Crosshatch: hot tip

So I actually shot, did some perfunctory editing of, and uploaded a video to the youtubes. I feel so technologically... semi-competent. 

This goes along with the Crosshatch pattern that just came out. It's how I ended up wrangling all those wiggly elongated drop-stitches a bit more efficiently. While this works great for me as a thrower, continental people might not find it quite as convenient (but possibly still better than keeping it on the needles). This only deals with the second "special" pattern row - after the wraps are all lined up. It also doesn't address the beginning and end of round special stuff - just all the many stitches in between.

If I sound allergic and self-conscious, that's because I am. At least one of those things may improve in the future; guess we'll just have to wait and see. 

dyeing again, natch

(As promised, a brief chronicle of the onion skin dyeing experiment)

Materials:

30g onion skins

150g superwash merino yarn (fingering weight)

100g salt

1/4c? (very approximate) white vinegar

big ol' nonreactive pot (I used an enameled Dutch oven)

small squirt bottle

Here's what I did.  Do keep in mind that it was a pretty by-the-seat-of-the-pants operation, based on a combination of vague and varied advice found on the interwebs and what was in the house/seemed like a good idea at the time.  It should also be noted that Munich's tap water seems to be made up of about 30% dissolved limestone, so who knows what color this recipe might yield in water of a more...shall we say...conventional pH.

Moving on.

Brought onion skins to a boil in enough water to cover.  Reduced to a simmer for about an hour - till skins were floppy and translucent.  While onion skins were boiling, soaked yarn in a bowl of warm, briny water (with aforementioned 100g salt dissolved in).

That's what 30g of onion skin looks like, as it turns out.

Once onion skins had given up their pigment, strained dye liquid and returned to a heavy boil to reduce down a few, concentrated ounces - transferred into squirt bottle (in this case a clean Sriracha - i.e. cock sauce - bottle because this is a classy household).  Cleaned remaining goop out of pot.

Refilled pot about 2/3 full with clean water and a tablespoon or so of vinegar; after checking that the temperature of this and the yarn bath were in the same neighborhood, introduced the yarn to the party.  Set over a low burner to bring to a bare simmer, then cut heat.  Using squirt bottle, added dye to four or five strategic locations in the pot.

Just after adding the dye

No stirring!  The whole point of the concentration exercise was to achieve a nice kettle-dyed effect.  After letting everything hang out undisturbed for about half an hour, checked for dye absorbance.  The water was just about clear, so I pulled the yarn out for a bath in the sink with another tablespoon of vinegar.  Finished with a second bath in a little bit of Soak, then squeezed the hank out thoroughly, rolled it up in a towel and walked on it, and finally hung it up to dry and walked away.  This is what I found the next day:

Success!

The result is a more pinky-peach than I'd expected.  It's also way more colorfast than I'd worried it might be.  It'll be interesting to see how (much) the color changes over time, but the salt and vinegar fixatives really seem to have done the job.  And now I'm craving chips.

Button it up

My Featherweight Cardi has been bugging me ever since I finished it.  I don't blame the pattern...I decided I was smarter than the pattern, something I'm frequently guilty of, and knit it in a heavier weight yarn than called for (Wollmeise 100% Merino, a sturdy fingering weight).  I had to go way down in needle size to get anywhere near gauge.  These factors in combination meant that my finished cardi was more welterweight than featherweight.  Also I decided to work the shawl collar in 1x1 rib so that it would lay flat, which I think exacerbated the problem described below.

When it was finally done (all that stockinette!  And nothing but 1x1 ribbing for relief!), I actually liked the extra heft; it was nice and warm and substantial.  What I didn't like was the way it wanted to hang WAY open - not open in an effortless, comfortable way, but open in a way that I couldn't keep the shoulders from sliding off without pinning my elbows at my sides.  Add this to the somewhat saggy armhole situation (described on the project page linked above, if you're interested), and things were looking pretty unhappy.  I thought a little bit about solutions, but was too demoralized to tinker further with it.  I jammed it in a dark corner for a few months to think about what it had done.

