Updated Since Posted

Is This Wool? How to Test Before You Knit

May 4, 2010 |

Author Eric

Yes, I own some Wool-ease, which is mostly acrylic. I don’t really like it. I bought it when I was new to knitting. It will be okay for some projects, but I really prefer natural fiber, and my real preference is naturally dyed or naturally colored fiber.

So I have some yarn that I balled with my ball winder and now I’ve forgotten if it is all wool or not. I found on the web you can test a scrap by putting some of the yarn in a cup with some undiluted bleach overnight and if it is all wool there will be pretty much nothing solid left.

BUT – brain on – a much faster test is to take a two feet of it if its worsted, or an equivalent amount in other weights, and try to felt it by rubbing it into a ball in a bath of hot, soapy water. If it’s a feltable fiber like wool you will know within minutes, and without chemicals, fire hazards or nasty smells. The less wool in it the less it will felt. Do a test of something you know is wool for comparison if you are not sure it’s felting as well as it should.

There is a burn test if you don’t mind your home smelling line burnt hair or plastic. Visit this link to read about it. What, no takers?

Why we must ban petroleum based synthetic yarns (timesunion.com)
How-To: Knit stretch sensor (makezine.com)
A Healthy Dose of Fiber (timesunion.com)
The Strand That Binds… (timesunion.com)
Yarndex: The Yarn Directory (timesunion.com)

Recycling Yarn Not the Treasure Hunt I’d Hoped (Part 1)

November 28, 2009 |

Author Eric

(Be sure to see part 2 of this topic at this link)

Well, I made a trip to our local Savers Thrift Department store to look for decent wool sweaters from which to recycle the yarn. I thought this would be a great, economical way to obtain several skeins worth of yarn for just about $6. In general, I do believe recycling yarn can be a worthwhile endeavor, but I don’t think it’s for me. The reality of the hunt is not worth the result, which today resulted in more awareness than wool.

First thing I did was examine the 20 feet of men’s sweaters. Feeling along the edges of them for something that might be wool, as well as looking for sweaters that are mostly a solid color I discovered a few things about Read the rest of this entry »

Cool New Idea for Portuguese Knitting Pin/Hook: Make a Knitting Pendant

September 20, 2009 |

Author Eric

I was talking to my cousin Leigh about knitting one day and she mentioned she had not yet tried Portuguese Knitting (PK) yet, not having decided what to do about the pin/hook situation. She lives in hot, humid Tampa and doesn’t tend to wear garments that have much fabric up high where one would pin the PK pin for the yarn. So I suggested she use the little sock hanger idea, maybe from a short chain around her neck or a choker or such.

So today I tried that myself and it works great. Maybe better than a regular pin in that the chain I’m using has a set of beads on it that give it a little weight. So with the yarn on the sock hanger (you could use a j-hook or something more decorative, even make it a jewelry-like pendant) it kind of is suspended in the air, and hangs there on the weight of the beads as I knit. It seems to keep a nice, light tension on the working yarn.

I’ve seen Andrea on her DVD where you can hear the yarn vibrate almost like a guitar string as she flips it with her thumb. I get that as well, but when I knit with a hook or pin sitting in a fixed position on my shirt or vest there is no give or springiness to keep tension on the yarn in a flexible, self-adjusting way. I have to keep the work at the right distance and watch how I’m keeping my yarn tensioned with my right hand and arms. With the hook on a chain with beads for a little weight the tension is “managed” nicely for me by the springiness in the setup.

The one problem I’ve had with Portuguese style is that my knit stitches were always rather tight. I would have to deliberately pull the loops I was creating a bit more to open them up as I formed them. THIS HAS BEEN SOLVED by this trick with the hook on a weighted chain. I just did a few rounds on my speed practice swatch and find that now I must be sure I don’t give an extra pull when making a knit stitch or it’s too loose. Now my knit and purl stitches are all evenly tensioned and I can slide my stitches on my needles. I feel normal now. See #4 below on how to change the tension.

Here’s a picture of my first setup:

small-sock_hook_on_necklace_red_shirt_DSCN1779

And it occurs to me that with a sock hanger you could use the second hook for a second color for color work knitting. And they are cheap! Not elegant, but cheap.

