Fast sock knitting with crochet hooks.

Hook Knitting Detail Video

A little blurry, a lot messy.

I’d wanted a cabinet of some sort to keep it all in but didn’t want to invest in another piece of furniture, and I didn’t want some junky piece from a thrift store. Looking for a gift for my mother for Christmas I found myself at Target, in the far back corner where the closet organizing stuff is, and ran across their Sterilite plastic storage chests. I bought one with three drawers and one with five (both were the same size, but the second had four small drawers and one large) for under $25 and went home to tackle the monster.

As you can see by the before and after pictures it made a big difference. I can actually eat at my dining table without having to move yarn and knitting first.

Yes! The Yarn has been conquered.

The wool is in the wool drawers, the blends and other sorts of yarn are all in their own drawers, and the various tools and needles all have their places. My great knitpicks.com ball winder is put away, my crochet needles are separate from the knitting needles. The many started projects are in appropriate drawers in stead of lying all over the place accusing me of what I’m guilty of (neglect, distraction and indecision), and I have my sanity back. Some of it.

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Then I tried doing cables. Not so much fun. Using a cable needle was a bit cumbersome. A couple of times, with my slippery nickel plated Options needles I have lost loops off my left or right needle in the process and had to restrain my panic as I prayed to the knitting angels that I could retrieve them. Maybe cables should be done on bamboo by default, I thought. No.

Then I discovered, as in a recent post, that you can do cables without needles in a sort of pinch and switch method. I’ve experimented with this and while it sure looks easy on video, and maybe is easier with larger needles, for a tighter knit on smaller needles it is more precarious than using a cable needle. I thought there had to be a better way.

I had come across a cable thimble on another web site and wondered if that would be a useful tool, but found no instructions on how to use it. I tried making one myself with wire, but still couldn’t figure it out. Plus, the little cable thimble sells for about 10.00 USD and that wasn’t worth it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am starting my Fountains pattern scarf in red superwash by Cascade. Well, after all the above experimentation, struggling with the pinch and switch method, I just about quit last night. I all but ripped it out. I even decided on another pattern called “lighted torches” that doesn’t have any cable crossovers.

Then an impression came into my mine, and image from the Angels of knitting: use a crochet hook held in the right hand along with the right needle to temporarily hold the outer loops while doing the swap with the inner loops. So I tried it this morning with a crochet hook and it worked! It was much easier to manage the switcheroo of the loop sets. No struggling with the tightness of the loops, no fear of losing loops, and it seemed quicker to do.

Here’s how to do cables this way. You are ready to do your crossover. Let’s say it is a three plus three crossover. I chose a crochet hook to give me the extra security for the loops in limbo, and it keeps the loops from closing down. Use a crochet hook that is a size or two smaller than your knitting needle – this makes the loop transfers a bit easier. I used a size 5 hook with a size 6 needle. Hold the crochet hook along side the right needle. If your instructions say to hang the cable needle in the back, then put the crochet needle in back of your right needle and in front if it says to hang the cable needle in front.

The switcheroo with the loop sets on the right needle and hook, ready to be moved back to the left. And Max makes an appearance as well at the upper right. I was using his needles.

Use the crochet hook to pick up the first three (outer) loops off the tip of the left needle. Then slip the next three (inner) loops from the left needle to the right needle. Now slip the outer loops from the crochet hook back to the left needle, and lastly use the left needle to pick up the three loops you slipped to the right needle. Now you are ready to just resume knitting.

Summary of the switcheroo:

1. Slip first set of loops from left needle to crochet hook at the back or front of the right needle per your pattern instructions.

2. Slip second set of loops to the right needle.

3. Slip first set of loops from crochet hook to the left needle.

4. Drop the crochet hook when it’s empty.

5. Slip second set of loops back to the left needle. All loops have been returned to the left needle.

6. Knit the loops.

7. Get up and dance around.

As you can see, it’s a good bit different from using a cable needle. The hook is used to rearrange the loops before knitting them and is not let go of until the loops are rearranged. Then you drop it and knit all the loops for the crossover without interruption. With a cable needle you transfer the first half to the cn, knit the other half, knit the first half off the cable needle. In any case, this way seem less clumsy and more secure as I don’t ever loosen my grip on the left needle. I’ve had my left needle slip out of loops while working with the cable needle.

So now the world is a better place. We can cable without fear. I just knew that scarf was not going to be fun until this idea came to me. I just hope it makes cables easier for some as it has for me.

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.

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.

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.

I plan to use that also in a test to see if I can give them crochet tips myself, as I want to experiment with hook knitting. I tried it with some crochet hooks a few days ago and it was quite easy to knit that way. It was mentioned that they use hooked knitting needles in Portugal and elsewhere, so this may come in handy.