Pretty Yarn Cakes

Here are the first yarn cakes made from my hand-dyed acrylic yarn on my 'new' [secondhand] wool winder which I bought on Ebay from Kate. She was the only seller able to answer my questions about how much yarn the winder would hold and as a knitter, not just a seller, knew how it worked [and that it did work].

For DD and I it was a challenge - we had never used a wool winder before so we had to work out how to put it together, how to make the gears mesh without breaking anything and how to thread up the winder. We've been pretty successful, don't you think?

not always what we choose

Isn't it funny how yarn sometimes seems to have a mind of its own?

Last year, my mum gave me several skeins of black Patons Tasman yarn. She doesn't like knitting with black, and I don't mind [most of the time]. Tasman is a nice yarn as far as acrylics go, rarely splits, has an even thickness all the way through, and knits up so softly. I have used nearly all of the yarn she gave me, mostly for socks. Last week, I started the last skein when I was partway through a sideways scarf: all that turning at the end of short rows can get monotonous!

With quite a lot of the skein left, I decided to cast on for another scarf. I wanted to knit an interesting pattern so that those 1000's of short rows wouldn't be too boring. First I cast on for My So-Called Scarf but decided that was too complicated and the pattern wouldn't be easily seen in the black yarn. So, of course, I ripped it out. Then I cast on and started my own zigzag pattern - 10 stitches knit, 10 stitches purl; in the artificial light of our family room I couldn't see where I was up to and I couldn't watch TV while I was constantly struggling with the pattern; so I frogged it!

I cast on for a garter stitch scarf then realised that I was never going to have enough yarn to complete the wide scarf I had cast on! So, yes, it also dived in the frogpond!! It was only then that I realised that the yarn didn't want to be another scarf - it wanted to be a beanie! Now, it's a beanie waiting to have the ends sewn in [can't do that with black yarn in the artificial light either].

And... there was still yarn left, so I cast on for another beanie. It's about halfway done - maybe next time I'll listen to the yarn instead of choosing for myself what I'm going to knit!!

Knitting is a learning process

Even when one has been knitting forever, one can still learn something! Like:

• It's possible to create 'ladders' using circulars. How you may well ask? I wish I knew!!


• Finishing the top of a hat at 24 stitches then threading the yarn through the stitches and pulling tight gives one of two results: either there is a small hole at the centre of the hat or the hat puckers at the top. Neither of these is ideal when making berets!!


• Patterned fabrics - e,g, lace, eyelets, etc. - may hide a multitude of sins: like my uneven tension!


• Even though the finished size of an object doesn't matter because it's going to charity and it's bound to fit somebody, a gauge swatch is still a good idea!

And how did I learn all this? Yesterday, I cast on for a beret. I use size 3.5mm and 3.7mm needles with 8ply/DK yarn because I know I'm a 'loose' knitter. I knitted the band in K2, P2 rib on the smaller needles, then changed to the larger needles. The resulting fabric is too floppy, there are a couple of ladders [that were created by some unknown force], there are 'holes' where my tension is uneven and there's a hole [or puckering] at the crown.

The question is: to frog or not to frog? Now, as regular readers would know, I usually have no qualms about frogging; if I don't like it, I rip it out - right there and then, no questions asked!

I had such high hopes for this beret. It's knitted in two skeins of my hand-dyed yarn. The yarn is pretty and the beret was meant to be too! When it was 'finished' and I looked at it closely, I just felt sick to the pit of my stomach. I was totally depressed! Yet, I don't feel inclined to rip out this beret. So, I guess I'll leave it to sun itself beside the frogpond while I think about its fate!

Good things from bad situations

Tuesday was a very bad day at work - and I was only there a couple of hours! I came home feeling depressed; so bad I didn't even want to knit! I tried to knit one row [230 stitches] but it gave me no satisfaction, except to finish the row!!

Out came the oft-neglected crochet hook [oops, did I say that word? LOL]. Crocheted six rounds of a granny square - it was way too big compared to the squares I did back in November. I had used the 5mm hook instead of the 3.50mm!! :-(

Undeterred, and unwilling to frog an afternoon's work, I used up the rest of the skein. Yesterday I added another skein in a different shade of green - a new technique for me! [Did I ever mention I like learning new things?] The square is rapidly becoming a knee-rug for this month's Charity of the Month [CotM] for Knit4Charities.

And I am a lot less stressed!

