Tag: knitting

So this is love

On By CarynIn Craft

Knitting black yarn with black needles, oh my. I didn’t start off with this plan. I bought hand dyed eclipse themed yarn because it had my eldest’s favorite colors, then I had to get the smallest Prym needles, which only come in black. I get respite when the yellows and oranges pass over the needles, but the black on black stitches are done mostly by feel. This is my current forever project, because I can only knit during the daylight, and can’t be sleepy or have any alcohol when I’m working on it.

Photo description: black, orange, and yellow yarn knitted on black needles, sock in progress, toe up

There is a persistent meme in the crafting world that you only knit black yarn for those you love because the stuff is so hard to see.

Swatching

On By CarynIn Craft

Ok, so I didn’t actually cast on my eclipse socks on Monday, but I did knit swatches. The instructions give a gauge of 32 stitches over 4”, with a suggested needle size of 2mm. I tried three different needle sizes: 3mm, 2.25mm, and 2.5mm.

Photo description: Shadow’s embrace yarn knit with 3.00mm needles, knitting ruler for scale.
Photo description: Shadow’s embrace yarn knit with 2.25mm needles, knitting ruler for scale.
Photo description: Shadow’s embrace yarn knit with 2.50mm needles, knitting ruler for scale.

Although the 2.25 mm needles gave me the correct gauge, I felt the fabric was stiff, and I don’t like working with the actual needle set. My preferred needles are made by Prym, and the smallest they make them is 2.50 mm. So I’m going to go down one sock size and knit at the slightly larger gauge.

Rather than throw all that yarn into swatches, I ripped out each swatch after taking a picture.

Throwback Thursday: knit gloves

On By CarynIn Craft, throwback

So this deep dive into past pictures for Throwback Thursday has been interesting. There are things I honestly didn’t remember making (which is why I take pictures). I do remember that I had a glove knitting phase where I traced my family’s hands on paper and used that as a template, but I didn’t remember doing color work. Turns out I did, and here is the picture of a couple lovely mirrored bees for my sister that I made in March of 2004.

Photo description: yellow knit wool gloves with black and white mirrored bee shapes on the back of the hands and ribbing at the wrists.

I’m pretty sure that I was using double pointed needles with these, the practice of which went completely away when I had kids and the risk of a needle dropping sky-rocketed.

Dividing yarn: subtractive method

On By CarynIn Craft

I found painted yarn at my local yarn shop! This yarn is self striping by having a precise color repeat. I don’t need my socks to be identical, but I don’t like knitting two socks from the same ball because of tangle and twist issues, so I divided it in two using a scale and a ball winder.

Photo description: Printed yarn by Cascade with 51g on the scale, and 51g on the winder

I place the full amount of yarn on a scale to get the total weight, then I wind my yarn into a cake using a Royal wool winder until the scale reads half the original. I cut the yarn, and start a new yarn cake.

Photo description: two equal weight yarn cakes with pretty pastel shades of green, purple, blue, pink, white, and yellow.

It is harder to measure going from skein to cake because the skein is on an umbrella swift and the cake on a ball winder, both clamped to the table, but if you go a little past what you think is half, then weigh the cake, it is easy to wind off back onto the swift.

Shadow’s Embrace

On By CarynIn Craft

This is hand-dyed yarn by Madeline Tosh. The color-way is named “Shadow’s Embrace”. Yes, it was a special design for today’s eclipse. I bought it through JuJu Knits in Fort Worth, and while I was picking up, saw a sock pattern called “Singularity” by Jeny Staiman.

Photo description: Shadow’s Embrace black and orange super fine weight yarn by Madeline Tosh in the skein.
Photo description: two yarn cakes of roughly equal value wound from the Shadow’s Embrace yarn.

I am totally working on socks today called Singularity Shadow’s Embrace. Makes my nerdy science heart happy!