Kay's Korner - A Knitters Notes

Gifting a hand made item is a moment of pride. Make sure that your finished project is just that, finished. So many times in our rush to wrap, we overlook or just plain ignore that important last paragraph of the pattern instructions, "finishing." The designer had a good reason for including those final instructions, from sewing in sleeves to blocking and working in the loose ends from tie ons. So many times the finishing instructions are what take our project from completed to fabulous.

The blocking process insures that not only our projects will be the proper size, but also that the stitches will be set. The spring in animal fibers will respond favorably to the moisture used in blocking. Even cotton items take on a new look when properly finished. Lace stitches, when rinsed and pinned open, show off their intricacy and true beauty. I could go on and on discussing the virtues of proper blocking, so please trust me on this one, just do it.

Don't forget to include the care instructions when gifting a hand made item. I always include a ball band from the yarn used, which shows the fiber content and usually, the best method of cleaning to use. It is also a good idea to tuck a little bobbin of the yarn in the gift, so a small repair can be effected, if necessary. To add a touch of panache to your presentation, custom woven labels can be ordered on the internet and at many craft shops. (Mine read "Rare Purls Original.")

Still on my needles this week is the Elsebeth Lavold pullover "Happy" knitted up in her yarn Hempathy. After several years of projects using heavier weight yarns, I am enjoying working with this finer weight yarn on US #6 needles. So many lovely hours of knitting for my yarn investment and the finished project promises to be the perfect weight for a mild Georgia winter. I have also begun a spectacular cardigan worked in 14 different yarns, blended to perfection. I came across the yarn and pattern when checking my craft closet for UFO's (unfinished objects.) I had made the swatch, knit three rows, and tucked it away in a plastic project storage box for another day. Now it is a gift to myself.

We are having some delays getting all of our new yarn listed on rarepurls.net, but please feel free to contact us at 678-373-3020 or at kmather@rarepurls.net and we will do our best to find the yarn for your needs.

Copyright 2008 Karen Mather

May 10, 2008

Even though I recently turned 52, I consider myself a work in progress and continue to try new activities, especially ones associated with the fiber arts. Sure I have crocheted and knit for 40 years, but only in the last decade have I committed to becoming a true fiber artist. My appetite for learning all things fiber has taken me down many interesting paths. As in all endeavors, if you do something long enough , somewhere, somehow, you are going to goof up. The trick is to learn as much, if not more, from our mistakes as we do from our successes.

Several years ago, felting became the latest craze, whether needle felting designs onto knit fabric, felting knit projects in the washing machine, or felting items by hand. My first felted project was happenstance, when as a teen I tossed one of my nicest wool pullovers in the washer and dryer, where it came out a ¾ inch thick toddler sized calamity. I quickly hid it under empty soap boxes in Mum's laundry room trash, never to be seen or mentioned again. Many years later, I saw a pattern for a jaunty felted hat at my local yarn shop, knitted in Wool Pak 14 ply New Zealand wool. My hat turned out so well that I made two for myself and several women commissioned me to make them one for themselves.

For those of you unfamiliar with the felting process, any animal fiber when exposed to agitation and heated water with a dash of detergent, will felt. This means the item will shrink and the fibers fuse together, leaving a sturdy fabric that will not pick and can be cut to size without raveling. Felted fibers are especially useful for hats, handbags, and placemats, but do not limit yourself! I may be showing my age, but do you remember the "boiled wool" jackets so popular in the 70's and 80's? They were felted. It is tiny scales on the fibers, invisible to the naked eye, which allow animal fibers to felt. They lock together when agitated with heated water and detergent enhances the process. Wool seems to be the animal fiber that gives the most consistent result, but as long as you swatch, felt, then evaluate the swatch, any animal fiber can be used. Very desirable outcomes are found when mixing animal fibers with novelty yarns. When the wool or other animal fiber felts, the synthetic novelty yarns become more prominent and take front stage.

I invite you to experiment. A word of caution: superwash wool and very white wool do not felt as they are processed with chemicals that negate the scales. They will no longer felt. Also, once fibers have felted, there is no going back. You cannot unfelt, so be sure to check the felting progress often to assure your desired result. I strongly recommend the use of latex gloves, in the weight used to wash dishes such as Playtex gloves, when fishing your felting out of the hot, soapy water. They will allow easy manipulation of the item, without scalding your hands in the process. It helps to have a measuring tape handy, as well.

