Designing a flag with Super Saver yarn

This week, we're having fun with flags by designing an afghan of a country’s flag using Red Heart Super Saver yarn.

It's summer and this week I've done a lot of my sampling with Super Saver yarn on my front porch swing.

In my last post, we chose our yarn, knitted our samples, and accurately recorded their measurements. Today, we’re going to calculate the rough numbers for the project and prepare a simple flag.

Creating rough numbers

Yesterday you took precise data of the stitches and rows to 4” [10cm]. I emphasized the importance of being accurate to the fraction of a stitch and row, especially if you’re doing a flag with a center motif, such as the vergina star or the maple leaf in the Canadian flag, or a complex flag such as the stars and stripes of the United States of America. If you aren’t already comfortable with the metric system, where the increments are smaller and based on a decimal system, this is an opportune time to practice, as it makes both the measuring and the math easier.

Let’s use our stitch and row details to calculate the approximate number of stitches and rows for the finished afghan. This is simple algebra where s = stitches to 4” [10cm] and x = total stitches, and where r = rows to 4” [10cm], and y = total rows. If you're using the metric system, substitute 10 for the 4, 152 for 60, and 122 for 48 in the equations below.

If you're going to knit your afghan from the long side, the stitch calculation will be:

s ÷ 4 x 60 = x and the calculation for the rows will be r ÷ 4 x 48 = y

If you're going to knit your afghan from the short side, the stitch calculation will be:

s ÷ 4 x 48 = x and the calculation for the rows will be r ÷ 4 x 60 = y

I plan to knit my afghan along the short side. (See direction of knitting in the photo below.) Based on my tension of 17 sts and 24½ rows to 4” [10cm], my calculations work out as follows:

17 ÷ 4 x 48 = 204 stitches and 24.5 ÷ 4 x 60 = 367.5 rows.

Overall, my afghan will have 204 stitches, and 368 rows.

The old Macedonian flag, featuring the vergina sun. The black line indicates the area to be used for charting, and the grey arrow on the right indicates the direction of knitting.

I use a spreadsheet to do my calculations. I perform my basic calculations as shown in the diagram, but, when using a spreadsheet, the symbols for divide and multiply are different. The figure below shows the formula I used to calculate the number of stitches in the formula box (beside the blue check mark). The result of 204 appears in the cell with the black line around it.

A screen capture of the spreadsheet showing the calculation for the number of stitches based on the tension sample.

Working a Simple Flag - Design Options

If you're doing a flag that has equal-sized stripes, such as Ireland, France, Germany, or Italy, you can, at this point, simply divide your number of stitches or rows by the number of stripes, then incorporate or add your border stitches to these numbers.

Border stitches are important to prevent the flag/afghan fabric from curling. If I were making the entire afghan surface in the flag colors, I would work a deep border of ten or more rows of seed or moss stitch, along with a deep edge (8 or 10 stitches) of the same stitch worked along the left and right sides. If I planned to “float” the flag on a background to maintain its correct-to-scale dimensions, I would choose a color that is not contained in the flag for the borders. I would work the entire border in an all-over textured stitch, and I would do a deep edge along the left and right edges of the flag in the flag’s colors.

Let’s use the French flag in the diagram, and the result from my tension swatch of 204 stitches and 367 rows worked along the short edge.

A diagram showing the stripes of the French flag, placed on end so that the flag is knitted from the short edge.

In the French flag, each of the three stripes are equal. To work the afghan in one piece, cast on 204 stitches, work the bottom border, then continue in your chosen design. Change colors at 20" [51cm], and again at 40" [102cm]. When the afghan is its full length (60" [152cm]) minus the depth of the bottom border (at the cast on), switch to the border stitch pattern with the color currently in use, knit a border the same length as the beginning border, and cast off all stitches.

In the next post, we'll look at ways to use technology to assist in creating complex designs.

Sampling a flag with Super Saver yarn

Yesterday, we examined several design options for creating an afghan that incorporates a nation’s flag. Today, we’re going to look at choosing a yarn for our project.

When choosing yarn for a design, I like to consider its purpose as well as the recipient’s interest and ability to care for it. If I’m not sure, as is the case of this project, I will err on the side of wearability and ease of care. For my old Macedonian flag afghan, I chose Red Heart Super Saver.

Red Heart Super Saver yarn -- affordable and durable.

Here’s why:

1. It's 100 percent acrylic, which means if it gets tossed into a washer or dryer, it’s going to survive.
2. Chances are, this project will have a relatively short life, so I’m reluctant to choose a yarn that will require a large financial investment. Super Saver is affordable.
3. Super Saver is an Aran weight yarn (18sts to 4" [10cm], which means it will work up quite quickly, and if there’s one thing you want to see in an afghan project, it’s progress.
4. Color range - Super Saver comes in over 120 colors. Many of these are variegated, and not suitable for re-creating a flag, however, the solid color range has an ample selection of the colors found in most national flags.
5. Super Saver is put up in 7oz [198g] skeins each of which has 364yds [333m]. Theoretically, this means that there will be fewer ends to weave in compared with yarns that come in 50g balls.

