Archive for July 2009
Knitting in the Sky
July 30, 2009 | 
Author Knitpicks.com just released their new Options Zephyr Acrylic Interchangeable circular needles. They are CLEAR and light and slightly flexible, and they say they are allowed on airplanes. You may have heard of TSA agents confiscating knitting needles. Here’s what the TSA web site had on it today about traveling with you pointy things:
Transporting Knitting Needles & Needlepoint: Knitting needles are permitted in your carry-on baggage or checked baggage. However, there is a possibility that the needles can be perceived as a possible weapon by one of our Security Officers. Our Security Officers have the authority to determine if an item could be used as a weapon and may not allow said item to pass through security. We recommend the following when bringing knitting needles on an airplane:
- Circular knitting needles are recommended to be less than 31 inches in total length
- We recommend that the needles be made of bamboo or plastic (Not Metal)
- Scissors must have blunt points
- In case a Security Officer does not allow your knitting tools through security it is recommended that you carry a self addressed envelope so that you can mail your tools back to yourself as opposed to surrendering them at the security check point.
Most of the items needed to pursue a Needlepoint project are permitted in your carry-on baggage or checked baggage with the exception of circular thread cutters or any cutter with a blade contained inside. These items cannot be taken through a security checkpoint. They must go in your checked baggage.
So remember that padded postage paid envelope for your stuff if you can’t get your deadly needlecraft on the aircraft. The Zephyrs may be easier to pass, but don’t it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you are going to be away for a while you might send your knitting tools ahead by UPS or such, then ship it back.
Here are the new needles:
In the Ravelry SMACK (Straight Men Also Crochet and Knit) forum there is a thread on air travel with knitting. Some airlines and countries are very strict, such as Australia and their airline Quantas. Canada is supposedly very easy.
And some posters said they have even prepared pencils to knit with by coating the tips with clear nail polish. Others have successfully got onboard with bamboo dpns, stashing them among a few pens and pencils.
Note: also be aware that if you have large metal stitch holders you may not get them on board. Find an alternative.
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Needle Overview for the Beginning Knitter
What to buy? Everything? No. As fun as it is to buy new toys it’s best to learn some things first. I’ve found from my first explorations that there are ideal collections of needles for knitting. You will read that some yarn is more slippery so it is better to use bamboo with that kind, and other yarns are better on metal or other slick needles. Here’s my discoveries as I learned to knit.
At first I started with a set of aluminum needles from Walmart and the written instructions. I found it very frustrating trying to control the yarn on the slippery metal needles but that may have been, and most likely was, due to my choice of knitting method and lack of proper application. I almost quit a few times because of how slippery it was, and as I mentioned before, I came to feel like I needed to be an octopus to knit.
It was recommended in various places that bamboo is better for the beginner, but in my opinion maybe not. Bamboo does give you more control but it can also get a bit frustrating. One thing is that the points are duller, sometimes too dull, depending on the brand, and that can make it a bit harder to catch the yarn and pull your loops through your loops. If you are handy you can sharpen the tips a bit – be sure you keep a good taper. I haven’t tried this yet, but will soon.
Point Sharpness Varies. Top to bottom and all size 8 US: Clover bamboo, cheap bamboo, aluminum, Options Nickel-plated.
Another thing is that you may not like the lack of slipperiness with the yarns you will tend to use. It’s best to reserve bamboo for slippery yarns. If you want to have some around, you may not want to have them be your only set. Try some first, then buy more if you like them. Go to a real yarn store and learn about the yarns that will be better on bamboo and decide if you will ever really want to use it. Alternately, you may want to buy the bamboo and then make the slicker with polishing or even clear coating. (If you intend to clear coat with something like urethane or whatever, be aware some bamboo has been waxed and that can interfere with extra coatings.)
On my current exercise, which is the sweater sampler from The Sweater Workshop book, I started with a set of 16 inch bamboo circulars and didn’t like the friction of the needle so I used the 0000 super fine steel wool to polish them and I like the new surface better. It has some bite but the yarn slides better. This may be a good middle ground for you, and I will give any bamboo units I buy the same treatment.