Tam's legacy

Tam tried to become a beret. Not enough yarn. Beret went swimming in the same frogpond as Tam.

Tam has now spawned two beanies/chemocaps/head huggers. If they can't be used by Penrith's needy, they'll be donated to one of the many hospitals crying out for chemo caps for cancer patients. Long live Tam!!

The Tam it did a-swimming go!

I like knitting new things - new patterns, new items, new techniques. Yes, I knit for charity and so knit some items over and over [like beanies and scarves] but every now and then [or more often as the whim might take me], I want to knit something new, something different, something I haven't tried before.

So, there I was, looking for something I could knit for charity from the one-of-a-kind hand-dyed 50g balls/skeins of 8ply/DK acrylic, preferably something in stocking stitch which would best show off those recurring colours, when my eyes, strolling through Knitting Without Tears for the umpteenth time, 'found' the pattern for a tam o'shanter. Seemed straight forward enough, and I had about 75g of yarn that would work together. Surely, a tam wouldn't need more than 225m of acrylic? And. I was right; a tam can be had from a mere 50g [155m] of acrylic.

I cast on 90 stitches, with my never-before-used Knitpicks 3.7mm needles on 60cm of cable. I had to use the magic loop technique for the first few rows but after that everything was fine. I had finished the base and decided that next time I would just do a rib not a folded back double layer for the base [waste of yarn knitting twenty rows when I could settle for ten!] I knitted on, increased to 120 stitches, knit for another 25 rows, and did a beautiful seven-point-star cast off [thank you EZ].

With two dpns still attached to the crown, I tried it on - what a shapeless bag my tam turned out to be!! Now, EZ does warn about this - but she blocks her tams. I have learned from experience that acrylic will not be blocked - not for love or money. It has great memory and goes back to its original shape as soon as it is dry! Perhaps, if I'd known what was coming, I would have done one purl row when I did the increases so the tam knew where it was to fold! But it was too late for that! I was at the end, finished, finito, finis!! [except for “cut the thread, draw it through the last seven stitches, pull it tight, sew in the end”!]

Everything may have been okay, if I was knitting it for myself or if I could be there to explain it to its new recipient. Even so, I still thought that, maybe, I could get away with it … but WM laughed once too often. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s very supportive and just two days ago, talked me out of frogging the too-narrow scarf [again] but this was the final straw!

Can you imagine some homeless person at the food van late one night, looking at a shapeless blob that looks like a handle-less bag, recognising it as an article of headwear, and choosing it over other offerings [like practical, sensible beanies]? No, neither can I.

So, to save my poor tam from humiliation and the pain of rejection, I did what every good creator does - consigned it to the frog pond. No, not the sometime-in-the-future pond, the right-here-right-now pond. What had taken hours to bring into being was gone in a few minutes, just as if it had never been. But I remember -- adieu, Tam, we knew each other so briefly but I enjoyed the encounter except for your last few moments here.

And no, there won't be another; but I did go to bed re-designing Tam as a beret! Do you think a homeless person would want one? Perhaps someone staying in a women's refuge might appreciate one as a Mothers' Day present!

I'm back

WM and I had a very wet but enjoyable holiday. Although a patrolled beach was less than 50m from our door, we didn't go swimming at all - it wasn't warm enough! We did a lot of walking, watched the surfers and talked. Back in the cabin, we did a lot of reading, eating and I did some knitting!

I sewed up the seam in the beanie I had finished knitting and finished the mittens I started before I went away. I cast on and finished two beanies of my own design; one on straight needles, the other on circulars [those Knitpick needles sure are heavy]. I finished the back of the raglan-sleeved baby cardigan I began in December [those small-sized needles are still hard for me to use].

I also cast on and finished my first ever Tomten jacket in 8ply/DK; the finished size will fit a small child. I had no idea how much yarn I needed and, because I knitted it in my one-of-a-kind hand-dyed 50g skeins [that's all the yarn I took with me], it's a bit of a hotch-potch. However, I quite like the finished article and will probably knit another now that I know I need 411g of yarn to finish! DD was so impressed when I showed her the finished article that she immediately cast on for her first structured article [she has only knitted scarves and blankets up till now]. She is having no trouble following EK's instructions [her first go at knitting from a pattern].

I'm off to catch up with all my favourite blogs - thank goodness for Bloglines! Then I 'm going to frog the scarf I started last night - it's too narrow!