Getting better

Well, I have to admit that the Debbie Bliss Pure Silk is very pretty when knit up.  It's odd to work with because it's so slippery; I often felt as if the stitches I was working on were very loose, and yet the stockinette sections turned out to be very uniform--thanks to the slick yarn correcting its own tension, is my theory.

I think the bead stitch at the bottom flows nicely into the Four Sisters motif, and the little cicatrice near the left top is my idea for a shaping device; although I haven't decided exactly where the columns of Four Sisters should go on this pullover (arms yes, but sides too?  Or back?), I have decided that I want to accomplish most of the shaping with changes in stitch patterns, so I needed a dense stitch pattern that plays well with the others.  (Not shown:  the picot hem swatch I tried--didn't really like it with this yarn or the other stitch patterns).

Yet...the yarn seemed to fuzz quite a bit; could this be a good thing, a mohair-like halo?  Or will it progress to pills?  I also found the fabric to be light, perhaps too much so.  So I tried holding two strands together for the second swatch, and while I like the weight of this fabric, and the stitch pattern stands out nicely, just thinking about winding all the yarn that would be required to make a sweater with two strands...plus, I think this weight silk would be extremely warm, and since I don't really picture it as the kind of sweater you'd wear ice skating, or around a drafty house in the winter, or standing on the sidelines of the kid's soccer game in November....

Next:  Euroflax Sport Weight.  Machine washable AND dryable!

Comments

[connie]

Hi Angela,
Thanks for taking us through your thought process...though this post worries me a little. I'm about to tackle La Luz and I suspect that it has many of the drawbacks you illustrated with the Pure Silk.

The Euroflax Linen sounds luscious though. That would be a good candidate for lace stitches I would imagine!

[Maud]

Your patterns look gorgeous in the silk yarn! I have no experience with the yarn, so I don't know about how the fuzzyness will turn out in the long run, but I wonder how heavy is the finished piece? Will it drag down a lot? Does one have to take that into consideration when calculating the lenght of the garment?

[Iris]

Oh the two patterns work perfectly together, such a smooth transition! The silk, I'm afraid, could end up being really really fuzzy--I had tested some similar yarn before. And my swatch became so loose after a single wash...