That said, I fashioned one that is more wearable as a pendant/necklace (see below). The possibliites are endless but the weight of the pendant is important, I find (see below). You could do one with a nice sterling j-hook and some cool beads on either side, or in anticipation of two color work, two hooks with beads keeping them apart.

There are a lot of nice j-hooks at www.silverenchantments.com and other places.

By the way, last night I was knitting with the sock hanger in the placket opening of my golf shirt. Turns out I wore the shirt to bed and woke up with the hanger still in place! I also accidentally wore it out to a restaurant. Oops. I think the pendant hooks necklace will be a lot less strange looking.

Notes added late 9-21-09:

More on the Portuguese knitting pendant idea:

A great thing about the knitting pendant is that as long as the pendant or beads are kept hanging in mid-air the tension on the yarn and your stitches is kept pretty much constant. I also find that the little bit of bounce from when you flick the yarn over the needle helps to advance the working yarn as you knit.

If you want something more elegant you can easily make a pendant or add a j-hook to something you have on a chain. I found an old rune pendant that I have and added a j-hook that I bought at Michael’s. It weighs 14 grams – I have a small digital fisherman’s scale I use for weighing balls of yarn. The beaded necklace you saw with the sock hanger on weighs 15 grams.

Here’s the one I made with a metal pendant:

The rune on the pendant means "completion" - good for knitting.

IMPORTANT: You can experiment and see what weight produces the best tension for you. I tried a pendant weighing thirty grams and found it made my knit stitch tension to tight again. Twenty grams also made knit stitches tighter than I like on bamboo with acrylic yarn but might be okay on metal needles.

After more research I’ve found the critical elements are:

1. Pendant weight of about 15 grams. Mine is 14 grams.

2. Chain/cord length of 24 inches.

3. When knitting, keep the angle between the cord and your yarn between about 150 degrees and 170 degrees, meaning its closer to a flat angle as you work so the weight of the pendant can have full effect and “bounce”. This keeps your loops on your needle tips and draws the loops on the needles closed.

UPDATE:

4. If your resulting tension is too tight, as it tends to be for me on knit stitches, allow the pendant to be closer to your chest (let it hang lower so the angle is smaller, more toward 90-120 degrees). This will reduce the pull on the yarn. If your tension is too loose, keep the pendant higher in the air and this will effectively increase the pull a little to tighten up the loops. Totally adjustable tension!

Remember that this tool will aid you in moderating your tension. For knit stitches you will allow the pendant to hang a bit lower, and that will loosen them up. For purl stitches you would pull out a bit more to lift the pendant and increase the relative tension a tiny bit over the knit stitch. With mixed stitches it doesn’t seem to matter. So the pendant won’t fix your tension without a little involvement from you. It gives you a way to moderate it. If the yarn is on a pin or around your neck you don’t have much range to apply more or less tension. The pendant acts like a spring so you can “cushion” your tension on the knit stitches in particular. Pulling it out more on the purl side will make it more akin to a pin, using up the springiness. Relaxing the pendant will reduce the tension on the knit stitches. Practice before you do any serious project.

On that note you might want to make a pendant set with easily removed charms or such so you can vary the weight as you experiment to find the right weight. If you don’t have a digital scale note that for reference a USA nickel weighs approximately five grams.

And here is my version for stranded knitting:

This is what I made for fair isle work.

I don’t have the exact weight of the pendant but it felt about the same as my single strand version. Worked great. Those are carnelian beads. If you make one with such beads be aware that with all the bouncing that over time the wire cord you use will wear through and the strand is likely to break, so this is not necessarily the best design unless you want to periodically restring your necklace to prevent surprises.

Added 10-13-09: And here’s a budget version you can make. I bought a pair of flipflops to day and they came on this plastic clip. It could be used in a similar way. Just hang it on a chain or string with a loop to keep it centered. You will need to add some weight though, as this is very light. Here’s the pic:

Flip-flop sandal clip from store.

(May I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog as often update it with new discoveries, as I have above in this post about the Portuguese knitting pendant.)

- Eric

I Sharpened My Bamboo Knitting Needles

September 19, 2009 |

Author Eric

You may remember I bought some cheap knitting needles from China and was going to send them back. About half of them were so dull I literally could not knit with them. Well, I kept dragging my feet, not wanting to spend about 20.00 USD to send them back, wondering if they would really be refunded as promised, and finally decided to just try and sharpen the dull ones.

