Knititude

Next-Level Knitting: Avoiding yarns that hinder your progress

When you're ready to try a new knitting skill, such as cables, or lace, or short rows, or [insert new skill here], did you know that your choice of yarn can make it easier...or harder? Here are some factors to consider when you're ready to move beyond simple garter or Stockinette stitch:

Make sure you can see your stitches easily! Beautiful as they may be, this is not the time to choose a thick-and-thin yarn (above: a display at Gather Here, in Cambridge, MA), a really fuzzy yarn like mohair (below: photo from Ewe & Me Yarns)), or a highly variegated yarn (3rd photo, also at Gather Here).

I also recommend avoiding a really dark yarn. The photos below are of two of my designs, the Corvina Pullover and the Honey Pullover. 

The lace stitch patterns are similar, but the stitches are much easier to see in the yellow versus the dark purple yarn (and the lighting of the purple yarn is deceptive; under normal lighting, it appears more the color of the shadowed shoulder). This effect can be mitigated by knitting in bright light, but if you tend to knit in a fairly dim room while watching TV, stay away from midnight blue yarn for your first lace project!

Make sure your yarn is easy to work with! Again, the mohair yarn is a poor choice for your first cabled project, because the fine fibers that create that lovely haloed effect will tend to get caught in your needles-- and will also make life miserable if you need to rip out any mistakes. 

What about that slippery silk yarn you fell in love with (above photo: Bergere de France Soie)? Sorry, but often that gorgeous sheen means the yarn is quite slippery, and not only will the stitches fall out immediately if you happen to drop one off your needle, but I've worked with some silk or bamboo yarns that are difficult to even wind into a ball without sliding into a tangled heap. Note that you should avoid slippery yarns, not all silk or bamboo yarns; some are textured, or blended with other fibers, and are very easy to work with.

Some yarns are also difficult to work with because they split easily. This becomes especially problematic if you are working cables or lace, because the stitches are pressed together on the needle while working a cable cross or while working several stitches together, increasing the chance that you will split a strand of yarn with your needle. Generally a tightly twisted yarn is less likely to split than a loosely twisted one; in the above photo, the twist in the yarns increases from left to right.

And finally, a word about very fine yarns (#0 lace or #1 super fine weight): Don't do it! Not for your first project using an intermediate knitting technique, anyway. These yarns not only violate principles #1 (it's relatively hard to see your stitches) and #2 (it's physically more difficult to manipulate such fine yarns, especially if the needles are very small), but using such lightweight yarns will make your knitting go VERY slowly, which can be frustrating and discouraging.

Next post: Next Level Knitting: Choosing a yarn that helps, not hinders

Cabled Sampler Cowl (and a class on cable knitting for novice knitters!)

 

By definition, a novice knitter has learned a limited number of knitting skills, which also limits the variety of suitable knitting projects. So it can be tricky to find patterns that help a novice knitter to learn new skills, yet are easy enough that knitting progress isn't frustratingly slow.

The Craft Yarn Council has published definitions of different levels of pattern difficulty, designed to help knitters choose projects that are appropriate for their skill level. According to the Craft Yarn Council's definitions, an Easy level knitting project uses basic stitches, repetitive stitch patterns, simple color changes, and simple shaping and finishing. Basic cables and lace, simple intarsia, knitting in the round, and mid-level shaping and finishing are all defined as Intermediate level skills, and short rows and more complicated lace, cable or fair isle stitch patterns are defined as skills that belong in Experienced-level patterns.

By these definitions, most of my patterns are either Intermediate or Experienced difficulty: they usually include a cable, lace or texture stitch pattern, they are often worked in the round, and they often include short rows.

While I think the CYC's definitions are very helpful, I feel that a simple lace or cable stitch pattern can fall under the "repetitive stitch pattern" classification. In addition, many simple cable or lace stitch patterns look much harder to work than they really are-- which is always a nice boost to the confidence of a novice knitter. I also feel that knitting in the round on a circular needle can be easier (and faster) in some ways than knitting flat: the right side (as opposed to the wrong side, not the left side) of your work is always facing you, which means that Stockinette stitch is worked by knitting every stitch, rather than alternating rows of knit and purl. It also makes it much easier to keep your place if working a texture, cable, lace or fair isle stitch pattern, and it decreases the amount of seaming required when finishing a project.

So while I've recently been trying to create more Easy level projects, I haven't avoided simple cable, lace, or texture stitch patterns, nor working in the round; to me, including these has the important advantage of making projects more fun to knit. 

Some of these Easy level designs will be coming out in a book of patterns that I recently completed; it isn't scheduled to be released until spring of 2018, but working on these got me thinking about how to hit that sweet spot of interesting enough/easy enough to keep knitters going! So when Skillshare.com approached me about doing a video knitting class on their website, I quickly decided that I wanted to teach classes that would help novice knitters learn new skills, thus expanding their project choices from Easy to Intermediate level patterns. And that is why I'm calling these classes "Next-Level Knitting."

My first class teaches cable knitting, using the Cabled Sampler Cowl* (photos) as the class project. I teach knitters how to do simple cable crosses, and also review a few other basic skills: the long-tail cast-on, working in the round, seed stitch, and binding off. Use this link to find out more; the first 25 users can also try the class for free!

*Last photo shows the "wrong side' of the cowl, which is also very attractive. Already know how to knit cables, or want to give this project a shot on your own? The Cabled Sampler Cowl pattern is also available as a free PDF download.