Red Heart also makes two worsted weight yarns - Comfort and Classic Yarn. With a couple more stitches to 4" [10cm] (20, versus 18 for Aran weight), Comfort and Classic Yarn allow for a slightly more detailed design.

If a faster knit is your goal, Red Heart has Comfort in a bulky weight (16sts to 4" [10cm]), as well as an 80% acrylic, 20% wool line called Heads Up. Both yarns have enough colors to make many popular flags.

Take up the needles

The next piece of this design puzzle is to have a very good idea of what the tension of the afghan fabric will be.

Take the needles and yarn you plan to use, and make a reasonably large swatch – at least 6" wide. The goal is to have enough fabric to accurately measure across a 4" [10cm] span of the overall fabric (usually stockinette stitch for an afghan). To encourage the swatch to lay flat, I always add a few rows in either garter stitch or seed stitch at the beginning and end of the swatch, as well as a few stitches in the same stitch pattern on either side of the stockinette stitch area.

Pins are placed 17 stitches apart, and the rule shows the distance of 4" [10cm] between the pins.

An added advantage of framing your swatch is that you get to try a border treatment for your project. Seed stitch was used in the sample above.

Once you have a swatch, examine the fabric – Does it feel flexible enough to drape over chilly legs? Is it too loose to the point where it might stretch out of shape over time? If you aren’t sure you like the result, choose a different size needle, and try again. It may help to tag each sample you make with your thoughts and the needle size used. Leave room on the tag to record your tension. Some knitters like to keep their swatches for future reference -- tagging them adds meaning to the swatches.

When you’ve settled on a sample that has the drape, or “hand” that you like, accurately measure the tension of the sample. It's important to be very accurate when measuring. This step will make or break your project, especially if your design includes stars, circles, or leaves – anything where the height-to-width ratio has to be right. Our sample design features the vergina sun, so it's important to take accurate counts for both stitches and rows.

The vergina sun is a beautiful shape, reminiscent of a mariner's compass. Accurate tension measurements are essential to ensure that this design's symmetry is retained when it is translated to a knitting chart.

When measuring stitches, I like to count from between “v”s, and when measuring rows, I like to count from the bottom point of the “v”s.

If your tension isn’t especially even, or if you get a questionable reading, move to another area of the swatch and measure again. Record your measurements accurately – if you get 19½ sts and 25¼ sts to 4” [10cm], these are the numbers to use. My sample has 17sts and 24½ rows to 4” [10cm].

Tomorrow we'll determine the base numbers for our project using algebra and a spreadsheet (fun!), and design a simple striped flag.

Knit a flag with Super Saver yarn

One of my favorite comedy programs on television periodically runs a segment called “Fun with Flags.” Long before this, I had an on-going “affair” with nautical flags, and over the years I’ve collected several books and charted designs for the nautical flag alphabet.

Recently, a very kind colleague asked me to knit him a blanket of a specific flag, the flag of Macedonia – not the new one, the old one.

This made me think about making blankets that represent the flag of a country. It’s a great way to show our patriotism or to display our heritage.

So, I set out to have some fun with flags, which, because of my assignment, led to fun with afghans using Red Heart's Super Saver yarn, and fun with designing (one of my knitting joys). Join me on this knitting adventure.

First steps

So, we’re having fun with three things - flags, afghans, and design. Where do we begin?

They say that when writing an essay, the best way to begin is to draft the closing statement. Sometimes, this approach works for knitting projects, too.

We know that the ultimate objective is an afghan. The standard dimension for an afghan is 4' x 5' (48" x 60" [122 x 152cm]). The standard size for a flag is 3' x 5' (36" x 60" [92 x 152cm]). This difference in the standard dimensions of the two items presents our first design challenge. The following scale drawings illustrate the difference.

Fig. 1 is a scale drawing of an afghan, and Fig. 2 is a scale drawing of a flag. The difference between the height and length is referred to as the "aspect ratio".

How do you want to proceed?
1) Do you want the whole afghan to be the flag?
2) Do you want the flag to show only in a section of the afghan?
3) If the answer to 2) is “yes”, do you want the background to be a color or a neutral?

Let’s take a look at these options:

1) Entire afghan is flag - If you want to fit the height of the flag onto the 48" [122cm] of the afghan, and keep the same aspect ratio for the width of the flag, the afghan will have to extend to 80" [204cm]. Most sofas and futons are at least 78" across the back, so if the afghan will be displayed, this is a viable option. This might also be a good design choice if the recipient is tall.

To maintain aspect ratio of a flag, one option is to extend the length of the afghan to 80" [204cm]. In the diagram, this extension is shown in pale yellow.

