Weaving at 5 EPI

5 epi. FIVE!!!!!!

I bought the variable dent reed for my Schacht flip loom a little while ago.

The reed is designed to allow you to create a warp with different thicknesses of yarn and weaving across the width of your project. I haven't used it that way, yet. But, I have had a LOT of fun taking advantage of the 5 ends per inch reeds and using up leftovers from my Aran afghan project.

I was worried that the yarn would be too soft to use as a warp, but I looked around on Ravelry and more than one person has used it, so I went ahead and did it. It's weaving up very well. I just have to keep an eye on myself so that I don't pack the weft in too tightly. My little needle gauge rests on the table next to me and I check it every once in a while with that.

It's Cascade 128 in a deep, dark blue. I can't wait to see how it looks when it's finished!

UFOs, The Stash and Memorial-Day Shopping!

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I'm terrible about getting some projects 99% done and then, well, just stopping. When I organized the basement/office/studio earlier this year, I piled all of my neglected projects into this little box. (The afghan wouldn't fit, it's in the knitting bag under the table, and it is NOW DONE!)

I seriously have, in order from least embarrassing, to most embarrassing: 

1) A sock that needs about 2 hours of work to finish the pair. (I ran out of yarn, but I have more, now. I  have had the yarn for 2 months.)

2) Three cotton bibs that need buttons. I have had them for about 2 years. I always had the buttons. I just really, really hate sewing on buttons. 

3) A baby sweater that needs about 2 rows of knitting and a little icord to finish. Abandoned about a year ago. 

4) Another baby sweater that seriously only needs icord ties to be finished. Also abandoned about a year ago.

I had excuses. I had the Book, then we moved, and then I had to finish the Book, and yadda yadda. But, now, I'm not letting myself start anything else until I finish these 5 things. The afghan is #5, but it is done, done, done. It still counts. 

At least my timing is pretty good. From  now until the end of Monday, you can get up to 70% off all kits, fabric and yarn, up to 60% off all sewing project kits and up to 40% off art, paper craft and cake decorating supplies! So, either hop on over and renew your yarn stash or try something new!

I'm not letting myself start anything else until these projects are finished. But, once these things are done, all bets are off. Maybe I'll spoil myself a little and replace some of the dpns I still can't find. (How does that happen?) Maybe I'll try out a new yarn. Who knows? 

Happy Valentine's Day to Me!

It looks sold out, now, so I'm super-happy that I snagged a Simply Sock Yarn Company tote while they were still around! (Three guesses as to which color of sock yarn I bought, and the first two don't count, as my dad says.)

Knitting Needles, Anyone?

When I told the organizer that I could provide needles for my students to try (classes start tonight!), she said: Are you sure you'll have enough. 

Um, yes. Behold my 10-odd pairs of straight size 7 and 8 needles!!! The circs and dpns are already packed. 

Have you amassed a kind of obnoxious number of needles? I don't think I need that many, but I can't bring myself to part with any. 

Stash Management

I've introduced Dee to the joys of thrift store/estate sale/garage sale shopping and there's no going back! A recent find: Awesome vintage suitcases for $5 each. The very smart woman running the sale put cute little tags on the cases that made them pretty much irresistible. See "What do you need to store?"

Well, yarn, of course. I love my new office space, but there isn't as much storage as there was in our last house. 

I filled the case with little honeycomb dividers, then went through my sock yarn stash. It includes this thrift store find, probably from about 15 years ago. I haven't had the heart to use it, yet. 

Wound balls go into the organizers, a few small skeins fit in there, too. Big skeins and 100-gram balls go into that big space at the top of the case. A flap clips down over it to keep them from spilling all over the place. 

It all tucks away neatly under the guest bed. I felt pretty good about this until I remembered that I would need about 10 more to REALLY organize it all. This is just my sock yarn! Oh well...

I feel like I'm popping open a big case of crayons every time I take the case out. Some are odds and ends, some are brand-new. They're all lovely, though.

A Bit of A Frankensock

In our rather small and cluttered apartment (one follows the other, I find), I'm really fighting stash. It would be great if I could knit through some yarn and have less to move when we get a house!

I made a pair of top-down socks with Trekking 6-ply in color #1801 (or, as I put it, a BIT More Pink Than I Thought, But It's Ok.)

When I finished, I weighed the socks - they weighed in at 79 grams - from a 150-gram ball! So, there wasn't quite enough to make a second pair from the same ball. 

To the stash under the bed I went! Here's the problem: I don't have a lot of yarn in that weight (although I certainly will get more now that I love in Minnesota!) So, I tried doubling Simply Sock Yarn Solids in Navy and started from the toe on #3 needles.

It made a VERY firm and thick fabric, but it would be pretty tough on the hands in the long term. I need to explore using doubled sock yarn on #4 needles. After the toe, I switched to the rest of my Trekking, weighing the leftover ball until it weighed only about 36 grams. 

