
Our class project

Beth Brown-Reinsel's musings on traditional knitting everywhere
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Our class project
A fund had been set up at the museum in memory of Ann Swanson, one half of the design team of Two Old Bags. (Katie Carpenter is the other half and graciously picked me up and drove me to the museum.) This fund provided the activities for the long weekend, and generated enough capital to continue the tradition for another time! I first taught the Danish Nattrøjer class on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, a Knit-In was held and many familiar faces showed up!
Carol Anderson is on the left and Katie Carpenter, who was Ann Swanson's partner, is in the back. Carol kept us in stitches with her wonderful renditions of Lena and Ole jokes (a Minnesota specialty).
Sally Wall and Kate Martinson (professor at local Luther College) are enjoying one of them here...
Karen Weiburg, former owner of Three Kittens Yarn Shoppe in Minneapolis is pictured above. The young woman on the right, eventually pulled out her current project: 14 pairs of socks (yes, that's 28 socks total) being knitted simultaneously.
We were all so impressed at her industriousness. She is using three 60" circular needles to hold all the socks and it takes her about one-half hour to knit the entire round! She had decided she could not buy any more yarn until she used up what she had so this motivated her to get it all done at once! She organized each pair with its own ball in plastic bags and clothes pins. Just awesome!
Another knitter, Beverly Bakkum, came to the Knit-In wearing my design Celtic Dreams. I love the color she chose to knit it in and she did a beautiful job!
Tags: 14 pairs of socks

All the cast-on stitches are on the needles and ready to be knitted together with their corresponding brim stitches
Very satisfying. I have seen this method worked in designs in different books, but one thing never seems to be taken into account. That is, the lining will get bunchy inside if it has the same number of stitches as the brim The two fabrics won't lay together nicely. The lining should have a smaller circumference than the outside brim. So I cast on 10% fewer stitches for my linings than I will need for the outside fabric, increasing that 10% later on. That means that when knitting the two fabrics together, every so many stitches (around every 10th stitch), an outside stitch will be worked without an accompanying lining stitch. Here's a short clip of the Invisible Cast-On from my tutorial: [wpvideo vpeIEGEa]
Tags: cast-on, invisible cast-on, knitted lining, Sunnhordaland Hat, You Tube video
Tags: HiyaHiya needles, Lacis, Nordic Knitting, Redfish Dyeworks, Sundhordaland Hat and Mittens, Voyageur Press
I was also anticipating another wonderful workshop with Margaret Klein Wilson of Mostly Merino and a slew of students, many of whom were returning from previous sessions. This event has become a permanent part of many of the knitters' summers. Over the years, our friendships have deepened, while new faces are always welcomed and made a part of the family immediately.
I was not disappointed. Kelly cooked up a delicious storm for us and the farmhouse where many stayed was as warm and inviting as ever!
The view from the house was even more spectacular than this photo shows:
I taught the Norwegian Setesdal Lusekofte–a workshop I don't teach often, as sewing is a major part of the sweater construction. In these next few movies, I would recommend playing them twice. The first time gets everything loaded up so that the second time the delivery is smoother. (Or maybe my old computer just doesn't do as good a job of displaying the movie.)
[wpvideo 5rN9HnNL]
Maryann was working on my Featherweight machine in the above clip.
[wpvideo a5xa3ioR]
This video shows many of the busy knitters assembling their little Lusekofter. Josie is modeling my full sized Lusekofte, while Arlene, Judy, Kathy, and Jane are working. Josie cooked that incredible flan for us again this year! YUM!
Here's the crew at the end of the workshop with their beautiful work displayed. Even Kip, Margaret's border collie, wanted to be in the photo! (Actually I think he felt he had done a good job of herding us to one spot!)
Next year was planned by the participants and there are only a few slots left in either of the two sessions:
August 12th - 14th, 2011
Norwegian Mittens & Latvian Fingerless Mitts
August 18th - 21st, 2011
Top Down Aran Cardigans & Celtic Dreams
In addition, Margaret and I are looking into the possibility of a weekend workshop in March and possibly one in June.
You can register by emailing Margaret or call for more information: 802.254.7436
We were all lucky to have the opportunity to see Margaret Klein Wilson's wonderful work. She hand dyes the most lovely color range of yummy wool yarns. Here are just a few colors:
In addition to selling skeins individually, Margaret also kits up her yarns for some spectacular designs:
She has recently broken her ankle but will resume dyeing in late November and is taking orders. Her yarn makes lovely gifts, even in skein form!