Complex flags, such as the Union Jack (Great Britain) or the Jamaican flag, are more challenging to adapt to an all-over design in the standard afghan size of 48" x 60" [122 x 152cm]; changing the dimension of the flag changes the angles in the flag’s graphic, which affects features such as crosses and triangles.

Some country flags (Mexico, Ecuador) have a detailed crest featured in the flag. Rather than try to chart an intricate crest, you might want to source out a fabric or embroidered version of the emblem and apply it to the finished blanket.

2) Show the flag on only a portion of the afghan - If you want to keep the aspect ratio of the flag, it can be placed in several ways. You can place it so it takes up the full width of the blanket, either horizontally, or vertically, or you can set into a “frame” of be background color. As with striped flags, the background or frame areas can be made in panels.

Flags that consist of basic stripes (France, Ireland, Germany) can be expanded to cover the entire surface of the afghan. Flags that have a center motif on a striped or single color background, such as Japan, Canada, or the old Macedonian flag, also adapt well. Flags with stripes give the designer or knitter the option of working the afghan in one piece or in panels.

3) Designing the background - the background, or frame, could be the color of the recipient’s bedspread, sofa, or futon cover, or it could be a neutral such as black, grey, or white. In addition, a textured stitch design, such as seed stitch or garter stitch, can be used for the background.

Take some time to think about how you want your afghan to look, and in our next installment of Fun with Flags, we'll look at choosing yarn. I'll give you a hint: it's by Red Heart, it's economical, and it's hard-wearing.

8 strategies to knit fair isle better

Knitting with Italian DK weight superwash merino called Dona by Fibra Natura, this week has been a great experience. I love this wool. But to really test it's worth, I tried it with fair isle knitting and made this swatch. And Dona didn't disappoint.

While I was knitting this swatch I recalled and thought of and tried 8 strategies to make my fair isle knitting better. To be honest, some of the strategies came to mind after I had almost finished the swatch, as a result of trying to avoid further mistakes.

Fair isle swatch using Dona yarn by Fibra Natura

Technique

If you can, take a class in the technique that you don't usually knit. If you're a thrower (aka English-style knitter), take a picker (Continental style) class, and vice versa. When you can knit both ways, even if one isn't your dominant approach, you can carry one or two colors in your dominant yarn feeding hand and one of the contrasting colors in your other hand and knit with both methods simultaneously. This makes for very even tension and small floats across the wrong side.

Bobbins

2 strategies have to do with bobbins. It's important not to overload them so that they aren't too heavy and drag down on your stitches. One reason for bobbins is to avoid the drag that happens when we knit fair isle directly from the skeins. The twisted disasters that usually plague the project a few inches below the working row are definitely mitigated by bobbins. If a bobbin is too heavy it'll do the same thing to the stitches as twisted skeins do: it tightens them up too much.

The second reason to use bobbins is that they're nifty devices to help keep those strands untwisted. At the end of every row, it's a quick untangle and you are ready to go.

Close-up of tight stitch

This knit fair isle swatch is based on an item of Russian embroidery that I saw once. The colors of the embroidery were the traditional red, white, yellow and black of much of 19th century pieces and the theme of roosters and hens figures a lot in folks pieces. I had to change things up and use teal, however (it does happen to be a prevalent color in my yarn stash). I love how they took a nordic snowflake icon and modified with the roosters.

If you look at the cockscomb in the rooster to the right and compare it to its reflection, you'll see that I have some extra tight stitches in teal that have disappeared into the knit fabric. Unfortunately I was using a mixture of bobbins and some skeins and things got messy and tight and tangled and I didn't notice what was happening until it was too late. I shouldn't have avoided having a bobbin for every color.

Pre-knitting Preparation

Another strategy is to study your charts carefully. Make notes about how many places you'll be joining in new bobbins of yarn. Ask yourself if you'll be carrying a color across a whole row or if you'll be adding a new bobbin for each motif or section that needs a flash of a contrast color. For this chart I had 2 bobbins of teal, 1 of white, and 3 of black. The third black one was used for the feet of the birds and the few "seeds" sprinkled in front of them. I used 1 of each teal to work the side border up to the center of the reflection, where I took up with another bobbin of teal.

Nordic Rooster fair isle chart

Keeping track of your stitches and rows

Having a row counter is an essential strategy for knitting fair isle successfully. There are apps with row counters and clickable ones for your knitting back, and going back to the basics with pen and paper is always good too.

A second way to keep track of your progress through a fair isle chart is to use a magnetic white board and magnetic strips. You place a copy of the chart on the white board and hold it down with magnetic strips that you move every time you finish a row. This can be done for under $20. For less, you can use whiteout tape or highlighters to draw a line through a completed row.

If any of you give this chart a try, I'd love to see a picture of what you knit.

materials

Using wool is the best choice of yarn for fair isle knitting. Traditionally, the yarn used was a fine yarn and the wool had some "tooth", the term for the grippy texture that does involve an itch factor, but ensures that the colors bond to each other well. Knitting with superwash that's tightly spun is often frustrating when it comes to stranded color work because the yarn loops slip away from each other and it's difficult to get cohesive fabric. I found that the loft and lighter twist of Dona yarn, and especially its 'springiness', made it a great yarn for fair isle.

