Knit for Brains dot Net

Posts Tagged ‘tools’

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:

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

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.

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.

I got a chance to use my Knitpicks.com chart holder and it works very well. The magnets let you mark your row and make it easier to follow, plus it obviously holds it up for you, even on your lap or the couch next to you. There’s a magnetic catch that holds it closed when folded closed, and that holds it open at the angle you see when needed. It was just about 10.00 us. Good idea. On the picture below you can see my full detail chart I did in Excel for the red scarf.

Knitpicks Chart Stand with Magnetic Place Markers

So in the end, what needles to buy?

My thought is to save you some trouble. From my own experience I can suggest what may be the most usable needle collection for your convenience in most knitting situations.

When you start out into knitting you will want to t start with a small selection of different kinds of needles, meaning what they are made of, until you learn to knit with some degree of comfort and ease – just the basic skills in early practice – to give yourself the chance to try a couple of kinds of yarn, including wool, acrylic, rayon, cotton and maybe others. If you go to a yarn store or know another avid knitter you might be able to try a few of these. This will give you a feel for the difference between metal, wood, plastic and acrylic needles, but also you can try different point sharpness to see how you like that aspect. Bamboo tends to be duller and metal or acrylic sharper.

Also, as you learn to knit and control your tension, you will see differences in the tightness of your knitting as well as develop a sense of how you like to work. Along with the thinness of the yarn, these factors and what you plan to knit will influence your needle sharpness and needle material.

As a beginner my knitting is some times a bit tight so I prefer sharper needles. A slight drawback to sharp tips is it seems easier to split your yarn, but I think with sharper tips it’s easier to keep the yarn on the tip as you pull it through your loops.

You have probably read that different materials have different slipperiness for your yarn. This is the main consideration for needle choice. Until you get more dexterous at handling your needles and yarn you might prefer less slick needles. I like the feel of my nickel plated Options but I’m finding with the smaller needles sizes and thus smaller gauge I have less room to move and I’m more prone to slip up and lose loops off my needles.

The bamboo is going back to China

I’ve tried bamboo also. As I mention elsewhere, I prefer it smoother than how they come stock and go over them with 0000 super fine steel wool first. That takes the clear coating off and buffs the surface so there’s less tack.

Bamboo can be had for straight and circular and dpns. You may be tempted to stock up on a few sets of bamboo needles in different sizes and different lengths of circulars, which you can get fairly cheap off amazon.com. this may seem economical, as you can get 15 sizes in a set. But what if you need other lengths of circulars? At 25$ per set that will add up fast. Do you really want to spend that much?

As you knit or do a swatch you may need to change needle size to adjust your gauge, so you may indeed want more needles on hand. A set would make sense so you don’t have to run to the yarn store where you can be tempted to buy other things as well.

At this point, for all I’ve observed and tried, which now includes the new Zephyr acrylic circular needles from Knitpicks.com, if I were to lose all my needles or be starting out, I would buy just the Zephyr set of circulars as they can be used for circulars or straight needles. You could get a Denise set alternately, but I like the sharper Zephyrs.

Along with my Zephyr set I ordered an extra 60 inch cable so I can use it for a sort of magic loop approach to knit smaller diameter rounds. Often you need a 16 inch circular for sweater collars or perhaps a sleeve, or may need dpns for something. I’ve decided there’s no point in getting the dpns if I can use the 60 circular magic loop-wise. I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems pretty obvious it should work. If you can use it for socks you can use it for collars and sleeves, hats and more, even where you need a larger needle size.

Max and the new Zephyr Options Acrylic Needles

What else do you need? If you are into socks and mittens you may need some smaller needles, either dpns or 40 inch circulars for magic loop. Options needles go down to size 4US and Denise only go down to 5US. I’m going to lean toward working with worsted weight even for socks, which is fine on size 4. I’m not crazy yet about tiny needles, tiny yarn and that many more tiny stitches.

I think with this proposal you could get away with spending about $55 usd for your Zephyrs or Denise set, then another $20 or so for a set of cheap bamboo dpns if you need cheap small needles for socks and such. You can get some metal circular needles for around $15 each at 40 inches. So if you want to go that route for socks get size 2 and 3 US. Unless you really like the slickness of metal the acrylic Zephyrs or Denise should do you fine for most needs. PLUS these sets are more welcome on airplanes. I’m not so sure the wood Options are, although I would think so. Maybe if you hide them among your colored pencils when you board?