Super Fine steel wool, marked 0000, is for polishing. It will remove any clear coat on the bamboo.
One reason to get bamboo is that you can get a set of fifteen sizes for about $25 on amazon.com and elsewhere. This is a great buy, and handy if you feel like having everything you need available in case you need to change needle size to adjust your gauge result for a project. Then you don’t have to run out trying to find what you want. If you don’t like the points you can, again, sharpen them.
By the way, sharpening should not be attempted with a blade. You will want a powered sander disk or belt. Ideally, I would use a stationary belt sander to get an even and quick taper, then fix the point the way you like it. Finish with 00 (double zero) steel wool and then 0000 superfine steel wool for your final shine – or whatever process it takes to get it smooth. If you have a buffing wheel you could use that but don’t use any compound.
BUT, as you will read below, you may find it more economical to get something like the Options wood or nickel circulars as they can be dual purpose, instead of spending money on a set of bamboo you may have to labor over to sharpen or polish if you aren’t totally satisfied with them. There are other brands of interchangeable circular needles. I chose the Options based on a very positive review and I’m very happy with them. Read on.
I liked bamboo at first but now that I have learned to control the yarn I don’t feel much need for its lack of slipperiness. When I got my new set of Options Nickel-plated interchangeable circulars – which you can use as “straight” needles by capping the cable with the “button” end that comes with it – I fell in love with the slickness. It’s like knitting on glass. Very sexy.
About controlling the yarn; at first I tried to learn regular continental and then English knitting but had trouble. I was very pleased with I found Portuguese knitting as yarn control is totally handled by the yarn around the neck or around a pin on your left shoulder. Then I discovered Eastern European knitting and I really like both the speed and yarn handing. I use both, depending on the project. I find Portuguese knitting is a bit better for bulky yarns – or maybe I just need more practice.
So on to the rest of the needle commentary. I mentioned my nice nickel Options set. I got them from knitpicks.com, the manufacturer and seemingly the only source. They were under $60 for the set, which comes with pairs of points for sized 4 through 11 and two pairs of cables to make two 20 and two 34 inch circulars. They come in a handy-sized bag to protect them from the cat and keep various parts and tools together.
Options Interchangeable come in a handy bag to keep everything together.
Like I said, you can cap the two cables and make each point into a one-ended knitting needle that is about 15 inches long. Or you can put both points on one cable and just turn your work like you normally would without joining to knit in the round. Voilá, you have a nice set of “straight” metal knitting needles as well as a set of metal circular needles. I’m going to use these for a flat scarf that is project #2 coming up, and also for a sweater that will be knit in the round. You can also get longer cables and also points up to size US 15, all purchased separately for a reasonable price. And of course if you prefer a bit more friction you can try the wooden version, which is rather colorful as well. I haven’t tried them so I can’t testify to what they are like but I’ve heard people like them plenty.
A single Options tip set up for use as a single pointed "straight" needle.
So, that handles all your circular and straight needle needs. What about smaller sizes? Usually this is for things like fine lace and socks. I don’t know a thing about lace, so you will want to read elsewhere for that. Socks are what got me into knitting – no, I haven’t started a set yet but I bought all I need – so I will address that part.
What I bought for socks is based on a middle of the road approach. Those pointy double pointed needles (dpns) look kind of scary, like massaging a hedgehog, so for starters I’m going to try the magic loop method, which recommends a 40 inch circular needle. I got Addi Turbo needles in nickel plate #2 US, as well as a 47 inch one in case I decide to knit two socks at once on separate needles, and some people suggest having the circular needles of differing lengths so you can tell them apart in case that is ever a challenge. That would depend on your pattern and where you are in it.
Socks and sweater sleeves and sometimes sweater collars and parts of hats and other stuff are often done on dpns. You can use circulars on these parts but at some lengths the cable may become an obstacle to wrestle with. Usually the pattern will suggest a 16 inch circular, which is pretty tight but not really hard to work with. I don’t own any in metal yet. They are pretty expensive, like 15.00 and up. You can also get metal in 12 inches. I bought a set of bamboo at 16 inches for $25 off amazon but as I said, I have to polish them with the 0000 steel wool to be happy with the feel of the bamboo on the yarn I’m using.