I then wanted to switch back to the navy yarn - but I couldn't handle the feel of the double-thick yarn on that part of the sock. So, I increased from 50 to 70 stitches (k2, m1, k3, m1) around - and finished the top of the socks!

Dee thinks the deep color change makes it too obvious that I ran out of yarn, but I almost always wear socks with long pants, so who will know except for me?

I feel like I got the best of all worlds. A super-strong toe. Cool colors and a tough-wearing yarn through the body and heel. A thinner, more stretchy sock top for my, um, sturdy calves. We'll see how it wears, but for now I'm thrilled!

I promise I will write the pattern, eventually. I kept good notes on the heel, both top-down and toe-up. A 52-stitch or 48-stitch sock would have been a lot easier to work, but...live and learn!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to Me!

1) I found my swift and ball winder. 

2) It turns out the ball winder works, even when on its side.

Sherwood Slippers: Cascade 220 Held Double (and Why Grist Matters)

Ok, so my first thought when I heard that Cascade 128 (non-superwash) was discontinued: knit some Sherwood Slippers in Cascade 220, held double.

Cascade 128 on top, Cascade 220 on bottom. Before felting.

"Held double" means that you work with two strands of the same yarn as if they were one strand. Some knitters like to use both the inside and outside strands of a center-pull ball. I find that I always get tangled up if I do that, so I wind my yarn into two different balls and go from there. Knitter's choice, of course. 

I knit up the last of the Cascade 128 in red that I had and, using the same instructions, needles, and knitter, made more in purple Cascade 220.

Before felting, the 220 slippers were just a tiny bit longer than their 128 counterparts (maybe 1/4-inch or a little more than half a centimeter.) The width was identical. The 220s weighed a little more, at about 47 g/slipper instead of 40 g/slipper.

Both yarns are 100% wool and I get the same stitch gauge with each. Why is one slipper almost 18% heavier than the other?

1) The thinner yarn, in this case, is spun and plied more tightly than the fatter one. It even says so on the ball band, if you know how to look at it.

Cascade 220: 100 g = > 220 yds (201 meters)
Cascade 128: 100 g = > 128 yds (117 meters)

Gee, I wonder where they get their names. :)

Let's start with one Cascade 128 slipper. It weighs 40 grams, so takes about 51.2 yards of yarn to make. If the Cascade 220 slipper uses the EXACT same yardage for each strand, it takes twice as much = 102.4 yards. 102.4 yards of Cascade 220 should weigh (102.4/220)*100 = about 46.5 grams. I love it when the lab result matches the math.

2) Grist.

Knitters don't think about this much, but what we're looking at is an example of different grist, even though I have the same stitch gauge. Grist is normally given in meters per kilogram or yards per pound, but we could turn it on its head and see how many grams there are per meter of each yarn.

Cascade 220 (doubled):  .995 grams/meter
Cascade 128 (single): .855 grams/meter

So, a project using the same yardage in each yarn will weigh more in Cascade 220 (held double) than it will in Cascade 128 (held single).

Which also means:

- When subbing yarns, ALWAYS use length measurements, not weight, to determine how much yarn you need!

- A pair of Woman's Medium Sherwood Slippers can be made with just one skein of Cascade 220, held double, with about 15 yards left over (whew).

- Cascade 220 slippers might hold up better than the Cascade 128 slippers, based on my somewhat unscientific idea that a slipper that uses more wool takes longer to wear out. The scientific way to say it is that the tighter twist and more plies involved in the Cascade 220 make the fibers of the yarn less subject to abrasion, but who can say for sure until the sole hits the floor?

Why You Want A Kitchen Scale

I have a small kitchen scale at home. I use it to measure yarn, fiber, and (now that we're gluten free at home) ingredients for baking.

I feel it's important to have one, as a designer, because I use it to see how much of that 100-gram skein of sock yarn I REALLY used. I can then do some math and see how many sizes are possible with one skein.

Now that I have one, I can't see how I went without it. It's even better if you use it to help manage your stash on Ravelry. If you check out my stash page for the yarn above, you'll see that I have about 360 yards left of this particular yarn. In Ravelry, you can plug in the percentage you have of a skein of yarn (in this case, 80%), and it figures out the leftover yardage for you.

Why does this matter? 360 yards isn't a lot of sock yarn. But, I can use the Pattern Browser and Advanced Search for patterns on Ravelry to see that over 6,000 patterns use less than 300 yards of this type of yarn. So, instead of stash diving, I can "pattern dive" for my next project.

Incidentally, if someone out there searches stashes for this particular yarn and discovers that I have just enough to save their bacon and let them finish a project, then I can be their personal hero. That is always a good thing, and wouldn't be possible without a precise way to measure my leftover yarn.