random threads

My knitting mending basket has been growing, so over the Christmas break, I did sit down and address two items. First, my Central Park Hoodie ended up with two holes on the left sleeve. I’m not exactly sure how this happened, but they appear to be rips in the yarn, not “wearing-thin-areas.”  I need to treat my hand-knits more carefully, I guess.

I did locate some of my remaining Miski yarn in the blue yarn pile, and set to fixing the problems as best I could. The holes were a bit too large to successfully duplicate stitch across, so I added in a bit of weaving. Before and after shots show an improvement, but you can still see the patchy areas. I’m glad it is on the sleeve and not a more noticeable area.

The second patient was my Annetralac socks.  They developed a small hole on the bottom of the foot. This time, I was able to duplicate stitch over the missing stitches with matching yarn and get a near invisible patch. Here are some in process photos where I used knitters pins as mini-stitch holders.
Before:

During ( I couldn’t find my darning egg at the time, so I pressed a water bottle into service. I’ve also used a light bulb on occasion as a substitute darning egg.):

After:

If you’d like an excellent tutorial with good pictures, head over to the HJS Studio (I should have before I attempted my CPH repairs…) here.

Oh, I had fun on Saturday and the results were spectacular, if I say so myself!  I took a class at Baskets of Yarn, my LYS, on Dying Sock Blanks from dyer/handspinner/polymer clay and all-around artist-extroidinaire Sue Dial.

If you aren’t familiar with sock blanks, they are a flat stockinette-knitted rectangle of fingering-weight sock yarn, which has been machine-knit up with two strands of the yarn at once.  They come in plain white, or some vendors sell already-dyed blanks if you don’t want to tackle the dying yourself.  Knit Picks has been carrying the undyed blanks for several months and has a tutorial on their website about dying them.  Conjoined Creations sells pre-dyed blanks to a variety of retailers, check to see if available near you or at an online store you frequent.  In the class on Saturday, we used undyed ‘Happy Choices’ from Plymouth Yarn, which is 90% superwash merino wool, 10% nylon. Plymouth is also selling pre-dyed blanks.

Sue brought six basic colors of pre-mixed acid dyes, and a ton of foam brushes.  The sock blanks were soaked for about 20-30 minutes in either plain water or in a mix of water and vinegar.  After squeezing most of the liquid out of our blanks, we then set to painting on our blanks, making sure the dye soaked through to the back side. After doing stripes, chevrons, checkerboards, color transitions, dots, and whatever we liked, each blank was wrapped in its plastic wrap, coiled up and placed in a steam bath for 30 minutes. I did an extra sock blank (2 were included in the class=2 pair of matching socks), so I have 3 pairs of socks-to-be in a chevron rainbow, a warm color stripe and a gradation from dark to medium to light blue to light to medium to dark green.

After leaving the steamed blanks still in their plastic cocoons overnight to cool thoroughly ensuring maximum dye absorption and color brightness, I washed them under cool water for a few minutes to make sure all unattached dye was washed out–almost all was absorbed in the yarn. Then they were hung on the fence in the 88 degree weather for a few hours to dry.

The advantage of having two strands of yarn dyed at the same time, means you will have matching socks, and you can knit directly from the blank (no need to re-wind the yarn into balls) two at a time, which, of course is my favorite way: two-at-a-time, toe-up.  I plan to start knitting the rainbow chevron patterned yarn first. Can’t wait to see how it looks different in the sock (but I am trying to finish up my Two Musketeers sweater first), so it may be a week or two before I have any results to show.

And yes, in the past month, I have been busy finishing up some socks. My parents came down from Michigan for a quick visit, so I had to quit procrastinating and finish up the socks I had planned to give to them.

For Mom, socks in Berroco Comfort Sock, which is 50% fine nylon, 50% fine acrylic, which means good for my anti-wool mom. The color is called Southland (colorway 1813), and the stitch pattern is Lacy Rib. I used my usual toe-up-two-at-a-time magic loop pattern, since these were samples of a pointier toe style for the May and June sock classes.

For Dad, I used Regia Mini Ringel in colorway 5339, browns/tans/grey even stripes. I used a stitch pattern from Charlene Schurch’s The Little Box of Socks called ‘Shadow Rib’ but used my usual toe-up pattern of my own design. Again, these were used as samples for turning the heel in sock class. I knit these on size 2.5 US (3.0 mm) needles, larger than what I typically use, and used 64 stitches per sock to make sure Dad had a loose fit on his ankles since he has developed swelling issues.

Lastly, I finished my luscious Annetrelac socks from Interweave Knits/Knitting Daily which are for ME! I used the specified yarn, Schaefer Yarn’s Anne, which is 60% superwash merino, 25% mohair, and 15% nylon. I enjoyed the pattern and the yarn muchly. I do want to do more Entrelac (Lady Eleanor is in my future), and once you get the ‘knitting backwards’ down, it is a lot more fun to knit. If you are looking for ‘how-to’s’ on knitting backwards, check out these links:

Knitting-and site

Knit Witch on Youtube (video)

Stream of Consciousness tutorial

Dr. Girlfriend Knits

The Teal Tofutsies‘ socks have now been finished. These were knit as samples for my toe-up, two-at-a-time, one needle socks class at Baskets of Yarn. The ribbing pattern is a plan K3, P2 on the instep and cuff. The heel has a traditional gusset and heel flap with the sl 1, k1 padded heel stitch.