One thing is for sure, you don't want to pull tight on the stitches knit with Dona yarn because of its springiness it gets quite thin when over-tightened. Cotton, silk, or acrylic yarn poses problems for fair isle knitting because there is no clinginess or little elasticity, both which contribute to uneven fair isle fabric.

3 color stranded-knitting swatch

The last strategy for successful fair isle knitting is one that is shared in common with all good knitting. We've got to block the fabric that is knit in fair isle (or stranded as it's also known).

I think I'm going to take this motif and make a cute little sweater for a baby boy. One of those "be prepared" knitting projects, in case someone needs a gift. No, it's not for my first grandchild...that's an event that is still years away.

Yarn bobbins make color work easier

I love bobbins. Any shape, any size, any color, made of any material. I even use gift cards that have nothing left on them and cut my own custom bobbins. For color work, they're an essential tool that should be in every knitter's toolkit.

Even though I have several different brands in my collection Unique yarn bobbins are very effective.

Yarn bobbins

One reason I like these Unique brand bobbins is their size. They are 2" long and about ¾ʺ wide. The one end has two extended arms to hold yarn as you wrap it and the other end has a V-shaped indent and a slit at the bottom of the V through which the yarn glides to be caught in a semi-circular opening.

As far as bobbin design goes, this design makes a lot of sense. As you wrap yarn around the center of it, a semi-circular mound of yarn does start forming. The plastic edges and the slit are all polished so there are no burrs and no place for your yarn to catch and tear, another characteristic that elevates this variety in my estimation.

Unique yarn bobbin

Side Note: Does it freak anyone out that my fingerprints are so easily visible on this bobbin? I think I've been watching too many criminology shows. I'm glad I'm not violent. I have sharp needles, but am too relaxed from knitting to react in that way when upset.  I know, I know. I've seen those "beware, I have knitting needles" t-shirts that promise retribution for crimes of annoyances, too, but it's just not me.

Using bobbins for fair isle knitting

When I knit the fairisle swatch (more about it tomorrow) that you see under the pile of bobbins, I was really pleased how these bobbins held the yarn in place (still using the yummy Dona yarn). I learned one thing, however. It's possible to load up a bobbin too much. When I wrapped too much yarn around a bobbin, like the one with the teal yarn in the top middle of the picture, and I started to knit with it, there was too much pressure on the yarn to keep the live end from squeezing through the slit unbidden.

Having a more reasonable amount of yarn wound around each bobbin made them more effective tools. They hung at the back of the work with a length of about 6". I dropped the bobbin for one spin (the length of yarn wrapped around the core once before going through the slit) which added about 4". Then I knit the row, twisted colors as needed across the wrong side so as not to have long floats. Once I arrived at the end of the row, it was a simple task to untwist the yarn from each other and let the bobbins hang directly down.

Tomorrow we'll explore some tips and tricks for knitting fair isle, a couple of them having to do with bobbins.

Duplicate stitches add interest to your knitting

Today we continue to explore ways to play with color to spruce up your knitting, using the very soft and warm Dona yarn of Universal Yarns. As I explained earlier this week in my yarn review, Dona yarn is a great alternative to acrylic as it's 100% superwash merino wool.

Duplicate stitch on stripes using Dona yarn of Universal Yarns

Duplicate stitch is one easy way to make knitted stripes and have a lot more interest. You start with a canvas of stripes of the same or different widths, whichever suits your fancy. And then you work duplicate stitch on top to change things up. If you've never used a stripes calculator, give this free one a try; it's a great tool to help you come up with random stripe widths.

Swiss darning on knit stripes

Once again, I swatched with the feature yarn of this week, Dona. The sharp contrast between black and white is fun for doing little motifs in duplicate stitch (which is also called Swiss darning or Swiss embroidery). I enjoyed seeing how the sheen of my favorite color, teal, would jump out at me as part of the random stripe sequence I knit with embroidered motifs crossing two stitches. This is what it looks like.

If you look at the third black stitch in from the left side of the photo, you can see one of the perils of duplicate stitch on your knitting. I tugged the tail too tightly and the first stitch all but disappeared into the base fabric. But with a little gentle tugging, this is easily fixed if you do it right away. It's important to use the same thickness of yarn when applying duplicate stitch motifs because a thinner yarn leaves the underlying stitches exposed and a thicker yarn starts to create an unseemly bulk on the surface of the knit fabric.

Close-up of duplicate stitch

Things to avoid when you use duplicate stitch to enhance your striped knits

In this close-up, it's possible to see where I made a few mistakes. Sometimes I tugged on the yarn a little too much, and other times, I was a little too loose. It doesn't take long to practice duplicate stitch to the point where your stitches are consistent and lie flat on the base fabric. You'll notice on the leftmost white stitch that the right leg lies on top of the left leg of the stitch. This happened because of how I brought the yarn up from the wrong side of the fabric. It's important to work from one side of the fabric and move horizontally in one direction as much as possible to avoid these twisted stitches.

