A Trip to Fair Isle

I've been ignoring my sock-basket for a while now, knitting other things...

I just finished a project for my younger son, using up a 500g batch of natural-white Cascade 220 fingering that I won as a door prize at a knitting retreat a few years back. It was languishing in my stash until I got inspired enough to dye it up and do some fair-isle with it. I've never done a garment-sized fair isle piece before!

The dyeing worked quite well; I used iDye packets, which are super-easy to use. I ruined only 1 50g skein by dyeing it black - and then changing my mind and attempting to bleach it back to grey. Duh....mistake. Bleach did not produce grey, but fugly beige! But for the rest, I got a nice palette of colours; Toby wanted something with a brown background and kinda retro. 

[iDye'd Cascade 220 fingering]

Then I had some fun trying out different colour combinations for the fair-isle.  I drew up the chart in Exel and then used "format painter" to switch up the colour scheme a few times. Then I put the charts up on full-screen and stood away from them to see which one I liked best. Small changes make a big difference to the overall appearance, and it is really important to get a feeling for the overall effect from a distance! Notice obvious striping or strange shapes that leap out at you, and then make adjustments by rotating through your colour choices.

[Squint at this one and you'll see obvious horizontal striping.]

[Here, the white and yellow make strange shapes.]

 

[This is the one I settled on. The stars show nicely.]

When you've got something you like, swatch it!

The v-necked vest knit up surprisingly quickly, actually. Maybe I've gotten over my sweater-fear a bit? The colourwork helped, I'm sure, keeping me entertained. Also there were no sleeves, which cut down on the knitting time!!

Fair-isle tops usually involve steeking. I've done it before so no biggie, and I prefer a crochet steek because it provides such a beautiful finish and is easy to do. But I did stumble across some other techniques, which I think I might have to try sometime:

Kate Davies' "steek sandwich", which is reversible and would work nicely for a front band.

Tom of Holland's knotted steek, which is very minimal - weightless almost!

Fair-isle usually has minimal shaping, especially at the shoulders, which I don't really like. The fit is kind of boxy. I prefer some shoulder shaping, which is normally done back-and-forth...but I hate purling fair-isle! So I tried this technique which allows you to do shoulder shaping in the round. But I don't like the 3-needle bind-off done on the outside (really???!), so I did it on the inside instead. Hm. Didn't work out so well; I'd left long loops of yarn and had to bind off over top of them, which left an ugly finish on the inside of my vest. So I have not yet mastered this technique...

But anyways, am quite happy with the vest - and so is my son!

[Toby's new vest!]

Do Your Socks Fall Down?

I knit short ones, usually, so this isn't a problem I encounter often.

But my sons seem to prefer "tight" socks; ones that really stick to their legs. So I knit them ribbed socks, and sometimes will even thread some elastic thread through the tops to make sure they stay up and don't get floppy.

You can get "elastic thread" from a fabric shop, in the notions aisle. It comes in black and white.

[elastic thread]

It's an easy matter to thread it through the ribbing at the top of the sock. Usually three or four times around will do the trick!

[just run it through the ribbing for socks that stay up!]

(note: yarn is Woolen Rabbit "Bebe" in oakmoss. Lovely stuff.)

It is pretty well invisible and your socks will stay up! Also easy to replace if it ever gets loose.

Loyesaum Practise

I've been taking a wee break from the socks lately, and am warming up for the Setesdal Sweater Makeover project.

Last weekend I cracked open the embroidery supplies and tried my hand at some traditional "loyesaum" - Norwegian embroidery.

Here's what I did:

1. baste so-called "waste canvas" onto the wool fabric and lay down the basic triangles.

[step 1: baste down waste canvas and embroider first triangles]

Then, you can fill in more shapes. Here I've used KnitPicks "palette" fingering for the green and Kroy sock yarn (3-ply, old stuff) for the blue - the embroidery shop was out of these 2 colours. The Palette works well and could easily be used for this type of embroidery, but I find that the sock yarn is too tightly plied and doesn't behave well when you embroider with it. I wouldn't recommend using tightly plied sock yarn for this type of embroidery.

The other thing I quickly realized is that the waste canvas is really, really stiff, and is a total pain to pick out over large areas. So, if you are doing edges, like I'm practising here, then it's probably a good idea to just use a narrow strip of the canvas and not a whole sheet.

As you can see from the photo below, I ended up cutting the canvas to make it easier to remove from the embroidery...Also, don't embroider too much over it. Just the basic design. Otherwise it really is hard to remove.

[just use narrow strips of waste canvas and keep embroidery to a minimum before removing it.]

Finally you can stitch in details. Here I detailed black diagonal lines over the coloured shapes and am doing little "fleurs-de-lys" over them.

[detailing freehand]

I can tell this is going to take some more practise on my part before I'm happy enough with the results to try it on the "real thing". I'm not yet happy with:

1. the way the fabric puckers (try steaming lightly after embroidery??)

2. my design skills (my next try will be to copy exactly an existing design rather than freewheeling like I did here)

3. the overall size of the result. It seems a little small to me. 

4. the openness of the stitches. There's too much black showing in the coloured triangles/diamonds.