So for such applications it may be a good idea to get some dpns just in case. Recommendations I’ve found are to use bamboo or wood as they are less likely to slip out of your stitches, especially if you make a sudden move, like to free up your yarn supply. I don’t like the thought of trying to put stitches back on a needle so I’m going to get a set of bamboo. They come in various lengths so you will want to get a set that will suit your most likely projects. The set I found with five pieces is $20 now on amazon.com. I will probably get a set that are 8 inches long. Better too long than too short.
Another note on dpns: they come in sets of 4 and 5 and sometimes 6. You knit with all but one in loops and knit onto the empty one. You may prefer to own a set of 5 so you can have all your stitches split between front and back, especially for socks and if you are working with an even number of stitches, or if your stitches are divisible by three you can divide them on three needles and knit with the fourth.
So, here’s the summary:
I got my Options in nickel because I like the slickness and can use them as circulars or straights.
I found bamboo frustrating due to non-sharp tips and also higher friction before buffing with steel wool, and don’t think I will have much need for the friction for the yarn I’m likely to use. If you discover you want to use slippery yarns then get a set of bamboo straights for $25 off amazon.com or better yet, maybe a set of the wood Options Interchangeable Circulars which can be, again, be used as circulars or straights.
If you are nervous about knitting on slippery metal, get some expert help on yarn control and look into Eastern European or Portuguese knitting. And practice. You get better.
I bought 40 inch and a 47 inch #2 US Addi Turbos for socks for when I get around to that. Again, I like the metal.
I am ordering a set of 8 inch bamboo dpns for other uses in case I need them, again, so the needles will be less likely to slip out of my work.
I hope all this is of use to you. Nothing like the voice of a little experience, and that’s what I have – a voice and a little experience. If you have anything to add please leave a comment.
And here’s Max’s latest picture as official Knitty Kitty:
"Yarn makes a nice pillow. Wa-wa!"
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Posted in Products and Tools | 
Tags: amazon.com, Cat picture, china, circular needles, dpns, eastern european knitting, knit, needles, Options Interchangable, sleeves, Socks, Sweater Workshop book, wood, yarn | 
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How I Turned a Scarf into a Ball of Yarn
I know that’s backwards, but I couldn’t resist.
I got my ball winder from knitpics.com the other day and it’s pretty cool. Very affordable at just 19.99. I didn’t have any skeins I wanted to ball up yet so I turned its fury on a scarf I crocheted back in May before I decided to get into knitting. It was the bulky Wool-ease in a sort of oatmeal color. The scarf didn’t excite me, just done in alternating rows of dc done in the back loop. It had an interesting accordion like texture but seeing it was 105 degrees outside I was not too attached to it. I decided to canibalize it for a cossack hat and so threw it to the hungry ball winder.
The top of the winder has a sort of notch to hold the start of the yarn but it’s not cut right for a bulky yarn. Once I got it started it made short work of the scarf. I held it to the floor with a foot and just wound away. The ball winder is designed to put more distance between the turns of the yarn than I would have thought. As you can see in the picture it’s not closely wound. So the ball was bigger than perhaps necessary, and being bulky yarn it turned into a ball that was a little too large for the winder to finish.
It was crochet; it had to be destroyed.
.
So now I have a very cool ball of yarn to turn “reinyarnate” into a hat. (Read about technique below…)
Proof of Reinyarnation
There is a bit of a technique to using a ball winder. One thing I find is that if I don’t control the incoming yarn it will flop about a lot and the ball will be kind of loose and larger when done. So what I do is take a small piece of fabric and hold it loosely around the strand of yarn so that it keeps a very mild tension on the line. This produces a somewhat smaller ball and deters the yarn from tangling in the wire yarn guide.
Another thing I do is put the source skein or ball in a shoebox or paper bag on the floor. Backing up a bit: I clamp my ball winder to the back of a chair and put the source yarn on the floor below it. So with the source in a bag or box it won’t travel all over the room.