If you look at the picture below. I used some drawing software to illustrate how the stitches are worked horizontally, with the strands of yarn showing through the knit fabric from the back side.

Horizontal duplicate stitches

Another bonus to working all the stitches in horizontal rows is the neatness factor on the back of the work. If you change directions and go all over the place there will be a lot of floats and stranding across the back, which leads to bulk and puffiness on the right side of the work. Below you can see how neat rows keeps the bulk to a minimum. Tomorrow we'll look at a very useful tool to help colorwork knitting in general.

Wrong side of duplicate stitches

3 fixes for knitting intarsia

Lots of knitters avoid intarsia designs because they haven't been successful in the past, or they just imagine that it's going to be unimaginably difficult. There's actually very little that's difficult to intarsia knitting and there may be a few problems that can easily be avoided or fixed. For this example I'm using the very brilliant and soft Dona yarn from Universal Yarns - it's a great alternative to acrylic as it's a superwash merino wool.

Intarsia Knitting

Knitting intarsia is basically like finding a knot in your ball of yarn and having to cut that and join a new ball mid row. You knit the last stitch of the first color, and then you insert the needle in the next stitch, and leaving a substantial tail of yarn, you knit the next stitch with the new color. On the return row (usually the purl side), you simply lay the yarn you've just been knitting with over the ball and yarn of the next color and pick up the new color to continue purling across. This creates a half-twist between the yarn strands that closes the gap.

Intarsia swatch

Uneven stitches in the rows

When you look at the white stitches in the swatch above you'll be able to see about 3 rows where some of the stitches are looser than the average ones elsewhere in the swatch. While this problem of short bursts of loose stitches can happen in any stretch of stockinette stitch, it's quite common in intarsia knitting.

The problem of loose stitches is usually one of the hands playing with the tension of the yarn as you feed the needles. If you tend to look up frequently, set your project aside for moments, reach for your mug of coffee, cup of tea, or glass of wine a lot mid-row, you're going to get these little blips. In intarsia knitting it tends to happen when you struggle with skeins or bobbins of yarn that are twisted, tangled or simply annoying you. On the purl rows, this does tend to happen a bit more.

To solve the problem of loose stitches while doing intarsia, the trick is to pull from the balls, skeins or bobbins the yarn you'll need for each section of each color and have it drape loosely on your lap or a table if you're at one. Not having to tug at the yarn for any section of the work is key. Also, it's important to save untwisting yarn and bobbins and drinking till the end of rows.

Loose color joins

Many people do find that it's easy to run into loose color joins when knitting intarsia. In the lower teal section of the swatch 3 rows away from the black, you can see an extra loose stitch. While these are easy enough to avoid, if one sneaks in despite your best efforts, it's simply a matter of distributing the extra slack by working it through the nearest 4 to 6 neighboring stitches. With the tip of a needle 2 or 3 sizes smaller than the one I was knitting with, I tugged on the right leg of the loose stitch, then on the left leg of its neighbor, then the right leg of the same neighbor and so on. This is the result. I haven't re-blocked the swatch, but that would finish smoothing everything out.

Fixed loose stitch

Intarsia stitches looking loose and tight at color edges

Another issue that surfaces in intarsia is the appearance that every other edge stitch in the column next to the other color looks either looser than the ones in between or tighter. This happens to most knitters. To some it happens on purl rows, to others on knit rows. It happens to both continental knitters and to English-method knitters. The other thing to do is to tighten the first stitch of each color when you've just switched on the row (check if it's your knit row or your purl row) and on the last stitch too.

It takes some playing around till you're consistent. You can't rely on your automatic muscle memory or natural tension to deal with this. It's a microsecond of stop, think and tug. In the end, it's worth it when you have a great knit item with lovely edges between colors.

Join me tomorrow for more knitting fun.

Intarsia Swatch

Your yarn will affect the look of your intarsia edges

I've had the pleasure of swatching with Dona yarn (see yesterday's post). It's a DK weight merino wool with this interesting springy twist.  This yarn as well as many others yield a stockinette fabric in which the individual stitches look more like check-marks, rather than V's. This happens in some really springy yarn because of how the twist likes to settle in each loop after you've knit a stitch. If you see this check-mark look to your knitting, you'll most likely find that the fabric is lofty and springy to the touch and there's a lovely drape that has a bit of substance to it. This check-mark appearance will affect the edges of colorwork in intarsia knitting, but not too seriously. There is no real solution to that other than to change yarn. But I wouldn't change a thing. I think I'm going to knit a baby boy's checkerboard top with a chess player symbol in one of the squares.