As this article is titled that knitting never felt worse, let me advise you of other pitfalls. My mother's lovely off white felted hat was returned to me for resizing. She felt the brim was fine, but the band area needed to be tighter. I naively put the hat back in my washer, trying to shrink only the band area. Despite my tugging and checking the hat every minute, the result was an overall shrinkage and as I mentioned, felting cannot be undone My suggestion is to find a reliable pattern, to measure the recipients head circumference, and to block on a head mannequin or suitably sized bowl. Felting shrinks evenly and any tweaks for a large or small head should be addressed while knitting.

Which brings us to my most recent felting endeavor. My family has a simple home theater that has four remote controls. My Japanese rosewood table is where everyone tosses the four remote controls my guys swear are required to enjoy the movie. After seeing multiple mars on the table surface, I set out to knit and felt a tray with an approximately 2 ½ - 3 inch edge. I was confident that with my experience this 10" x 14" x 2 1/2" tray would be a piece of cake. I began by knitting a rectangle from 2 strands of Cascade 220, held together, one a handpaint with the other a coordinating solid. Cascade 220 is widely regarded as the most popular yarn for felting and it comes in more colors than Oprah has long lost cousins. I knew that I should expect 30-35% shrinkage in the felting process and to expect greater shrinkage per row than per stitch. In my haste to complete the tray, I did not aptly compensate for this difference. Although the piece looked perfect in every detail before being felted, my heart sank when I pulled my work from the washer tub. My nipped in corners retained their shaping and the top and bottom edges were slightly concave, just as I had planned, but the sides of the tray where the work was counted in rows were floppy and gaping. Every attempt to reshape was futile and the end result was a bitter disappointment. I could not delude myself into believing that anyone may mistake my hourglass sides for a design element. With a little glue and clipping away some of the excess, the tray will be usable, but the pattern will become part of my "good yarn gone bad" file.

On Kay's Needles
This has been a busy couple of weeks! I had to rip back my sleeves on "Happy" so that the stripes would match properly with the body of the garment. This pattern had a new twist - the sleeves are knit first! I am already contemplating which Lavold pattern I will start next, as I have so enjoyed working with Hempathy, one of the fabulous yarns from her designer line. I am finishing the crew neck on a Mother's Day shell, knit in Jaeger Celeste, a viscose, polyamide, linen blend ribbon yarn. It will complete a set, when paired with a poncho knit in 2007. My openwork stole worked in Linie 12 "Clip", the perennially popular 100% Egyptian cotton yarn from On Line, has become a warm weather staple for me, the perfect accent to casual wear. Worked double strand on large needles, the effect reminds me of broomstick lace.

Happy Knitting!

Copyright 2008 Karen Mather

March 24, 2008

Every day, I see articles and hear interviews on the recessive trends of our economy. Fewer jobs, high interest rates, both companies and individuals turning to bankruptcy, are all indicators of lean times ahead for many Americans. Now we are all looking for more bang for our buck. Isn't it great that our craft is so practical?! You go play golf and come home with a scorecard. A model train won't keep you warm at night. Though usually hobbies choose us, rather than vice versa, I get great satisfaction that my craft has a very practical side.

Although needle arts as a hobby is a phenomenon that began primarily in the last 50 years, needle arts as a necessary skill for women prevailed throughout history, only becoming less important since the advent of ready to wear. In 1937, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) developed a standardized sizing for women's clothes, making ready to wear finally fit acceptably. This ushered in a huge change in how we clothed our families and needle arts for the homemaker became an unnecessary, though still admired, skill set. In my lifetime, I have witnessed this evolution. As a child, my mother, a fabulous seamstress, lovingly constructed beautiful clothes for my sister and I, primarily because it saved her a considerable sum. I interviewed my mother, affectionately known as "Mum", when developing this article. Mum did not purchase clothing, other than undergarments, until 1948, when she was 19 years old and started to work in the city. Even through the 60's, my mother at her Singer was a common sight in our house. She could sew superior garments for the women in our family at a reduced cost, while keeping them stylish, enjoying her craft in the process.

