Friday Fiber Fun: Joining a Chainette Yarn

Hallelujah, it's Friday! It's been a long week, with the Mister on a work trip and school starting, so I'm especially looking forward to a long holiday weekend (that I get to start earlier thanks to my office's closing at 2 p.m. today). Today is also our 15th wedding anniversary, which we're planning to celebrate with dinner out tomorrow.

Today I wanted to share a little photo tutorial of how I've been joining the yarn I'm using for my Quotidian Tee. I cannot take credit for this method, as Mary explained it to me via email, but I know that many people (me included!) learn things best when they're presented visually, so I thought I'd snap a few photos when I came to the next join so I could share. I apologize if these are hard to see, but the yarn is pretty fine; keep in mind that you can click on any photo to make it larger.

The yarn I'm using here is Knit Picks Lindy Chain, which has a chainette-style construction -- think of an I-cord or crochet chain. There are a number of yarns out there with this kind of construction, though they're not all exactly alike. Some are big enough and have enough loops that you can actually graft the ends together, but that's not the case with Lindy Chain. When you pull this yarn apart, you typically get no more than two loops. So the join I'm using is sort of a modified Russian join. To accomplish it, you'll need a couple of needles and a pair of scissors.

The first step is unraveling each end enough to have tails long enough to work with and two loops. What I've done here is put a needle through the two loops on each end, each one pointing a different way, and then threaded the needles with the tail of the opposite skein of yarn.

I pulled the needles through the loops and pulled the tails so that the two yarn ends are snugged up next to each other. Then I pushed the needles through the loops again so that the tails are making a full circle (through the loops of the opposite skein, then through the loops of the skein they are attached to).

The last step is burying the end in the strand of yarn by poking the needle through the strand repeatedly, just like in a typical Russian join. You can see here I've already pulled the needle through on the left and it's still in the yarn on the right.

When the yarn is pulled taut, the join is virtually invisible, and all that's left to do is trim the yarn tails that are sticking out. And that's it! This join is a little fiddly, particularly with a finer yarn, but I've found that it gets a little faster every time I do it.

I hope this is useful for you, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Fiber Friday Fun: An Unvention

Happy Friday! Today is officially my second day of vacation, but it started with an early orthodontist appointment for Rainbow and will likely be filled with cleaning and packing and everything else I need to do before we leave for our trip. But first, I have maybe-new cast-on to share with you that I (in the words of Elizabeth Zimmermann) "unvented" when I started the second of my doubled hats.

When I started Rainbow's hat, I used the Emily Ocker method of casting on, but I always find that a bit fiddly because I have to find a crochet hook to do it. As I was getting ready to start my own hat, I started brainstorming ways to achieve a similar look but without needing any tools. It's likely someone else has already figured this out, but I though I'd share with you what I did. I have just photos for now, but if I can get someone else to help me at some point, I might be able to take and post a video.

This cast on is a sort of mash-up of the above cast-on and a figure-8 cast-on. First, you'll start by making a circle with your yarn, large enough for your ball of yarn to fit through. Tie it in a half knot, just so that the circle stays intact (you'll untie it later). Lay the circle to the left and put your needle tip to the right, with the yarn attached to the ball going on top of the needle.

Next, wind the yarn around the needle, bring it up between the needle and the yarn loop, push the yarn ball through the loop of yarn, bring it back up between the loop and the needle, and bring it back over the needle again -- basically making a figure-8 with the yarn.

Repeat the above steps until you have the correct number of stitches on the needle, securing the last stitch around the needle by passing the ball of yarn through the loop. Close up the loop most of the way by pulling on the yarn tail.

Now divide up your stitches as needed on your needles; I'm going to be working magic loop, so I split the eight stitches I cast on in half.

Knit all the stitches for your first round to stabilize the cast-on.

Now you're ready to start increasing! To tighten up the cast-on, just tug on the yarn tail (I've made a little yarn butterfly with mine). You may notice that the circle wants to loosen up a bit as you work, but you can pull it snug again very easily. Once you've got enough fabric knit, you can pull the tail tight and weave it in.

You may find that this cast-on is a little fiddly, but it's easy to tighten it up after you've gotten the stitches on the needle. You can also make the loop of yarn as large as you need to, but keep in mind that more yarn will mean a longer tail at the beginning, and if you're knitting a hat where you want to use up as much yarn as possible, a much longer tail will use up some of that.

I hope this is helpful to you! Please do let me know if you use it or if you have other questions about it. Also, I'm still debating whether I should write up the full pattern for how I knit my hats with the swirl increases and decreases, so let me know if that's something you'd want.

Happy Friday, and have a great weekend!