5. the thread used for the details - I will try with thinner stuff (embroidery cotton) next time.

Practise makes perfect!!

Darning

Darning.
We all hate it. But if you knit socks, at some point, you need to learn how to do it.

There are some things that will make your life easier. The first, foremost rule:

Do not throw away your old sock yarn, save some for darning purposes!

Then, the next-most-important rule:

Do not wait for a hole to appear before darning!

Inspect your hand-knit socks every time you wash them and darn them once they start to look worn. Once the hole appears, it's much harder to darn neatly. The smaller the hole, the easier the repair. If you suddenly get a hole during the day, whip out your sewing kit (what?? You don't carry one at all times??) and make a quickie repair job with sewing thread to prevent the hole from getting bigger! My socks go at the toes:

[too late! There's a hole already!]

Duplicate stitch looks the best for repairs, if you can master it. Because you are following the exact pattern of the yarn, it is basically invisible. It is much, much easier to execute if there is still some yarn left to follow!

You need to practise some duplicate stitch and be comfortable with it. Duplicate stitch is easiest to practise with contrasting yarn on a flat piece of knitting - you can pick it out with no harm done. Try a patch or two before trying your hand at fixing any holes. Once you've got this down, you can tackle a real hole.

For darning, you'll need a darning egg or some other round object (an apple or orange) that can spread and flatten the worn area while you are working on it.

[darning egg. This is a wooden egg from Michael's, covered with Fimo by my kids. Fimo is totally optional.]

Then, identify a square area that you will fill in with duplicate stitch.  In this case, I'm looking at 5 sts by about 4-5 rows all 'round the hole, making sure that the first and last rows and each side column are over still-existing stitches. Starting at one of the lower corners, duplicate-stitch over top of the existing work. The first row is the easy warm-up since you should be following existing sock!

[here, I've completed the bottom row and getting my needle into position for row 2]

The second row will be trickier because there will be a few stitches where there isn't any pattern to follow. This means: loose loops of yarn.

[here I am working on the 2nd row, over the hole. I have to continue the pattern "in my head" without the sock structure to guide me...]

[continue to the end of row 2, catching both the remaining sock yarn as well as the darning threads from row 1.]

If there is still sock yarn present, catch both it and the darning thread from the previous row - you'll make a double-thick "knitted" structure this way.

[on row 3 - orange - there will be no "sock" yarn to catch]

On row 3, I'll be moving right to left again and there will be no sock yarn to catch, only the darning threads from row 2 (see orange visualization above).

The next rows build on each other, and I will be catching the darning thread of the previous row. Don't pull duplicate stitch too tight, because it makes it hard to pick out (and if you are like me, it'll take a few tries to get right!). Also it looks best if it matches the yarn tension.

[properly executed fix!]

A well-darned sock looks almost new. 

**oh, and I just came across this knitty article on repairs. **

Fixin' - reknitting the toe

So that Araucanica Itata Multi I bought turns out to be unsuitable for socks.

After a short time of wear, a hole at the toe:

[I didn't use any reinforcing thread.]

Also note the distinct colour change on the sole of the sock as opposed to the leg. After 1-2 washes, the colour has faded distinctly. In some of the following pictures, you can also see that a "fuzz" has appeared; presumably this is the bamboo or the silk that is coming out in places where it has been abraded. It's quite unattractive, looks almost like melted plastic.

 

[I'm reknitting the toe...but check out the colour difference! Yech.]

Time to fix the hole. I hate darning, it looks awful unless you do the kind where you follow the stitches, which I have a really hard time with (especially when there are no stitches to follow...in the hole!). So I will simply rip out the toe and reknit. Since these are top-down socks, this is easy to do. I'm not sure how you'd do it for toe-up socks...never tried...

Step 1: establish a "lifeline" below the hole, picking up only one "arm" of each stitch as you go around the entire sock:

 

[I'm doing the entire toe so I start right before the decreases]

 

[using DMC embroidery cotton...nice and thick and a different colour!]

 

[done!]

Step 2: start ripping at the hole. This makes a sort of "cap" that lifts off above the hole...

[here you can see those plasticky fuzzy thingies, bottom right]

 

[toe end above hole removed, lifeline showing below.]

Step 3: Rip out to the lifeline. The line will prevent further unravelling, and makes it very easy to pick up the stitches for reknitting!

 

[I skipped a stitch, but that doesn't matter. It won't unravel.]

Step 4: pick up the stitches from the lifeline, and then remove it. Now you're ready to reknit! You may have to correct the seating of the stitches on the first knitting row, depending on which "arm" of each stitch is facing you.

This, by the way, is the reason why toes were sometimes knit in different colours / pieces / types of wool. It is easy to place the lifeline, and to rip the knitting out, because the ripping stops automatically once the wool runs out.

You can do a similar trick by knitting the heel (short row or afterthought heels work best) using a different piece / colour / type of wool. When it wears out, insert lifelines around the heel, and then rip it out (the heel, not the lifeline!). You knit a new heel in by picking up the sts on one side of the hole. When finished, you'll have to graft (or sew) the last row into the rest of the sock.

Flap heels can be done this way too, but their sides have to be sewn or knitted back in as well. It's a lot more work.