Many thanks to Alan Riga for his photographs and thanks to all of you who came to the workshop. You made it so fun!!! Tags: Hand dyed yarns, Lusekofte, Mostly Merino
Darning is actually a weaving technique. Essentially, a patch of woven fabric is created over the hole. The main drawback to this technique is that woven material has little give compared to knitted fabric. So the repaired area will be more rigid and may in fact contribute to further holes elsewhere by causing some stress to the garment. Also, the darned area can be bulky, so a choice must be made between splitting the plies of the yarn to darn with (which will be less bulky, but also less strong), working with the yarn as it is (strong, but bulky), or working with a different material which is thinner, but sound (the darn will then be very obvious). Use as fine a yarn as is possible when repairing socks. Bulky repairs are uncomfortable.
There are three steps in darning a hole in a sock, or any knitted garment, for that matter. They are: creating the foundation, making a warp, and weaving the weft. A darning egg is quite helpful for darning socks. This tool provides a solid, rounded surface on which to work, by inserting the egg (or a light bulb) into the sock and positioning it under the hole to be repaired. Don't stretch the sock too much over the egg, or annoying, uncomfortable wrinkles will develop around the darned area once the sock is relaxed. The bottom part of the egg, the handle, is useful in repairing fingers of gloves. If you are repairing an area which has no contour to it, such as the leg or heel flap, or a sweater, insert something small and flat in the sock so you'll have a hard surface to work against. Some darners have such a flat surface on one side of the egg. Or, use foam core to pin the area down for stability, so you can work more easily.
Create the foundation
Assess the hole in your knitting. Try to envision it squared off. Using a tapestry needle (preferably one that has a sharp point), sew a rectangle
around the hole. You must pierce at least one half of each st that borders the hole. Piercing the yarns will ensure that no further unraveling occurs. If you enlarge your rectangle far enough away from the hole, you can safely go under each half st with your needle, rather than pierce it. But, I recommend piercing the yarns. Many people (and directions) skip this step, and create perfectly acceptable repair jobs despite the omission. But the foundation row will enable the repair to last longer by reinforcing the stable edge stitches and giving a solid base to the darning. Two foundation rows can be worked 1/8" apart all the way around the hole for a truly solid base. This would be preferable for knitting that is of a very fine gauge.
Make a warp
Now, sew your yarn back and forth across two sides of the rectangle,
making certain that your warp travels around (under, then over) the foundation yarn. I work across the sides which are stitches at either end and save the sides of the hole which are rows for the weft. It is possible to make too many warp threads for the darn, yielding a hard, uncomfortable patch. Try to go under each stitch in the foundation row once. I find a blunt tapestry needle helps from this point on. It is easier to avoid splitting the yarns with a blunt needle, and very tricky to pack down your darning if there are split yarns.
Weave the weft
Now, turn your work 90 degrees, and move your blunt tapestry needle over and under the warp yarns, going around the foundation yarn, then
turning back and weaving over and under in the opposite direction. Be sure that you go under yarns that were gone over in the last pass, and vice versa.
With the first few rows of weaving back and forth, you'll find it's difficult to pack down the weft, especially if you are using a soft yarn, rather than a highly twisted, harder yarn. Every few rows, use the tapestry needle to push down the rows of weft. Don't pack it too hard, or your darned area will feel like a board.
Sew in your ends on the wrong side. You're done!
REKNITTING
This technique uses the stable stitches around the hole as a foundation for the repair. Square up the hole as much as possible. To do this, you may have to rip out and make the hole bigger, but that's OK. These stitches are picked up on a double pointed needle at least two sizes smaller than what the garment was knitted on. Rows are worked for the length of the hole, then grafted back into the garment fabric.
The "side seams" can then be sewn down. If you are really intent on as much invisibility as possible for your repair, join a new yarn at the beg of each row, leaving 4 to 6 inch tails of yarn at either side of the hole. These will be sewn in on the wrong side of the work after the knitting is completed. Sew them in, following the path of the stitches on the wrong side of the work.
The beauty of this technique is that you can attempt to duplicate color or textural patterning to make the repair even less obvious. Count rows and sts carefully to be sure the work corresponds to the surrounding patterning. Duplicate stitch (also known as "Swiss Darning") can be used if repairing with two colors at once seems too much to handle.
