So: if you stray too far from that tree, you are going to come up with an entirely different sort of walnut.  Even one that may look suspiciously like a frog.

Size matters here.  Even if you have the correct gauge, you can still run into trouble: for example, a slim yarn knit on big needles might give you the same gauge as a moderately sized yarn and matching needle, but the end product will have a lot more drape.  Or a lot less, if you match heavy yarn with tiny needles.  Where a piece is meant to be soft and supple, you could find you are wearing a cardboard box.

But the biggest fact to consider is fiber.

There are an incredible variety of fibers spun into yarn for knitting, and they all have their own qualities.  See: Knitter's Book of Yarn, and Knitter's Book of Wool for much more exhaustive explorations on this point.

Here's a quick surface-skimming of the features of the most popular choices, with an emphasis on elasticity, hereafter to be referred to as 'Sproing'.  All yarns are assumed to have been spun equally since some yarns are spun for maximum sproing, and others have hardly been spun at all.  If in doubt, pull gently on a strand of the yarn you are considering, and then on several other yarns, to get a sense of how much they stretch out from their resting state.

(and if you can get your hands on the recommended yarn to do this very same test, you will have a much better idea of what you want in the yarn you choose yourself.)

Wool

Wool has a sproing factor of 'huge', and will bounce back immediately after you stretch it out.  You can make a hat out of wool that looks way too small when it's lying on a table, but when you put it on it will expand to accommodate a much larger noggin and then settle back down to small when you take it off a few hours later.

Superwash Wool

Superwash wool has a slightly lower level of sproing, in my experience.  It has been treated to remove all the little grabby bits on the sides of each strand of fiber, so it won't felt as easily if you throw it in the washing machine.  Without the grabby bits, it will be softer too, so it's a win-win!  Except that some superwash wools - not all - stretch out irretrievably when you wash them.

I still haven't figured out why, but I do know that the weight of the finished project affects the degree of stretch such that even a gauge swatch dutifully washed and dried won't give you the full picture.  It's not a bad idea to use a new-to-you superwash for something like a scarf or shawl before you move on to something that has to fit.

Acrylic

A lot of knitters substitute acrylic yarns for wool-based patterns: they wash well, and they almost never itch, and they are super affordable; you don't even need to have access to a yarn store to get them, because they're usually what's stocked in your local discount department store.  As a bonus, they are often spun to look like wool and sort of act like it, with a friendly sproinginess that makes them comfy to knit with.

But they are only pretending: they won't stretch or spring back or do any of those other nice things that wool will do, and they will never, ever sag out like some of the fibers lower down on this list.  You have to take that into serious consideration when you substitute acrylic for one of those, especially.

Alpaca

Alpaca has very little sproing.  Instead it's all about soft and heavy and also, absorbing insane amounts of precipitation to protect you from getting wet yourself.  (also it grabs onto other strands of itself like nobody's business, so if you are likely to make mistakes and need to rip out, you will be a very very sad knitter.)  Wools blended with alpaca will still have some sproing, but not as much as they would have if the alpaca wasn't there making it all relaxed and protective.  If that's what the designer had in mind, then you'd better think about it too or you will have a much less drapey hat than the one you fell in love with on paper.

Silk

If you ask silk about sproing, it will look both perplexed and apologetic and tell you Sorry, I don't speak that language.  Silk is luxurious and shiny and drapey and has no tension in it at all.  Like alpaca, it will accept the sproing factor of whatever it's blended with, even as it leads that fiber into a peaceful water garden to calm it down already.  But silk takes things a bit farther: it actually grows when washed.  And that can be a nasty surprise when you thought you had a handle on your gauge.

In fact, somebody who got burned by this fact commented on my Luxury Lid pattern that my stitch count had to be a misprint because what was meant to be her adult-sized version of it didn't fit a child.  Well: it was correct - but only for a yarn with the right amount of silk in it.

Cotton

Cotton doesn't speak Sproing either, and it too will sag out over time.  I knit the most beautiful white cotton sweater as a teen that I wore every summer for years - oh how I loved that thing.  It did eventually lose its shape but not too badly because it had an elaborate moss stitch pattern all over that distracted the fiber from doing anything too drastic.


And now, a story about yarn choice

The other day when I was in a yarn store hunting for the colours and fibers that would get me closest to a hat I had been dreaming about, the reality of yarn substitution hit home big time.

I wanted a sport weight, soft, 100% wool yarn with sproing and a clean finish, in very specific colours, in a yarn that other people could get their hands on if they wanted not to substitute.  That last point meant choosing a yarn from a major yarn company with a huge distribution, at a price that was not just downright silly.

And you know what?  There was no such yarn.

I could hit a few of those points but never all of them - a perfect colour of yarn might be too heavy, and though offered by the same company in the weight that I wanted, it wasn't the right colour.   With another yarn, the price was right, but not the itch factor (the itch factor is hugely important in a hat.)