Eek! A Steek!

As you know, I've been working on a sweater for Rainbow that has a colorwork yoke. Although the pattern is seamless (except for underarm stitches that are grafted), the yoke is written to be worked flat. I've never really tried to do colorwork purled, and I knew if I tried my gauge would be way off, so I decided to add a steek to the sweater so that I could knit the yoke in the round and thus not have to worry about purling.

A steek is essentially a strip of knit fabric that bridges the patterned parts. Once the knitting is done, you cut down the middle of the steek and fold the cut edges under. It can be a little disconcerting to take scissors to your knitting, but if you do everything correctly, your sweater won't unravel.

In my case, when I got to the end of the first row of the colorwork yoke, I used the two strands then attached to my knitting to cast on 10 stitches at the center front (where my button bands would later be). I placed a marker on either end of these stitches to help me keep track of where the patterned stitches ended and the steek stitches started. For every round involving two colors, I simply alternated the two over the 10 steek stitches. Once the colorwork section was complete, I bound off the steek stitches and finished the rest of the neckline working back and forth.

Then the fun began. Because my yarn (Berroco Vintage) is mostly synthetic, the strands of yarn were not going to hold together on their own and wouldn't be able to felt over time (which is what happens in many steeked garments). This meant I needed a strong way to secure the steek stitches -- my sewing machine.

First, I got my steek ready by weaving in a piece of contrast yarn to show me where the center of the steek was (this would be where I would cut after I'd done by sewing):

Then I got the knitting set up in my sewing machine:

The lighting is bad here, so the colors are off, but if you look closely you can see that I have two lines of stitching on either side of the pink yarn marking the center. You really only need one line of stitching on either side, but as it was easy enough to do two more, I thought I'd be extra careful. You'll also notice that the stitching isn't pretty, and it doesn't have to be. The key is to get the thread to pierce the yarn strands, thereby locking them together.

Once the steek was secured, I removed the contrast yarn and started cutting down the middle.

After just a few cuts, I had a cardigan!

The last step was to fold the cut edges under and secure them to the inside. This isn't as necessary with an all-wool yarn, as eventually (with wear) the facings will felt to the inside of the sweater, but I needed to do it on this sweater to keep the front looking neat (and to keep it from toddler fingers!).

Ta da! The scary part is done! All that's left after this is to pick up the stitches for the button bands. Now, that wasn't so scary, was it?

Inside the Sweater ER

*****Warning: Picture heavy post ahead!*****

You will remember that at knit night on Wednesday I made a most unfortunate discovery -- a mis-crossed cable near the top of my Forecast. Frogging was not an option, as far as I was concerned, nor was unraveling/dropping the stitches in the cable and reknitting them the Weirdy Pants way. The only option was the take out the scissors and do some sweater surgery.

To prepare, I studied Cara's post in which she performed a similar procedure, then I practiced on a swatch. This practice procedure was, in my eyes, completely successful. I challenge you to find the cable that was fixed in this after picture:

Need a hint? I knit both cables in this swatch with the same mistake, but only fixed one of them. Here was the before picture:

Having successfully repaired my swatch, I prepared to do the real deal on my Forecast. I set up for the surgery as follows:

I isolated the row of stitches that would be unraveled by putting a spare dpn underneath it. Using some smooth scrap yarn (in this case some discloth cotton), I installed some lifelines through the stitches in the rows directly above and below the row to be unravled. I had at the ready my embroidery scissors (small, exact blades to ensure I only cut what I wanted to cut) and a length of sweater yarn on a yarn needle.

Next, I cut exactly one leg of the center stitch of the row to be unraveled ...

... and unraveled the three stitches in this row. The stitches in the row above and below remained safe on the scrap yarn.

I placed the stitches on the scrap yarn onto two size 6 dpns (smaller than what I'd used to knit this portion of the sweater). Then, carefully, I eased the dpns under the band of stitches that were previously the bottom part of the cable.

Essentially what you're doing here is taking the stitches that were in the front of the cable cross and pulling them behind to the back.

Here you see the two dps and the tails of the yarn that was cut are all pulled to the wrong side of the fabric:

Now came time to suture the wound. I picked up my yarn needle with the length of sweater yarn and grafted the stitches on the dpns together ...

... and finally wove in all the ends. I turned the sweater to the right side again to admire my handiwork:

Success! Many thanks to Cara for her very helpful tutorial; I followed her instructions to the letter, and you can see they worked beautifully.

Now that that is behind me, I am ready to pick up on this baby where I left off. I finished the body Thursday night and am now ready to begin the sleeves -- you can bet I'll be watching my cables closely from now on!