Finding an alternative to acrylic yarn for washable apparel

Depending on your first experiences in knitting, on who taught you, on your taste, on your budget, and on a whole lot of other factors, you may find yourself in the "I only knit kid's sweaters with acrylic" camp, or you may be in the "children can't be warm in acrylic and need wool sweaters" camp. I'm not here to say one is right and the other wrong. All yarns have their merits and today I'd like to introduce you to Fibra Natura's Dona. This superwash merino wool yarn is washable and yet it's not like the superwash yarns that came into stores a few years ago.

Dona DK superwash merino by Fibra Natura

DK weight yarn is my favorite. There's nothing I enjoy more than taking out yet another pair or set of 4mm needles and casting on some Double Knitting (some call it light worsted) weight yarn. Dona is a squishy, soft and lofty yarn that really is a pleasure to knit.

Close-up of Dona yarn

As you can see in the above picture. It consists of 6 strands of 2 plies twisted together with an S-twist. The 6 strands are also spun with an S-twist, but the number of twists per inch is small enough to prevent it from feeling like cord, but frequent enough to prevent it from being 'splitty'. I only knit some swatches this time, each one was very light for the amount of surface area. The yarn is soft both knit up, as a single strand, and in the ball.

It's a superwash merino. So this exquisite breed has triumphed once again in the yarn world, providing the mill in Italy with a micron count that is so small, I would say that even the Princess (she of the pea sensitivity...feeling one through several mattresses) would not be able to say there is an itch factor in this yarn. And even though the yarn has been treated so that it doesn't shrink, it really stays soft and doesn't have that crunchiness that some superwash types do. This is what makes it an excellent alternative to acrylic yarn. It doesn't pill when washed, and it's super warm and soft.

The yarn comes in 32 colors, some richly intense, and some pastels. I chose vanilla, black and real teal for this week's posts.

Dona of Universal Yarns in color: Vanilla

Looking at this closeup of the Vanilla skein, you can see that the way the yarn is twisted, there is a lot of play on light and sheen. There isn't one ounce of silk or rayon or any other shiny fiber, yet there's a gentle glimmer amidst the plies in every twist. I like that the vanilla is truly a creamy off-white and not a bleached white with little character.

The real teal is intense and alive (teal happens to be my favorite color, ever). and I can't wait to knit myself a hat (I rarely knit for myself). The black is rich as well.

This week's posts are going to explore the interplay of color with black and white. We will look at color blocking, fair isle, and more. Stay tuned.

Close up of Dona of Universal Yarns in color: Teal

Questionable knitting motives

As knitters, we have all been put upon by someone for knitted goods. They see you knitting a pair of socks and ask you to make them a pair, or see something you have knit yourself and decided that they would like one too. I usually just tell people that they should learn and knit themselves one, but a lot of knitters feel bad saying no. Let’s face it, knitters are a kind breed.

I swear I did not plan this, my knitting just happened to be smiling at me!

Most non-knitting people don’t realize how much work goes into one garment. It isn’t like sewing where you can make a pair of pajama pants in an hour. A solution can be to tell them how long it actually takes you to knit a sweater or socks. The asker probably doesn’t realize that one pair of socks takes hours and hours of work to make.

All the hand dyed yarn does not come cheap either!

If that doesn’t put people off, I will suggest that they can’t afford me. I’ll say “the yarn alone costs $X” and they realize they can go buy a package of 10 socks for that much money. Once I had this exact thing happen. I had seen some yarn that was dyed after the TV show Dr. Who; it was Tardis blue and I really loved it. I was telling my friend about it and he asked if I would make him a sweater from this Tardis colored yarn. I was totally on board with this and made the deal that if he paid for the yarn, I would make the sweater.

He was very enthusiastic about this idea and decided to ask how much the yarn was. It was $20 a skein and there was not a whole lot of yardage, so I figured it would take six or seven skeins to make him a sweater. After hearing that price he said he could easily buy a sweater for that amount of money and wondered why people knitted at all. Good question. As you can imagine, that particular person has never received a hand-knit gift of any kind.

I would be weary of this technique though; some people aren't scared away and will ask how much you would charge to knit them something. In this case, I usually name a ridiculous sum of money; something like $400 for a sweater. Most of the time people are not willing to pay this much and will suddenly change the subject of the conversation or remember an appointment and needs to rush off. There are the few people that will actually take you up on it, so be careful about the price you specify; make sure the price will be worth your while.

If you possibly can, always knit with quirky named yarn, the above is Men in Tights.

A technique I’ve applied more recently is to trade skills. I have a friend who is a hair dresser and we trade haircuts for knitted goods. The barter system is really great if the person attempting to wheedle something from you has a particular skill or hobby. There might be something in the deal for you that would normally be expensive or hard to replicate.

The final technique I will go over is the ultimate cop-out. Just tell them you don’t knit for others. There are some things you do for money and then there are things you do for love. I have yet to hit a response to that, aside from “well don’t you love meeeeee?” Batting eyelashes or no, I usually look the person right in the eye and lift one eyebrow.