I used a stretchy Russian bindoff, made popular by Wendy of Wendy Knits. I tried out the Icelandic bindoff which is shown on Youtube here or here (but called a Russian bind off, it looks the same as the one called Icelandic bindoff), and found it toooo tight–maybe if I went up several needle sizes, it would work, but I’m happy enough with the Russian bind off to stick with that. I can achieve a good castoff on the same size needles, without resorting to a sewn bind off, so it’s good for me. It does fluff a little at the edge when not being worn, but I can live with that.

I’m still working on the eyelet socks, the shadow rib socks and the campfire rib socks from the class to move them to the next stage of demo’s (ie, stop before the gusset, stop before the heel turn, stop before the bind off) for the next class which is scheduled for June 7th and 21th.

As I mentioned yesterday, I took a class in Intarsia with Sue Dial at the Baskets of Yarn retreat. One of my questions, prompted when I was knitting Dad’s Spartan Socks, was could the Block S be knit in the round, without stranding? I tried briefly, but could not figure it out, so I switch to duplicate stitch for the Block S. So of course, within 60 seconds of starting the class on Intarsia last Thursday, the instructor definitively states, ‘intarsia can only be knit flat, it can’t be knit in the round’.

Hmmm. And when I had designer-extrodinaire, Jordana Paige, held captive resting comfortably in my back seat for two hours during the ride back to Charlotte, I brought up the intarsia in the round question again. Her first answer was ‘it can’t be done’, but she did say, ‘it sure seems like it could be,’ and ’surely someone has worked out a way.’

This being ‘Technique Thursday’, it seems appropriate for some Googling on the subject:

• Moth Heaven has a tutorial on Intarsia in the Round, describing how it can be done.
• Sara of Explaiknits, describes several techniques, one called semi-stranded or ‘festive’ knitting, the other two similar to Moth Heaven’s method. She also advocates knitting backwards to keep all the bobbins/strands on the same side of the work to minimize tangling.
• Carole Wulster of Knitting Software offers explicit instructions for DPNs or circular needles when knitting an instarsia pattern on a sock leg.

Gosh, it is even mentioned in the Wikipedia, so it must be do-able, (no definite directions there however). I also found that the word ‘intarsia’ is believed to be derived from the Latin word ‘interserere’ which means “to insert”. Makes sense. Next time I have a motif for a sock (maize on blue M’s for my Michigan-alum brother, perhaps?) I am definitely going to try this!

As an introduction to ‘Technique Thursday’, I thought I’d start out with something I need to learn–the tubular cast-on.

As my next sweater project is likely to be one of two ribby cardigans in my queue/YIPs (yarn in progress) pile, I need to learn how to do a good cast-on for ribbing. For the Central Park Hoodie (my current WIP), which has 2×2 ribbing, I did a long-tail cast-on alternating the usual knit-like cast on stitch with an alterative purl-like stitch. Cara of January One explains how to and has more links for the purl-cast on (she’s did a blue CPH last year!)

However, I’ve read the tubular cast-on is the best for ribbing. This tutorial from Amelia of My Fashionable Life provides good photos and instructions for a 1×1 rib. Theresa Stenersen provides similar instructions in the Fall 2005 Knitty. But what about 2×2 or even 4×2, 3×1, are they possible?

If you don’t like using a crochet provisional cast-on, then Tropical Yarns (hi fellow cruisers!) suggests using a length of smooth scrap yarn in a contrasting color as follows:

Tie your scrap and main yarn together with a slip knot, and place onto your needle. This will NOT count as a stitch. Now work the long tail cast on, with the scrap yarn over your thumb (or in your left hand). Cast on an odd number of stitches, one half of the total required, plus one (the main yarn will be on the needle, and the scrap yarn beneath.

Their instructions continue here.

Hmm, Sivia Harding says do the 1×1 tubular ribbing, then on the next row, swap positions of knits and purls to arrive at 2×2. Hmm…sounds a bit fiddly and odd.

Ysolda has info on doing the tubular caston two different ways, a long-tail version with a video and a stockinette version, but for that, her photos don’t seem to be working for 2×2 ribbing. This might be workable…will need to swatch it. I’ll try to take photos and share with you all as a tutorial if I think it is workable.

Also, this searching for info on tubular cast-ons led me to an interesting technique Cara had to resort to for fixing a mis-crossed cable on her Central Park Hoodie. You probably are familiar with a couple of approaches to fixing them when they raise their ugly heads some rows later in the work:

1) Rip back to the offending spot. Can be traumatic if the error is a significant ways back in the knitting.

2) Drop down back to the bad cross and re-knit up the cable. I’ve done this myself, for as far back as 8 or 10 inches in the work. Results are a bit wonky, but blocking helps smooth the stitches out.

But I didn’t know about these options:

3) Duplicate stitch over it. Hmmm, doesn’t sound like it would look good. But when the revered Yarn Harlot suggests it as a possible solution, imperfect that it is, it merits a look. Top of the post is option 2) and then at the end, she covers the duplicate stitch approach.

4) and the (breathe deeply now) SURGICAL approach–you CUT your cable right in the middle! Cara provides great photos in a tutorial here and she was inspired by I need orange’s instructions. If I were desperate with a wonky cable way back, I would try this.

Any one familiar with a Tubular cast on for 2×2 or 4×2 or 3×1 ribbing?