• Ravel back around the hole to square it up.
• Pick up sts at the base of the rectangle, extending past the edges of the hole by at least one stitch, if not two. (If you are working in a color or texture pattern, be sure you are reknitting in the same direction as the original knitting.)
• Work back and forth duplicating the fabric of the garment for the number of rows necessary to hide the hole. Count the rows in the undamaged area to assess how long you must knit. Work one row less than the adjacent area, because the subsequent grafting will take up one row. You can either work with one continuous yarn or break it off after every row, leaving long enough tails to weave in later.
• Graft the sts on the needle to the first stable row of knitting above the hole, keeping the tails clear of the grafting. (See below.)
• Poke the tails through to the right side of the work, readjust the tension of the edge stitches. Then one by one, thread the tails onto a tapestry needle, poking them through to the back of the work.
• Weave in the ends on the wrong side, or sew the sides down with a whip stitch.
Grafting
Grafting is a technique which joins two pieces of knitted fabric together (which have been knitted in the same direction) by duplicating the path
which the yarn would normally take in a row. This is easiest to visualize and to work if both sets of sts to be joined are off the needle. If that is uncomfortable for you, put the sts on a piece of thin, slick crochet thread so they won't unravel as you work.
Grafting may be the only answer for a garment too damaged in one area to salvage, such as the cuff of a sweater, knitted from the bottom up. Just make a new cuff (provided you have enough of the original yarn left) and graft it on. This is easiest with Stockinette Stitch, but is possible to do in many textural and color patterns. For garments knitted from the top down, merely ravel back to the point where there is no damage, slip the sts on needles, and knit down. (One type of grafting is known as Kitchener stitch. This is a method of sewing together two pieces of knitting of opposing direction by duplicating the appearance and structure of the stitches.)
PATCHING
Here is an alternative to darning. By knitting a patch, and sewing it over the hole, a garment can be repaired and still maintain some of the elasticity of knitted fabric, owing to the knitted patch. First a few sts must be cast on, and a square or circle knitted, depending on the shape of the hole to be repaired. Leave a long tail of yarn at the beginning and end of your patch to use for sewing it on.
Square (for a square-ish hole): Cast on the number of sts that the hole is wide plus 4 more. Work as many rows as is necessary to cover the hole plus 2 or 3 more rows. Bind off. Block the patch so it will be easier to sew down.
Circle (for a round hole): Cast on enough stitches to cover the base of the hole plus a few extra. Increase one st to each side of the patch until the desired width is achieved. Work even until the dimension of the hole begins to taper in again. Begin decreasing, one stitch to each side until the desired top width is met. Bind off. Block the patch so it will be easier to sew down.
An example circular patch:
Cast on 4 sts.
Odd numbered rows: Purl
Row 2: K1, inc 1, k2, inc 1, k1.
Row 4: K1, inc 1, k4, inc 1, k1.
Rows 6 and 8: Knit.
Row 10: Ssk, k4, k2 tog.
Row 12: Ssk, k2, k2 tog.
Row 13: Bind off in purl.
Sewing the patch on: Whip stitch the patch down to the right side of the garment, or use a combination of whip stitch and grafting.
SWISS DARNING
For repairing garments where the integrity of the fabric is still intact, but worn, Swiss darning is the ideal technique. By following the path of the knitted yarn (as above for grafting) with a blunt tapestry needle, threaded with yarn, the fabric is reinforced invisibly. Using a blunt needle enables you to move in and out of the stitches more easily.
An Old and Time Honored Way of Repair
Many different cultures, from Mennonites to Norwegians and Swedes, would cut the worn foot off of a good sock and knit a new foot from the remaining loops! I have seen many examples in museums where the color and the thickness of the repair yarn had nothing in common with the original yarn! But tucked inside a boot, no one but the wearer would be the wiser.
Tags: darning, grafting, reknitting, repairing knits, Swiss darning

On the left, the green yarn was held in the dominant position; on the right, the gold yarn was held in the dominant position.
Here is an arc. The "X" is the knitter. The possible numbers of yarns radiating out from the knitter's work is infinite and they are represented by lines originating at the knitter. In this instance we have four yarns. The further to the right the yarns are held, the less dominant they are. The further to the left the yarns are held, the more dominant they are. So, the dominance of the yarns, from highest to least, is green, yellow, blue, red.
It is up to you to decide how you want the dominance to play out by holding your yarns in the way that will achieve your goals.