I unearthed it the other day on my way to walk the dog, and when it threatened to fall off before I'd even left the house I stuffed a short cable needle into it in lieu of a proper closure.  Whilst walking around in public sporting my ersatz accessory, two things occurred to me: first and most importantly, that I might lose one of the few worthwhile cable needles I've ever used (usually just skip 'em altogether) and second, that this might be pushing "eccentric knitting lady" territory.  (Which I guess I technically am, but I'd rather earn my title by knitting socks on the U-Bahn.)

Clearly, it was time for a better solution.

Here it is:

I tried on the sweater, and marked the place where I wanted it to close.

Then I cast 3 stitches onto a skinny DPN for i-cord application.  I applied said i-cord up one side of the knit column of one rib, picking up one half of each knit stitch "v"...

...and knitting it together with the first stitch of each mini-i-cord-row.

Here's what it looked like after doing that for awhile:

Once I got to the edge, I continued with some free-agent i-cord, then turned around and came back down the other side of the same rib, and sewed the ends down in a moderately neat fashion.

Then I had fun digging through my button jar till I found one I liked (yes, if I was a better planner I would have chosen a button first and THEN made my button loop, but I what can I say...I'm not).  I went ahead and attached that, then admired my handiwork.

Jury's out on whether this will be a permanent fix, but it's a serious improvement at least.

I'm dyeing here

Last time I was in the US I picked up a skein of Fisherman's Wool with the intent of doing a little home dyeing experiment.  I dragged it out the other day and hanked it up by hand, which was frankly really kind of a pain.  465 yards of pain if you want to be specific.  Maybe I'll treat myself to a little birthday present and finally get a swift and ball winder...hmmm.  Anyway, I actually got around to dyeing the hank in question the other night.

Special equipment: food coloring, protein fiber yarn, white vinegar

1) Hank yarn if its current state is otherwise (see above).

2) Get out largest saucepan you don't mind getting food coloring on.  Since this low-budget process involves only food-safe dyeing agents, there's no need to quarantine your actual cookware from dyeing equipment.

3) Leaving enough space for yarn, fill pot most of the way with water; bring to a gentle simmer and set to lowest heat setting.  Add a few tablespoons white vinegar.  Over the whole process, including a vinegar bath rinse, I used probably a 1/4 cup vinegar for my 8 oz of yarn.

This is where we leave the realm of generally applicable advice and get into the specific stuff I did for this specific hank of yarn.  This was not a scientific or carefully measured procedure, but I think it came out pretty well.  So here's what I did:

4) Add food coloring; dip yarn.  I dip-dyed my hank for a nice subtly variegated/tone on tone effect.  I started with  a blue-only bath, into which I dipped the lowest-hanging 1/4 hank.  I let it hang out for a few minutes, until most of the dye had been absorbed by the yarn (easy to tell because the water becomes clear).  I may have added more coloring for extra intensity part way through.  This is the kind of thing that one can eyeball.

5) Continue dyeing.  I did a total of four color baths, each one including a higher proportion of green to blue dye until the final bath was about a 1:1 ratio.  Upon each subsequent dip 1/4 more of the hank went into the pool until on the fourth round the whole thing went in.  Because each section of the hank was exposed not only to slightly different colors but also different dyeing times, the effect was variegation of both hue and intensity.  In total, I used about 1/2 a dropper of blue food coloring and 1/4 dropper of green.

6) Wait around.  Once the whole hank was in, I cut the heat and let the party start to cool down and continue absorbing dye, stirring in a few more teaspoons of vinegar for good measure.