I spent over an hour in Romni Wools, which has a huge, huge inventory, and in the end the best solution was to check off every other box and accept a slightly heavier weight than I wanted, and at a higher price.  In the end, it's only a hat, and hats don't need a whole lot of yardage: maybe some people who knit this pattern won't mind paying a premium to use the same yarn I did.  But if they do, all they have to look for is a simple, 100% wool DK yarn in their stash or at their local yarn store.

So: even the people who are making patterns struggle with yarn substitution.

(But isn't it great when you get it right?)

Safe hibernation for your in-progress knits

If you've ever set a knitting project aside for more than a couple of weeks, you know there's a right way and a wrong way.

The wrong way, of course, would be without moth protection, its needles or its pattern, or even all of its yarn - because there is no way you will remember where all of those things were when you finally pick it up again!  (and let's face it: if you set something aside for more than a couple of weeks, odds are good it's going to be months before you feel guilty enough to go back.)

The right way is pretty simple.  Keep all the tools and instructions and yarn and previously knit pieces in one mouse- and moth-proof place.


and leave notes.


Notes from the former you to the future you about where you left off, what decisions you made when the pattern was unclear, what you changed, what you liked, what was a pain, what kind of sandwich you had on that one Tuesday that you really liked and think you should try again sometime.  Stuff like that.

Exhaustive stuff, because...

When you get the project back out again and get re-obsessed, you won't make an entire second thumb gusset with the increases starting at a different place than they were in the first one and, consequently, a different number of stitches at the top.

Yesterday, as penance for the former me and insurance for the future one, I sat down and typed up everything about my pattern so far, and everything I think should come next, so this doesn't happen to me again.

But today: well, today I have to decide whether I like Left Gusset, which comes to a tidy little point at the bottom, or Right Gusset, with its wedge opening.

Either way, something is getting ripped out, so I will definitely need chocolate.

(I think I like the one on the left with the point. what about you?)

Tips for mobile knitting

I'm going to open this tip sheet on a positive note:

If you play your cards right, something like a rediscovery of an old but alluring unfinished project could be your outcome.

Plan for mobility

The key to fitting knitting into every nook and cranny of your day is: have knitting with you at all times.  That can be tough if you routinely knit large, complex sweaters that require a lot of yarn plus diverse, hard to replace tools... or if you are monogamous to each project and finish one before even buying yarn for the next in which case I envy your pristine yarn storage enormously.  However, if increasing your productivity or Zen time is important to you, you can perhaps justify cultivating a love for smaller easier projects as a means to that end.

There are a number of ways to ensure you have knitting with you.

If you are Trish, you always have a bag of some big knitting project (or maybe just a really awesome huge cowl) by the door.  Trish never seems to mind carting around an extra bag if it's for a worthy cause, which knitting definitely is, and as a result she is always able to settle in anywhere and be productive with minimal planning.

I should note as well that Trish doesn't even bother with pretty, petite metal and bead stitch markers that get lost in the bottom of the bag or in the grass at some outdoor event and cause pain and heartbreak when they do; she twists one of those plastic or paper-covered wire bag closures into a circle and uses that.  Those things are so much easier to spot, and also, to replace.

If you are me, you resent having to carry even one thing, so you always have a very compact knitting project with lots of mindless stitches in its future already tucked into a messenger bag that lets you keep your arms entirely free.  You're also now 100% equipped to knit while walking.  Bonus!


Take your knitting on a date

Yesterday I discovered that, for various boring reasons, I had to get my car downtown way earlier than I personally needed to be there.  Normally my thoughts would default to shopping, but this time I was strong and thought instead about how I could most compactly use that dead time to take care of some work-related knitting tasks.  And then I took my knitting on a date*.

A date is different than a party.  At a party - you know, the ones where you get together with a bunch of friends or fellow crafty fans in a yarn shop or somebody's house or a bar - you concentrate on the other people as much as on the work in your hands. 

On a date, you are focused entirely on your own knitting.  You are getting to know it better and to love it more.  You are not taking breaks to look up other patterns you might want to knit, or to put in a load of laundry, or take care of any other mundane tasks that get between you and your yarn. 

On my date, I triple checked some math for hat #1,

and did the very necessary gauge swatch for hat #2. 

Both of these tasks would have been hugely boring if I'd tried to do them at home surrounded by unfinished laundry and a messy kitchen counter, instead of in a Starbucks listening to the lady behind me make one full hour's worth of phone messages (plus the occasional actual conversation) to invite people to the launch of her new food-based business. 

I'm not being sarcastic - that woman was a machine!  She wasn't irritating at all but just so methodical and professional and did not hesitate to dial number after number.  I hope she does well.  And I kinda wonder whether she was taking her project on a date too.

