The Yarn That Keeps on Giving

In 2014 on the first San Diego Yarn Crawl, I purchased four skeins of madeline tosh sock yarn to make a specific cardigan. I was concerned that I would not have enough yarn so I went back after the Yarn Crawl and purchased the last skein. Luckily it was the yarn store closest to me.

I actually didn’t use the yarn until 2022 as I could not get gauge for the original pattern I had chosen and working a different size to compensate etc wasn’t an option. Finally I found something I liked and worked with my gauge and I love it but, I used only four skeins. Yes, the original number I had purchased.

The small amount I had left over from the fourth skein went into my scrappy crochet blanket and the remaining complete skein was saved for socks. I used the yarn pretty quickly after finishing the cardigan but the pattern I chose was two colours so I still had more than half the skein remaining. I put that to use this month as I used it in another two colour sock. This time combining it with yarn from my friend’s destash to knit a pattern that I had been "given".

I have been destashing full skeins of yarn that are left over from projects and have just asked for payment of postage. Rather than people have to deal with PayPal or Zelle or similar I decided to be paid in patterns. Very handy when I am only supposed to be using patterns I own.

I followed the pattern as written, reversing the colours for the second sock. Unfortunately I did not have enough of the multi-coloured to complete the toe. So I worked it in the grey. I don’t think it looks too bad, but my preference would have been for cuff, heel and toe to all be in grey. In a previous post I had written how quickly a project grows when that is all you work on and having completed these socks in three weeks, I understand how I was able to complete two pairs of socks in a month.

Preparing Yarn for Travelling

 

Over the past few years, most of our vacations have involved driving to our destination. This is very convenient as you can just throw whatever you want in the car. Though I am at the stage where I know what I will need and pack just that; from a knitting/crochet point of view it means that I can take all my tools and just in case projects. I have gone away from the cast-on-something-new-on-the-first-day as this has not always worked out for me and now I am just as likely to take a work in progress in addition to unused yarn.

But what to do if the journey involves different forms of transport, you are limiting your luggage but you want to use your stash?

Over the past couple of months I have been thinking about what I would like to knit when I am away and what yarn I would like to knit with. At first I thought it would be fun to make a garment but there are too many down sides to that. What if I run out of yarn, what if there is a problem with the pattern and I can’t or don’t want to continue. I would have to work an easy pattern knit in pieces so that it covered all knitting occasions but did not become too big to carry around. In the same way I dismissed a crochet blanket as an option because the yarn could be spread around the luggage but a crocheted blanket would get big quickly.

I am not against buying yarn while we are away but I’d rather not be in a position where I have to buy yarn. Plus it would be nice to come back to a diminished stash.

Looking at my stash, socks and hats it is. Wouldn’t it be nice to use up all the sock yarn I have purchased? For a flight last year I knit on a double layer hat and I have plans for that again this year and I will get it started before we leave so that I am confident with the needle size and number of stitches.

I had put to one side all the yarn I was considering and last week I spent a morning evaluating what I had chosen and winding up the yarn that had passed the extended vacation test. I immediately dismissed one option – the leftover Advent yarn - I would like to make a cowl with it but this will definitely be a project where I will worry about running out of yarn.

I wound up a few skeins of sock yarn and a couple of skeins of DK weight yarn. There were a couple of skeins that I had originally chosen that I did not wind, I have a picture in my mind of the type of pattern that they would be suited for and I do not want to take them and then be forced to use them in a less than ideal pattern. Never fear, a couple of other skeins replaced them.

Before we leave I will get some projects started - the aforementioned hat, some socks and a crochet project. That way I will always have something to work on.

The Joy of One Project Knitting

 

2024 was the year where I really tried to reduce the number of projects I had on the go at any one time. I didn’t help my cause by starting two yearlong blankets but I had two sweeps during the year to get the numbers down. And now I am enjoying this effort by having very few WIPs and reducing the ones I work on over the same period of time. 

I have put all the blankets into one category of –well,-blankets – so that I work on just one until it is finished before working on another. Sometimes a blanket comes under the easy category and sometimes under the requires concentration category which means that I have to have an easy project ready to grab when both my main project and the blanket project are at require concentration stage. Not quite one project knitting.

In addition to the blanket project I have a main project. And, does it go quickly when that is all you work on. I wrote a post in 2021 that a project will take the same amount of time whether it is spread over a month or a year. Although that is not strictly true as if you are working consistently on the same project you are not delayed by having to check where you are in a pattern which happens when you haven’t worked on something for a while.

I have said many times, I do not know when I became a multi-project knitter. I think it comes from making a gift or participating in a knitalong and when that item is finished, not going back to the project that had been put aside. And that morphed into starting all the things at the beginning of the year so everything I wanted to knit, or thought I wanted to knit got started and then all the projects were worked on throughout the year. This resulted in many finished items in the last quarter of the year but gave me little to show during the year for all the time I was putting in to knitting.