7) Rinse.  After everything's cooled down to a comfortable temperature to handle (and duplicate in your rinsing sink), check that the dye water is clear.  If there's still a lot of dye in the water, put the pot back onto low heat and consider adding more vinegar.  My water was clear and tepid, so I ran a sink of tepid water with a little wool wash and some more vinegar (helps with colorfastness).  I swished the yarn around in it a little, and when the color pretty much stayed put I decided to get crazy and do a second rinse with just wool wash.

8) Squeeze out excess moisture and hang to dry.  I employed the brutish but effective roll-it-up-in-a-towel-and-stand-on-it method.

9) Admire your industriousness and natural flair for harmonizing colors.

Getting felted up

I stumbled onto this super-sweet star ornament tutorial the other day, which seemed like a perfect use of some odds and ends of saffron yellow wool yarn left over from making these:

(from my Etsy store)

I decided to make a few modifications of my own...first, by using my worsted weight yarn scraps and US 7/4.5mm needles.  To make it even bigger, I started with ten additional stitches - i.e. an extra one stitch before and after the first and last decreases, and two extra stitches between the rest.  Then I simply picked up with the existing instructions.

Once this was done, I added a crochet trim in a contrasting 100% wool yarn in the same weight, using a 4.5mm hook.  This entailed one single crochet into each edge stitch all the way around except for the stitch at each point, which each got 3 SCs, and the one stitch at each "valley" between points, which was skipped.

With a chained loop, a slip-stitch to secure and the end woven in, that was done.

Finally, since I needed practice hand-fulling things anyway for a certain Christmas gift I'm finishing up, I decided to felt it.  TECHknitter has a great little tutorial on the topic here, which I more or less followed. Once I was satisfied with the amount of felted-ness, I squeezed out as much water as possible and shaped it to my liking, then just hung it on the tree to dry.

So easy and so cute!  I think I'll be making more...

Finishing School

About six months after I started "really" knitting, I began working on Melissa Wehrle's Emerald Isle Cardigan*.  It was well after my one year knitaversary and the weather had warmed back up by the time I finished, but I was really proud of myself.  It fit like a glove, the buttons buttoned, and the seams were smooth.  I'd even managed some minor modifications without incident.  It wasn't until the end of the summer rolled around and I started wearing it again that the gaping button band really started to bother me.

The cardigan fits pretty snugly - I knit it with zero ease - but the major contributor to the gaping was the fabric itself.  For the first and only time thus far in my knitting career, I had used the yarn recommended in the pattern.  In this case that meant a 100% alpaca yarn: Classic Elite Inca Marl.  It's incredibly soft and warm, but has very little structure on its own.  The button band couldn't support the weight of the buttons without deforming, and the button holes were getting stretched all out of shape.  I chalked it up to a learning experience, but still wanted to save the sweater - I liked everything else about it so well.

So I decided to adapt a trick I had seen used in some commercial knits, and heard about on the Knitmore Girls podcast - lining the button bands.  The Knitmores' tutorial involves grosgrain ribbon, but being the cheapskate - ahem - resourceful person that I am, I repurposed some fabric from one of the Hubbo's ratty old button down shirts.  After removing the buttons from the cardigan, I cut two strips of fabric just longer and narrower than its button bands.  Then I pinned and hand-sewed (whipstitch, I think?) the backing fabric on, being careful to first get the sweater fronts into their original, unstretched shapes.  Buttons were reattached, this time with backing buttons to support them and thread shanks.  Finally I opened up buttonholes in the backing fabric and stitched around those to secure them.  The whole shebang took a couple of hours - time well spent, if you ask me.

I didn't think to take action shots, or sad before photos for that matter, but here are the results:

A little wrinkly here,
but you get the idea.

Final verdict: this has become my favorite sweater, especially now that it's getting cold here in Germany.  It still has a few alpaca-related issues (pilling, shedding), but nothing that I can't deal with.  If I were to knit it again I would probably use merino or a blend - something still soft enough to wear with a short-sleeve shirt, but with a little more integral oomph.  And I really would consider knitting it again - it's a great pattern.