And sometimes I will put the source on a vertical paper towel holder if I can get the rod through the ball/skein easily. This helps more with oblong skeins you buy at craft stores as when they are being unwound they can flop about a lot in the bag or box. Don’t expect them to actually turn on the towel holder, and at a certain point you will have to deal with the last bit of yarn flopping about oddly anyway.
I find the ball winder very handy, and use it to rewind balls for projects that I’m restarting, or when I’m done with part of a ball, as the ball becomes squishy when you pull from the center and it’s nice to put it back in good order for storage or further use. And you can in many cases, of course, rewind and rip out at the same time, straight back to the ball.
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Posted in Products and Tools, Updated Since Posted | Tags: ball winder, Crafts, crochet, Fiber art, Knitting, scarf, yarn | No Comments »
Beware of Cat
If you have pet, beware of leaving your needles out where they can get to them. I’ve discovered that cats are crazy about bamboo needles. They are like cat nip to them. I might as well be knitting with mice tied to my needles for all the attention it gets.
I mentioned this to to someone who works at the Gail Knits store and she said yes, beware of mixing cats or dogs and non-metal needles. My cat Max is all over me when I have bamboo out. The first hint was when I was first learning to knit and I was digging through a bag of stuff and pulled out a Clover circular that had a small swatch of practice knitting on it and set it down on the carpet.
I left the room for about 2 minutes, sitting at my computer to look up something, when Max comes proudly marching in with his prey: dragging the swatch still on the bamboo circular, trailing the yarn all the way back from my bedroom, through the living room to the dining room where the ball of yarn lay abandoned. I just laughed my head off, and he was so happy with his prize. So I bound off and cut off the swatch for him and rescued the needles for myself.
Here he is mauling his prize:
Max and his prey
.
Then the other day I was starting my sampler for the Sweater Workshop book on the same Clover #8×16″ and he was right there, as the picture below shows.
A not-very-subtle interest...
So have to be studious about hiding my non-metal needles and crochet hooks, and Options cables and Zephyr tips when I am away for a moment or more.
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Eastern European Knitting, a.k.a Combined Knitting?
Last Sunday I went to my nearest local yarn/knitting shop, Gails Knits, to take advantage of their summer sale and bought yarn for my first project, the cabled scarf with seed stitch border you see in the page header (That’s a pic from the book – I haven’t started the scarf yet, but I did pick red. ) and as I was checking out I told Gail about the Portuguese Knitting DVD and how much I liked the style. I showed her the basics, and she in turn showed me her style, which is eastern european knitting (EEK). Apparently, it’s pretty rare. She said there was an article some years ago in a knitting magazine that listed the top ten styles of knitting, and it was number 9.
It turns out it is a bit faster than Portuguese knitting, seemingly having one less step in that you don’t have to flick the yarn over the needle. That’s not a big chore, but when I was watching Gail demonstrate it she was amazingly fast. I’ll have links to videos and pages here soon. It’s a variant of continental knitting, a pick style, and is quite worthwhile.
I’m still practicing but I did find that it wasn’t so great for a bulky yarn. I am doing a cossack hat from the Folk Hats book by Vicki Square and even with my nice and pointy new Options Nickel Plated circulars didn’t work so well on the thick, bulky Wool-ease yarn by Lion Brand when using EEK. I couldn’t catch the yarn and pull it through. So I tried the Portuguese knitting and it was much easier.
That’s interesting and handy to know. Now we have more tools with which to knit. I’ve learned one should choose carefully from knitting style, yarn material, yarn thickness, needle material and pattern. When I started out I would never have thought it mattered.
Here’s what the hat will look like when done:
The cossack hat in the book.
The hat is from Folk Hats by Vicki Square, pages 88-90. This one uses a bouclet yarn which seems to emulate shearling. I may do one with black later. For now I’m just re-using the yarn from the crochet scarf I killed playing with my new ball winder.
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Posted in Projects, Techniques | Tags: ball winder, combined knitting, cossack, crochet, eastern european knitting, Gail Knits, hat, knit, reincarknitting, scarf | No Comments »
Portuguese Knitting DVD Arrives
Just got the Andrea Wong Portuguese Knitting DVD and it is great. Plays fine in my computer – someone said it wouldn’t play on any of her DVD players. I tried it on my Sanyo DVD player for my TV and it works fine.