According to Mum, World War II was the turning point for home sewing. When so many women went to work, taking on traditionally males jobs to support the war effort, there was far less time in the average woman's day to knit, weave, or sew. Mass production accepted the challenge of developing ready to wear. It took years for ready to wear to be embraced by women, although there was early success in military uniforms, men's jackets and slacks which bolstered the young industry. Eventually women saw that they could buy ready made clothes cheaper than they could hire a seamstress, though still more than if made at home. They became used to the idea of mass produced fashion and having a wide variety of garments to choose from began to replace the women's taste for individual and unique designs.

The growing number of working women were now able to purchase their clothing, but many turned to women who remained in the home as laundresses. My grandmother worked long hours sewing in a mill and paid a local woman to wash, dry, fold, and press her families' clothing and linens. Mum remembers when she purchased her first automatic washer and dryer in the early 1960's, freeing up many hours in her busy week.

When the clothing industry collaborated with Toni, the home permanent company, in an effort to make permanent creases, especially in the very popular khaki pants or chinos, the chemical process so weakened the fabric, it would shred after 2-3 washings. In 1939, the development of nylon and polyester by a scientist named Carothers, working for DuPont Laboratories, made the new process called permanent press a success. By adding either nylon or polyester to fabric, it was strengthened enough to withstand the chemical treatment. In the following 10 years, there were many advancements in the permanent press process and in fabrics. When pleats and creases remained after washing and wrinkles were minimal, homemakers had extra hours every week to pursue other interests. Finally with ready to wear, automatic laundry appliances, and permanent press fabrics, the American housewife could claim some leisure time.

Today, many of us use leisure hours to return to traditional pursuits. Although sewing is not as popular an activity as 50 or even 25 years ago, knitting and crochet have recently had an upsurge in popularity. Needle arts allow us to be both creative and productive. Handmade gifts are cherished and women practicing needle arts are generally admired. While a well hand knit sweater will not usually save us money over a foreign mass produced machine knit, the difference in a quality and fit is noticeable. And while bowlers, golfers, and movie goers leave their leisure activities with little pieces of paper in hand, we knitters, crocheters, weavers, spinners, and seamstresses have a practical souvenir of our free time.

On Kay's Needles

After frogging my completed first attempt, I finished the "Go To" Pullover I designed, using Araucania's handpainted Limari, a merino/alpaca/silk blend, which knit up super quickly on size 17 needles. I designed the pullover to be knit sideways in one piece; from sleeve edge to sleeve edge, nipped in at the hip, tapering out to a modified batwing sleeve. For info on the "Go To" Pullover, please contact me at kmather@rarepurls.com. The Rare Purls Original Kit will be available on our website soon!

Another quick knit is "Aspa" from the book Araucanian Moments by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton for Araucania Yarns. Requiring only two (2) 50 gram balls of Araucania's Atacama, a yummy 100% handpainted alpaca yarn, the front tie shoulder wrap is worked in garter stitch on large needles, for a sure to please weekend project.

My final effort was a felted tray to hold all of the various remote controls for our home theater. I chose both a solid and handpaint yarn from the Cascade 220 line, to match our rosewood table, and began with a knitted rectangle. Despite my knowledge that felting shrinks stockinette more per row than per stitch, when my tray came out of the washer I saw that my estimates were faulty and ended up with sides that gaped. They are obviously not a design feature, so I plan to tack and clip a dart on the two misshapen sides and chalk this project up to a learning experiment. Perhaps a needle felted design on the inside of the tray will draw attention away from my repair. Either way, I now have a tray to protect our table from marring by clunky remotes.

Happy knitting!

Copyright 2008 Karen Mather

March 8, 2008

When shopping for yarn, we may first choose a pattern and then ask for the recommended yarn or we may fall in love with a yarn, then go in search of a pattern. In either scenario, the information on the yarn label, or ball band, is important. Although labels vary greatly in the data they supply, they all are there to help us in choosing a satisfactory yarn for our project.