* Taking this particular knitting on a date meant carrying a dedicated bag, which as I mentioned earlier is not something I love.  So when the date and my coffee were both done, I put the bag back in my car and then, ahem, went shopping.


Keep your hands on your work

When knitting in a mobile situation - and this may seem obvious but is worth stating - it is essential to keep your hands on your work.  See how I repeated that core message from the title of this tip?  Don't, for example, put it down to read a magazine article that beckons from the table beside your chair in a waiting room.  Even if that article is going to reassure you that your province or state has fewer traffic accidents than any other in your country.

(Ironically, some poor driver went through the guard rail of the Don Valley Parkway this morning shortly before I drove past, so apparently 'fewer' is not as reassuring as one might hope.)

By keeping your hands on your work - and, more specifically, on your work bag - you will avoid picking up a message hours after leaving said waiting room from somebody who picked up that bag from the floor, and thought it might be yours because there was a sock inside it, and probably you can come and pick it up again in a few days because it's been put aside safely.

Or worse: not getting such a call at all.  Ugh, it doesn't bear thinking about.


Stay open to mobile opportunities

By keeping an eye out for compact patterns and projects that interest you, you can always be prepared to replace any (temporarily, I hope) lost mobile knitting. 

Even starting and then getting distracted and not finishing such projects can be helpful.  That is how I rediscovered the little gloves I started knitting last winter, and didn't finish because the weather was getting too warm for them anyway and also, I had to pack for the Italy trip.

The first one is already at the porcupine stage and not at all appropriate for mobility.

But I left the second shortly after finishing its cuff, and right before the many many rounds of boring straight knit before I even have to start the thumb gusset.  Sooo...

mobile knitter status restored,

for today, anyway.


Have a marvelous weekend of knitting, whether it's out or at home, and I will see you tomorrow!

(Hand)spinning to good health

How you can tell I don't live in an obsessive crafting community: when I tell people I'm going to spin, they assume I'm on my way to a fitness class. 

This business of crafty vs. athletic has been troubling me over the last few years, since I took up knitting again after about two decades of focusing purely on writing, and consequently began putting on weight.  True, there have been other factors (read: STRESS with a capital WOW) but it is also true that when I was writing, I felt more active.

Why?  Because I was more active.  I don't know about other writers, but omigosh, I hit writer's block every few sentences and have to get up from my chair to make tea, learn how to use power tools effectively, or dust a wall.  Then I go back and write a few more sentences and the cycle repeats.  When I am knitting, my hands never stop moving but the rest of me most certainly does.  And now that I am spinning too?

Can this innocent ball of yum be the enemy in disguise?

Yikes.  That is an addictive occupation.  I will put off everything - in the case of what's in that picture, much-needed sleep - to spin just one more handful of fiber.

The other day I finally got to the May 20th issue of The New Yorker (2013, if you're reading this after the fact) in which Susan Orlean - one of my writing heroes - shared a piece on walking desks.  This article put my brain on high alert about exercise.

Points taken - with the caveat that these are my takeaways, and may not be remotely accurate:

1/ It's really important not to sit more than six hours a day, because doing that tells your body you don't need it any more and it starts the (thankfully time-consuming) process of closing up shop

2/ You can be physically fit and still have the closing-up-shop problem happening

3/ Our bodies are made to move

4/ Hello, get out of that chair

5/ GAH

etc.

My other takeaways were,

1/ Buy a fitbit because they sound cool

2/ Walking desks? Who knew?

Because I love shopping, I did buy a fitbit.  Then I researched walking desks even though my desk space is restricted to a 3.5' x 2.5' space and I'm not kidding, I have to use a bench chair so it tucks right underneath - there is no room for a chair back, even.  A treadmill in front of an elevated desk could not be less of an option for me.  Standing desks: that's another story and would actually increase my desk storage space so I'm open. 

Digression

The deal with the fitbit is sort of boring and long but essentially it's a pedometer that tells you not just how many steps you've taken but a lot of other stuff too.  Like, how far you've gone and many calories you've burned and, if you plug in a weight goal, how much more you can eat that day based on how many calories you've burned so far.  And it does it all automatically, with motivating graphics that change as your day unfolds and your step count increases.

I might as well just mention here that when it comes to fitbit's motivational graphics, the day you run errands and get so busy you forget to eat is a much more cheerful day than the day you sit in a car for six hours knitting so you can go set up the cottage for the summer.  Yeesh, priorities.

And... back to my story

As it turns out, it is definitely possible to be crafty and not be sitting.  One can do a lot at a standing desk, and I've revisited the concept of walking around the house while I'm knitting - no problem - which extends to pacing while watching a movie.

But what about handspinning?