The joy is working on one project and seeing it grow and knowing that when it is finished I can start something new and not go back to a project that was started months previously.

This piece was originally titled The Joy of Monogamous Knitting. Many knitters that work on one project at a time call themselves monogamous knitters. As I was writing and mentioning projects and blanket projects and back up projects, I realized monogamous was a misnomer but as I was searching for synonyms the definition of monogamous always came up in relation to a human relationship. Thus, I felt it was inappropriate to use in a title

 

 

An Unpopular Opinion

 

For the purpose of my discussion I am talking about wool, not cotton, linen or other plant-based/man-made fibers that have different qualities.

Also, this does not apply to 100% of knitted garments.

There is a trend to add darts to knitting patterns. Ostensibly to make the garment fit better – whatever that means. And for some people with big differences in various circumferential measurements, darts might be helpful but for the majority of people darts are not necessary.

Why is this? Knit fabric made from wool is a stretch fabric. Stretch fabric moves and drapes in a different way to woven fabric so openings, fastenings and shapings are not the same. Imagine using a T-shirt as a pattern base for a cotton top and then you try to put it on. Even if you do manage to get into it, it is not going to look or fit the same as your t-shirt even though they are both the same size. That delicate little button and loop at the back neck makes a lot of difference in being able to wear the garment.

Knit fabrics have less seamed shaping because any stitching stops the stretch of the fabric. Which may be what is required to stabilize the garment but if the fabric needs to stretch where the seam is placed what is going to happen? The seam will break.

Knitted garments have been fitting fine (not always perfectly because knitters and wearers are human after all) for many decades but now garments need shaping. Why this change? Let’s blame the internet. The internet has been good for the proliferation of knitting patterns and hand dyed yarns but this comes with the downside of the influx of people who have no idea what they are doing. They learn to knit, add some colourwork to a basic sweater design and know they’re a designer. But they know nothing about design or fabric characteristics. And with so much poor quality work on the internet, they are too inexperienced to know if the sweater pattern they are using as their base is any good or not. So a garment doesn’t fit, let’s add shaping rather than analyzing the problem.

The other reason for the change? Designers need a new thing to draw attention to themselves again. So let’s make a size-inclusive pattern with horizontal bust darts. And the person who can drum up the most attention for their pattern is the expert even if they were not the first nor the best.

February’s Socks are Finished

 

I did not start any new socks in January as I still had a pair on the needles from December. But as I had a dearth of projects in February, I cast on a pair. I had been tempted to cast on this pattern in January as they fit the theme of Colorwork but held off as that theme would always come up again. But when February’s designers were announced and this pattern was by one of those designers, I knew I had to cast them on.

This pattern also fit my own guidelines as it has been in my favorites for a little while and added bonus that it is a free pattern. And I would like to say that it is a pretty amazing pattern to be given away.

So what is the pattern? It is Film Reel Socks by Alex Parker Mooney. There are five sizes and four different ways of working the short-row heels. Pretty amazing for a free pattern. Looking at the various iterations of this pattern, I decided that it didn’t matter what the contrasting colour was but it was best if it was very tonal. (Although there is one lovely pair where a different colour is used for each section.)

I used the white and orange left over from these socks and the black was left over from these ones. I was worried that I would run out of the black yarn but finished with about 1g left.

The colour pattern was five stitches and I could have stranded the yarn but chose to practice the ladder back jacquard technique as I have used it just once since making this hat. This was an easy pattern to use the technique as I was making extra stitches from a row of black stitches and getting rid of them in a row of black stitches. Before I started I read other resources as well as the hat pattern and it is interesting that some resources say to make all the stitches with a backwards loop whereas the hat pattern said not to do this for all t the stitches. At some point I will have to see what the difference is.

As I said it was easy to use this technique on this particular sock pattern. I used it on the entire sock but now they are finished, I wonder how comfortable the sole of the foot will be.

 

As this is a colorwork pattern the designer suggested going up a needle size. I’m not a fan of that so I worked a size larger than usual but went down a needle size for the foot.

I hope you will agree that they are a lovely pair of socks with the kudos going to the designer and yarn dyer.

 

One Month In

 

I wouldn’t usually give an update on plans and WIPs in the second month of the year, but as I was making a note of all my projects in progress at the beginning of this month, one thing hit me – I had no active projects. Which sounds strange as I have five projects on the go. But those projects are all long term projects – four blankets and a car project. I had no project which is my main, relatively easy project.

Of course this had to be rectified and I cast on a pair of socks. But this didn’t completely solve the problem of having a mostly easy project on the go as they have areas of colourwork, and a few days later I cast on some slippers. This latter project is back up for when both the socks and the mitred square blanket are not at easy stages.

A quick update on the blanket. The squares have all been joined into six strips of five squares and now I am edging those strips. Which gives me long rows of garter stitch to work on; definitely non-concentrating knitting.

Of course, I don’t want to have loads of new projects on the needles but these two cast ons fill a need to always have pick up and go knitting.