The most obvious information on the label is the yarn line and the name of the yarn. My first example below shows that the yarn is from the designer line by Louisa Harding and the yarn name is Impression. We are told the suggested needle size in both the US number, US6, and in metric, 4 mm. In giving the recommended tension, or gauge as it is commonly called in the US, we are told it is 22 sts x 30 rows. Here is where manufacturers vary and novice knitters can get a bit confused. Most gauge swatches are 10 x 10 cm, or 4 x 4 inches, but occasionally labels will give the number of stitches and rows per 1 inch square, for example .

Also on the label is the weight. Our example shows 50 grams, but many yarns come in 100 gram hanks and some are measured in ounces rather than grams. A 50 gram ball is approximately 1.75 ounces. Usually, the yardage is also on the label, either in yards or meters, and on our label, both. Other important numbers are the color and dye lot. It is always a good idea to buy sufficient yearn for your project in the same dye lot, to avoid subtle changes in color. Personally, I always buy at least on extra skein, knowing that at my local yarn shop, an unused skein in new condition is returnable within 60 days, if I keep my sales receipt. A frequent exception to this policy is when purchasing yarn that has been discontinued or for some other reason reduced in price.

Washing instructions either written out or given in standard symbols are very helpful, prompting me to include a yarn label in any handknit I gift. When there are no instructions for laundering, check the fiber content and clean accordingly.

Increasingly product identification numbers and bar codes are being included on all products, including yarn. These make keeping up with inventory much easier for the shops who have the equipment and software to take advantage of this system.

The final item on our label is "Made in Italy." This is the country where the yarn was manufactured, not necessarily the country where the fiber originated. Sometimes the distributor of the yarn line will also be included on the label. Many distributors have websites where they list the yarns they carry, the colors of these yarns, and listings of the yarn shops, by area, that supply their merchandise to the public. Pattern books using their yarn are usually listed and often there are photos of each design. Free patterns are often offered, as well.

If you cannot find the information you need on a yarn label, at times labels are printed both on front and back. The labels that are tucked inside balls must gently be pulled out of the yarn to see all of the specifications. There are times when very little information is given on yarn labels. I purchased a large amount of yarn from Turkey a few years ago and the only information given was a brand name that I had never heard of before. Some foreign yarns have labels in Italian, French, or other languages. A real challenge is presented when the label uses a foreign alphabet, such as with the Russian and Japanese languages. This is rarely seen in the US, but part of the fun of travel is perusing foreign yarn shops.

Copyright 2008 Karen Mather

February 29, 2008

When I moved back to the metropolitan Atlanta area, the first women to befriend me were fellow knitters. We are a social bunch! Even without introduction, we chat in yarn shops and at craft fairs. When I take my knitting out in public, it is always an ice breaker. Whether with another knitter, someone who has always wanted to learn, or a person who reminisces that their mother knitted, needles and yarn seem to spawn conversation. Today, I am acknowledging the camaraderie of the knitting community, how the young and old, the new and experienced, the conservative and the risk takers, the women, and yes, the men who enjoy sharing each other's company while practicing our productive and creative craft

I first learned to crochet when I was around 12 years old. Sitting in my friend's room, I was amazed at how with a little plastic tool and a ball of yarn, she fashioned something that was more than the sum of its parts. Pardon the pun, but I was hooked.! I would spend hours in a rocking chair in my room, trying so hard to make beautiful things to wear and share. Before long, I was making commissions on my garments, added motivation to keep me learning new techniques. Although I still enjoy the actual physical movements of forming stitches, my interests have grown to include teaching and learning ever more about the fiber arts.

Although knitting is a solo effort, my fellow knitters truly enrich the process. Whether I am chatting on a forum, reading someone's blog, or stitching with a group at my townhome, I belong to a large community of knitters. As we trade experiences, we usually get a peek into the everyday lives of our comrades. I know Sandi has a hubby named Nicholas and that Cornelia is inspired by Swedish history. My friend Christel has two adorable toddlers and Lindsay works with young women living away from home. The women of the prayer shawl ministry at my church count rows and consult patterns, while trading phone numbers and recommending hair stylists. On a larger scale, knitting retreats are more popular than ever.

Copyright 2008 Karen Mather