This is great! As I was first attempting – literally – to get a grip in knitting I kept thinking I needed to be an octopus to knit. Controlling the yarn tension and moving the yarn around the needle in the continental or English style of knitting is insanity-making for me, and probably for many newcomers. But I bet that even seasoned knitters would love this just for watching a few seconds of the lessons in Portuguese knitting.
The stitches are fluid and simple, and the knitting pin controls both the trajectory and tension of the yarn just so beautifully. From knit to pearl you don’t have to move the yarn from back to front, but with a flick of your thumb you move it to be over or under the right needle depending on what stitch you are doing. In effect, this puts it behind or in front, but as the yarn is always coming from your pin or pendant its still easier than moving front to back or back to front as in other styles.
I’ve only watched a minute or two and felt the tension leaving my body. I feel so much better about learning to knitting. I admit, I’ve barely learned the knit and pearl stitches English style and have hated every minute of it. Now I’m free! You’ve got to learn this method!
Sunday I joined Netflix to get the knitting dvd they had and it arrived yesterday, but I may not even bother with it. It is called Knit Stitches in Motion. I guess I should see if there’s anything on it that is generally useful, or maybe patterns. I’ll let you know. (UPDATE: not worth your time, even for learning other styles.)
Again, I haven’t watched much yet, but I’ve heard that they also use hooked knitting needles sometimes as well. That would be handy as well, but it looks like if done right you wouldn’t need them. I may modify a pair of my bamboo units to see how that works. I fiddled with knitting with a couple of crochet hooks and it was a lot easier to control the yarn, but that was with English style. I didn’t need to fret about losing the yarn off the tips of the needles when pulling it through the stitch. In Portuguese knitting the angle of the needles and the yarn almost guarantee you won’t lose it. Yea!
I’m thinking of starting a movement to have continental and English styles banned and all the books burned. Memory and mention of them should be removed from all books and web sites, like how Rameses removed the name of Moses from all monuments in Egypt! Just kidding of course. But that’s how much I like the Portuguese style of knitting. It was so much easier to learn. Give it a try.
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A Fist Full of Needles: The Good and The Bad
My order of bamboo circular knitting needles and straights and crochet hooks from Asia arrived while I was laying by the pool. I found a web site that offered them wholesale but when they arrived the other day the quality was not so good in that the points are too dull to knit with. The taper is correct but apparently the finishers didn’t have an example of how sharp they should be. So now I have over 45 sets of needles that I can’t use. Fortunately they were pretty darn cheap.
I thought of sharpening them and looked around for appropriate power tools. I found a grinder/buffer that would work but after experimenting with a good set of Takumi bamboo circs that I prefer metal. Being new to knitting I didn’t like aluminum needles at first because I could barely control the yarn. They were so slippery.
After trying metal and bamboo – and getting better AND learning Portuguese knitting (which solved the yarn control problem) – I’ve settled on a nice grown-up’s set of nickel plated Options interchangeable circs from knitpics.com. They had a very good review on handknitsbysusan.com, and after looking at a bunch of others on amazon I decided this was a good choice for the price and features. I could have got some cheap aluminum ones but the trial pair I got had a very stiff cable, worse than the Takumi bamboo pair, which wasn’t that bad.
The one’s from Asia had a very flexible hollow vinyl tubing for the cable that might have been nice but I couldn’t test it out because I literally couldn’t get the needle into the cast on stitches, it was that dull. There were a few sets that would probably be okay but not enough to justify declining a refund. I wrote to them requesting a refund but their first reply was that these dull points are what people are buying wholesale all over the world. I compared them to bamboo needles in a store but those were all as sharp as the usual metal needles. So I wrote back saying I still want a refund.
I got a reply saying that will refund it if I mail it back to them. I’ll have to see what the cost is for that. Oh well. I think for a hand-finished wooden item like this you take a chance. I will order a set of sixteen inch circulars I found on amazon.com that have a lot of good reviews.
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