Posts Tagged ‘Fiber art’
Is This Wool? How to Test Before You Knit
May 4, 2010 | 
Author 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?
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Posted in Techniques, Updated Since Posted | 
Tags: acrylic yarn, Fiber art, Knitting, Natural fiber, wool, Wool-ease, yarn | 
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Need a couple DPNs? If you Have Options, You Have Options
I’ve been doing a little experimentation and designing for some minor pattern ideas that involved doing some i-cords, but they required a DPN of a certain size that I didn’t own. I popped in at Joann’s with one of my trusty 40% off coupons that blessedly rain from the sky these days and browsed the needle aisle. (By the way, do sign up for their email coupons at knitpicks.com)
A set of 4 Clover DPNs in the size 11 I was looking for would set me back about 12$ before the discount. That’s a lot to spend on an experiment, I thought, especially since I don’t use DPNs for anything, having nice sets of Options nickel and acrylic Zephyr circular needles. they have a nice taper at both ends…. Wait a second.
And there I realized I have all the DPNs I need. Without a cable these neat knitpicks.com circular needles sets can double for DPNs for my i-cord needs. they are a bit short for real DPN projects, but again, I don’t need them for that. So use your Options! Whether nickel plated tips, the Zephyr acrylics or the Harmony wood needles, make use of your resources!
Saved my coupon, saved my money. End of story.
You can easily knit past the threaded holes when they are playing left needle.
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Recycling Yarn, Part 2: Starting with a New Sweater
In my previous post about recycling yarn I stated that I didn’t like the process of hunting for the source sweater at a thrift shop, and I’m sticking with that opinion. You will not find me giving but a cursory glance at the sweaters there when I’m there for something else. It’s just too much effort for too little result. I have better things to do with that time.
I did however realize that recycling a new sweater from some inexpensive shop such as Ross or Marshalls is a great option. I was there shopping for the holidays last month and was lured to the men’s sweater rack. One thing I was confident of was that I would not be disappointed by finding a great sweater that had been ruined by washing and felting/fulling. While there were not a lot of colors and fibers that I wanted I did find one that is perfect.
A lot of nice yarn for just $20. Maybe I'll make a scarf and socks.
It’s a gray sweater in what I believe is Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Projects, The Knitting Experience | Tags: cashmere, Cat picture, Fiber art, intarsia, knit, Knitting, lambswool, modal, recycled yarn, recycling, Ross stores, sweater, turtle, yarn | 1 Comment »
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 »