I don't always knit for others, but when I do, I match my yarn to the home team.

There was a sign on Pinterest that said ‘knitting is like sex. If I like you, then it is enjoyable. If I don’t like you, there isn’t enough money in the world.’

This is the perfect adage to end this post on. Remember that you should never feel obligated to knit someone something and don’t just give in because you don’t want to say no.

The lowdown on dye lots

Since I'm an indie dyer, I like to think I have some inside information on dye lots. There are a couple of trains of thought in regards to dye lots and matching up yarn. You can use the dye lot number to match up different skeins of the same color for commercially dyed yarns - this is an excellent idea, since they're very close in color. However, with hand dyed yarn, you have to be much more careful. Just because the dye lot is the same, doesn’t mean the color is going to be exactly the same.

I definitely had a dye lot accident

I always suggest you use the time-tested method of switching skeins every other row when you're working with hand dyed skeins. Not only does this break up any unwanted color pooling, but if the skeins are visually different, you'll still get a fairly even color. Hand dyed yarn is not perfect and that is part of the charm, every skein will be slightly different. Even when I knit socks from my own yarn, the patterning on each sock was totally different and it was from the same ball.

Some color variations within the same skeins of yarn; tonal colors.

I kettle dye all my yarn, so the dye lots depend on several factors. One is the rate at which the yarn absorbs the dye. There are about a zillion factors included in this. If the yarn is closer to the bottom of the pot it gets darker, if you leave it in the pot longer it's darker. There are a lot of factors you can’t really control, but you can replicate them very closely. This might mean you get a couple skeins that are exactly the same colour or you get one that's much darker than the other. I have had two skeins from the same dye lot and they look very different. One happened to be near the bottom of the pot while dyeing and the other was nearer to the top. A majority of the dye absorbed into the bottom one because it was closer to the heat source and therefore set the dye much faster than the skein at the top of the pot.

Vampire barbie socks made from high twist.

Another really good photographic example are the Vampire Barbie socks I completed. They are from the same skein of yarn but look so very different. It could have been that my venison was a little tighter on one, or it could have been the dye, but the shafts of the socks were completely different!

Bottom of the pot and top of the pot.

Usually the hand dyed yarns are not a perfect solid color, unlike commercially dyed yarns, they are more tonal which lends a bit of depth and character to a knitted garment. As a summary I would simply say, use your common sense and look at the yarn with an eye towards the color. If they don’t look the same, see if there's another skein that matches closer in color.

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Knitted Fairy Tales by Sarah Keen

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The 3 levels of knitting and pet fur

Every knitter who has a furry pet struggles with pet hair in their knitting. When I was first starting out it really REALLY bothered me that there was all this cat hair in my knitting. I vacuumed, I swept, I washed the throws on the couches, but there was still fur in my knitting. I won’t lie to you, after a while, I just gave up.

It's like knitting has magical sleepy powers.

How to deal with this would depend on your level of OCD when it comes to keeping fur out of your knitting. If you’re on the lower end and it's a visual thing, I would judge the color of yarn your using and choose accordingly. For example, if you have a white cat and are knitting a black sweater, don’t expect that your sweater is going to escape. You’re going to be able to see that white cat hair like a beacon shining out in the night. I’m not saying you can only knit in white and cream, but that fur would sure be less noticeable on a tweed or heathered yarn of any color. A completely solid color is always going to share more fur than that of anything providing a busier pallet and more texture. - Level 1

Scarf? Blanket? Who can tell!?

If it bothers you that there's dog hair in your knitting even if you can’t see it, progress to level 2! This would be to make sure your pet isn’t sitting on your lap or beside you when you’re trying to knit. I would vacuum or sweep the area as well; perhaps lay down a throw or blanket if you’re sitting on a couch that your pet frequents. I personally do quite a bit of knitting at my dining room table. I'm lucky enough that the chairs are comfortable and the TV is within line of sight. Since this is a flat surface I can wipe down everything and keep my cats occupied with fresh cat nip.

Knitted or unknitted.

Level 3 would be if you were knitting something for someone with an allergy. To be completely honest, I would designate a section of your house that is ‘animal free’ if you can. I have a guest bedroom and we don’t let the cats in there because while a guest might not have an allergy, the fur might irritate them all the same. If you don’t have the space allowance to cordon off a piece of your home, you can also knit out of the house. I have a pair of socks that lives in my car, I only knit them there and the cats are never in the car. Other options can include knitting at a pet-free friend’s house, or someplace like a Starbucks.

As for getting pet hair out of your knitting, I’m afraid I haven’t found a solution outside of downright picking out each individual hair. I would highly suggest the prevention route. If you’re knitting with a synthetic fiber, some of the hair might slip out in the wash because there is nothing to hold it there.

Serious cuddle time with the afghan.