Well, thanks to my new friends at Ravelry's Completely Twisted and Arbitrary spinning group, I can tell you that very small electric wheels you can use standing up are things that exist.  For example, one might choose the Hansen miniSpinner, or the Ashford e-spinner.  They're priced in the ballpark of a traditional wheel, but they are compact, and they take up way less space than a treadmill for a walking desk, so: birthday wishlist?

Of course if you have the room, you can even use these things while walking.

(just: wow.  new hero up there.)

And I think that's quite enough about turning creativity into fitness for this week, don't you?  Tomorrow I will tell you about that cottage run and the knitting that resulted from it.  Yay, knitting!

Fiber journey: from roving to yarn cake

When you break it down, there is something faintly ridiculous about spinning your own yarn.  I mean, there you are with heaps of yarn in the cupboard waiting for you to take it out and make something with it, and instead you do this:

Find the perfect roving,

Divide it up evenly so you can spin it into singles,

Several singles, that is,

Then ply and weigh it,

Skein, measure, prepare to wash it,

Let it dry, and then cake it.

All that before you can even think about working with it.  And in this case, there are still more steps before the yarn can become something because each of these cakes has turned out to be a slightly different weight of yarn.  Not a lot different, but enough that any socks I try to knit with them will be a very peculiar shape with many bumps and protrusions.

Fortunately I have rather a lot more roving to work with, ahem.  And after all, I can always stripe my handspun socks, right?

The gory details

I'm sure there are many people reading Hugs who are a good deal more experienced with spinning, but I thought I'd share some details about the ways I've found easiest to tackle these various steps.

Dividing: I use my kitchen scales, which have yet to see my kitchen, and a big plastic bowl to weigh the roving.  When I was first spinning I liked to ply two singles together, but now that I'm able to get thinner singles I divide the total amount of roving into three equally weighted piles instead of that early two.

Spinning: I don't have a lot of extra gear with my wheel, so when I've finished spinning a lump of fiber I free up the spindle by wrapping the end of what's on the spindle around my first two fingers to start a ball.  I let each ball rest for a few days to set the twist.

Plying: I don't love the plastic element of this solution but it is very, very effective (and cheap!).  I keep a few seal-able plastic sandwich bags with a little snip cut into the side, and I pop each ball into one of them, then run the loose end out through the snip.  This keeps the singles from unwinding too far and wrapping up around each other before I want them too.  When I get to the end of one ball, as invariably happens, I open the bag containing the other, fish out the other end, and bring it up to the end of the first ball so I can ply the what's left of the second onto itself.  Eventually I'm left with a little loop wrapped around the sandwich bag, and I just snip the yarn at the fold.  Done!  (except that I'm thinking now of sewing little pouches with a silky smooth interior and a grommet on the side, and if I go that route I can expect to add another 4-6 hours to the process... the first time, anyway.  I'm slow with sewing.)

Weighing and skeining: I weigh each ball before I skein it, then pop it into a deep (clean, empty) juice jug so it doesn't roll away while I skein it.  I make a 72" skein so that each wrap is two yards long, and then I count the wraps around the swift to see how many yards I got.  Then I tie the four sides of the skein with colour-coordinated scrap sock yarn: four greens for one, four multicolours for another, four reds for a third... you get the idea.  I keep a book specifically for noting yarn weights so I always know where to look for this information, and I write down the weight, yardage, and colour code for each.

Washing:  I do this step in the washing machine on 'Soak'.  First I fill the machine as high as I'll need, and pour in some (surprise!) Soak.  I let it agitate a little to mix in the Soak, and then I turn off the machine and pop the skeins, safely tucked into lingerie bags, into the water.  This last time I forgot the lingerie bag step and one skein got wrapped around the agitator in the spin cycle, which is not something you want to have happen to you, ahem.  The spin part comes after the yarn has soaked for as long as it takes me to remember I left it in there - ideally not more than half an hour, but I've gone longer and it's still yarn when I get back to it.  Nearly dry yarn, at that, when the spin-dry part is finished.  (I don't let the machine do any agitating; I turn the dial straight from Soak to Spin before I turn the machine back on.)

Drying: Each skein hangs around the neck of a plastic hanger in the laundry room till it's dry.

Caking: I prep a scrap of paper for each skein with its colour code, weight, yardage, and a conversion to the number of yards per 100g to make it easier for me to determine which cakes will work nicely together.  Then I cake the skeins one at a time and tuck the correct paper scrap into the middle of each cake as I go along.


Whew... that is pretty crazy, isn't it.  But it's worth it, because there is nothing puffier and softer than a nice handspun yarn.  And hey, it's not much more crazy than knitting a lace shawl - hours and hours of intricate work that is concealed immediately upon wearing, if you scarf it snugly around your neck (I'm looking at you, mirror...)


And with all that: have a fabulous weekend.  I'll see you Monday - I have some knitting to show you!