It turned out to be really easy to sharpen them with a sanding disk on my drill, the polish and buff the tips with fine steel wool. Now they are exactly as sharp as I prefer my needles, which is sharper than even good bamboo needles come, and I am happily knitting away at a knitting needle case with a pair of them.

If you do this – many a handy guy will be tempted – I just used the standard sanding disk that came with the disk for my hand drill. I kept the needle at a sharp angle, almost parallel with the surface, and made sure the new tip had the proper taper of about an inch. When it was right, I refined the tip on a piece of sandpaper held in my hand. Then I buffed the sanded taper with 00 steel wool and finally polished it with 0000 extra fine steel wool.

I don’t think a pencil sharpener will work for this as they are meant for soft pine wood and bamboo is hard. Power tools to the rescue!

UPDATE: After some use I found that the tips still had remnant groves from the sanding with the disk, and so the steel wool was not enough to smooth them out. So I took some 138 grit sandpaper and twisted the tips in that for a bit and found it smoothed them out great. I had to readjust the tips again as they got sharper in this process, but it shows you can sharpen and dull up your bamboo tips as you need.

Zephyr Acrylic Needles Review: Is Clear Too Clear?

August 15, 2009 |

Author Eric

UPDATE: I have found that the frost effect produced by the method below doesn’t necessarily last very long with the friction of the yarn over it, so I’m looking into better ways to frost the tips. You don’t want to keep going over them with steel wool as that will wear them down. I will say that you do get used to the clarity of the tips after a while, so you may not need to bother if your eyesight is good enough. Use them for a while and see what you think.

I got a sample of the new Knitpicks.com Zephyr acrylic Options circular needles and liked them a lot at first try, so I ordered a set. In the days before they arrived I played with them more and started to feel that I didn’t really like the glass-like clarity much. It made it harder to see what I was doing. I could see the yarn through the needles as well as in front of it and in placing the needle tip that made it a good bit less distinct than I preferred.

I don't like seeing the yarn through the needles like this.

In the mean time the box with my set arrived and I let it sit on the dining table until I could come up with a decision or solution. I looked on the internet for ways to stain the acrylic a less transparent color but found nothing. Then it occurred to me I could just make the tips frosted by going over them with steel wool.

The tape gives the frosting a nice, even edge.

So what I did was wrap some scotch tape around the needle one inch from the tip, nice and straight around the shaft. I tried some 000 steel wool but it didn’t give it enough of a frost, so I tried some #1 steel wool, which is courser. It does leave some faint lines in the surface but as it is more abrasive the overall effect was better frosting.

Twisting the tips evenly in the #1 grade steel wool.

You will want to experiment with how to do this; how hard to pinch and where. I wrapped the tip in a bit of the steel wool and twisted sideways, working my way to the tip and back, dusting it off and checking where I was missing. Then I went lengthwise toward the tip to give it a crosswise abrasion, then again did it twisting side to side. Dust off the tip on some cloth to see how it’s coming. Compare it to an untreated tip and see if it’s frosty enough. Remove the tape when you have the frost effect the way you want it.

The frostiness will be reduced by the angle of the lighting or oil from your hands. The one on the left has not been frosted yet.

I tested my first treated pair and find it is very satisfactory. The distracting transparency is much reduced. Additionally, the smoothness and slip of the needle tips is further reduced. Whereas the Zephyrs have a sort of faint creaky feeling or sound when new, the frosted ones feel and sound more like bamboo. This is fine with me as less slip is one of the reasons I got them.

If you try this you do it at your own risk. Be methodical. Also, be aware that steel wool sheds a lot, so do it over newspaper and be sure to dump the shed fibers in the trash. If they get on the rug and ever get wet they will rust and stain the carpet. You may want to vacuum when you are done for good measure. If you don’t like the frostiness you can reverse it SOME by using 0000 steel wool or maybe with clear nail polish.

So I decided to keep the Zephyrs. They do have the sharpness, friction and travel-worthiness I was looking for, and they do have a certain futuristic elegance.

How I Turned a Scarf into a Ball of Yarn

July 19, 2009 |

Author Eric

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.

ballwinderonchair520

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.

ballwinderskeinonholder1

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.

Knit for Brains