Animal fibers, like wool, have microscopic barbs. You know those shampoo commercials boasting about how your hair looks before your use their amazing product? That is similar to what wool looks like under a microscope. That's why wool felts; those microscopic barbs reach out and fuse the parallel fibres together. If your animal fur is worked into the wool, odds are, it’s not coming out easily with a wash.

"It's a center-pull ball! I'm not in the way!"

The same goes for knitting your own fur into garments. When I had really long hair, I would always notice that I had knitted one of my hairs into a sweater and it was so worked in, I couldn’t just pull it out. I actually had to tink back until I had unearthed enough to simply slip the hair out. 

A HAND-y Tip for measuring your knitting

This post is going to be all about the lazy knitter, which I am. A teacher once told me that the tip of your index finger, from the last knuckle to the end, is approximately one inch. I measured my own and sure enough, it was one inch. This was a mind blowing experience for me. No more would I have to root around for a measuring tape when I just needed to measure an inch, no more eye-balling it because I was too lazy to actually find a measuring tape.

Even though my tape measure is really cute.

This got me thinking, which is usually extremely dangerous. If the tip of my finger is one inch, what about the rest of my hand? I started measuring. The second knuckle of my index finger to the tip is two inches; the entire finger is three inches. From the tip of my index finger to my wrist crease is 8 inches. More than once, I’ve been stuck somewhere without a measuring tape, looking at my knitting and trying to guesstimate how much further I should go. Usually it is because I was in such a rush to catch the train I totally forgot about measuring tapes and all manner of practical things.

The tip of my finger is one inch.

Of course this will be totally and completely different for each individual, but it would be an excellent thing to know; just in case. Depending on the projects you usually do, you might want to remember some bigger measurements. For example my wrist to elbow is 10 inches.

The one that is most useful to me is usually the index to wrist measurement. That is usually how long I make the shaft of my socks when I do them cuff down. I will use my index finger to measure when my cuff is an inch or two inches as well. 

The tips of my fingers to my wrist crease. The perfect length for my socks.

If none of your extremities match a measurement you frequently need, you can always use other markers, such as freckles! I have two freckles on my arm that are approximately 2.5 inches apart. I rarely use that, but sadly none of my freckles are the perfect distance for my knitting use. 

Two inches between these freckles

I hope everyone thinks this is as interesting as I do, and slightly less creepy than it seems to an outsider. These have been really useful to me and help enable me into becoming a true and undisputed part of the couch. I honestly think my tape measure runs away and hides when I'm knitting because I can never find it easily. Does anyone else have this problem, or is it just me?

3 tips to untangle yarn SNAFU

Tips for Tangles

Imagine this, you go to your LYS and there's the perfect skein of yarn. I’m not talking beautiful color nice feel, I'm talking the holy grail of fricken yarns! There's a soft angelic glow about it and choirs of children sing for effect. In a cloud of euphoria you purchase this yarn, take it home and begin to wind it so you can cast on. As it turns out this yarn is not a divine fiber, it was the spawn of a tangled jumble that managed to Trojan horse itself into your house!

A tangled mess of yarn ends, but tangled nonetheless!

I know a friend of mine bought a yarn like this and I’ve had one or two myself. Usually it was my fault when something ended in a tangle, but there were a couple skeins where there was just no hope. This is something I'm trying to spare people; when I dye yarn, it gets tangled up. It's dyed in skein form and tied three or four times to prevent tangling, but it happens anyway. Some of these skeins were REALLY tangled so my husband, Paul and I re-skeined them.

The dyeing process at work.

I'm going to give you tips that helped me out the most. First and foremost, when you realize you’ve got a tangled mess on your hands, don’t get frustrated. I know everyone is currently staring at their computer screen thinking, “Yea, you’ve got a snake’s chance in a typing contest of that one…”, but honestly, it’s very important.

Yes, that would be a bonafide yarn-barf.

The biggest thing that helped me keep my sanity is to never pull anything tight. You may need to loop one end around and through, but if there are no actual knots in the length of yarn it's worth it. If you're frustrated you're much rougher with the yarn, you pull things a little harder and begin foaming at the mouth and growling curse words. Don’t feel embarrassed, it’s happened to all of us and everyone wants to exact some paleo neolithic revenge on the person that tangled that yarn, even if it is ourselves.

Ultra Blueberry perfectly re-skeined!

This particular technique is very hard to give advice on, the way I do it may not work best for you. When I realize I have a problem, I find an end of the skein. It doesn’t matter which one. If I'm balling the yarn, I will usually just take the ball off the winder and wrap the yarn around the ball itself. This way you can loosen the tangle and push the entire ball through the openings it needs to go through; like untying a gigantic knot. Just follow your strand through and you'll come out on the right side of it.

You can leave the yarn a bit looser if it is on the swift like this!

Something else that managed to help me was fastening the swift to the counter sideways. This allowed me to untangle as I went without the danger of the skein falling off the swift. What are some tips that help you untangle or deal with particularly stubborn yarn?