Dominance in Corrugated Ribbing Whenever you work corrugated ribbing (the purls are one color and the knits are another), be certain to hold the yarn for the knits in the dominant position or the purls will bulge out unattractively.
There's lots more to be said about Dominance. I'll address it more in depth in a later blog.
Tags: 2 yarns in the left hand, 2 yarns in the right hand, a yarn in each hand, Ann Feitelson, Arc of Dominance, corrugated ribbing, Heirarchies of dominance, right side, Stranded knitting, The Art of Fair Isle Knitting, wrong side, Yarn Dominance
The effect was much more pronounced before I blocked the swatches, so now I am kicking myself for not having taken before and after shots! Still, to my naked eye, there was some improvement with the Z-plied yarn in the SSK lying flat.
Next, I wanted to work with some traveling stitches to see if I could make the left leaning twists look better using a Z plied yarn. Looking at the diamonds below, the left leaning twists are on the left in the bottom halves, while they are on the right in the top halves. Note: To make a right-leaning traveling stitch, I knit in the second stitch on the left needle, then the first stitch. To make a left-leaning traveling stitch, I reached to the wrong side of the work, knit into the back of the second stitch, then into the front of the first stitch.
In my opinion, the Z-plied yarn DID make the left-leaning traveling stitches sit more neatly, though still not as perfectly as the right leaning stitches did. So what do these results mean for knitting these techniques? We can't use S and Z plied yarns in the same piece just so our decreases or traveling stitches will look good. Definitely not! I think the point is to recognize that small irregularities in our knitting are not necessarily our doing. Instead of feeling annoyed or embarrassed by such minute details, we can know that this is a function of the yarn we are using and thereby get ourselves off the hook! Still, I wanted to try one more thing... I did one last swatch in a traveling stitch diamond pattern using a technique to compensate for the uneven tension. This idea is inspired by Cat Bordhi who showed how to slip a stitch in the previous row of a SSK to keep the tension of the resulting stitch under control. Could a variation of that work for traveling twists? In this swatch I used the S-plied yarn. In the bottom half of the diamond, I slipped the first stitch of the eventual twist on the wrong side rows. This resulted in half the number of rows and enlarged traveling stitches. Yes, I think they have a continuous flow, a smoother line, but they look much different from the right-leaning twists on the right side. I was really pleased with the top half of the swatch. Here I slipped the second stitch of the eventual traveling twist on the wrong side rows. The left-leaning line still sits up a bit more than the right-leaning line of twists, but it is smooth and consistent looking. The reason slipping the stitch works to minimize the looseness is that the one stitch is much tighter, having not been worked, and so it keeps its shape even when stretched into a traveling stitch. But it must be the second stitch of the twist, the one that lies below in the twist, that has to be slipped to tighten up the stitches. So take what you want from this, knowing that the tension discrepancy is inherent in the yarn twist. You can fiddle with it by slipping stitches, and at the very least, block carefully and thoroughly, but some days I just don't want to work that hard.Tags: Cat Bordhi's SSK, Green Mountain Spinnery, S and Z ply, S and Z twist, SSK, traveling stitches

Photos: Lying the mitt flat, the front motif seems a bit off-center, but when put on, it centers due to the pull of the thumb. Below, you can more easily see the extra ½" I have added to the side of these Norwegian Mittens which shifts the thumb gusset and thumb hole from the exact side of the mitten to the palm.
Now hopefully, any pattern you buy should have all these issues resolved, so that all you have to do is read the instructions and knit.
Mitten Gender
OK. I just made that term up. Several issues are at hand here (tee hee) to create Mitten Gender. You can knit a Left Mitten, a Right Mitten, and even an Ambidextrous Mitten that goes both ways (Bi-dextual?). The patterning, the tip shaping, and the thumb all contribute to the gender of the mitten! I will focus on The Palm, or gussetless, Thumb for now and hope to add to this Mitten Discussion in other months.
The Palm Thumb
Mittens without gussets are the easiest to knit. The Latvians know all about this one! They can put their energy into knitting the amazing patterning without being too concerned about working around the thumbs! This thumb is also called an afterthought thumb or waste yarn thumb. The purpose of this thumb is to make a beautiful mitten, unfettered by the interruption of a thumb gusset. The mitten must be designed with roominess in mind, as there is no increasing to accommodate the wider span of the hand. The wrist area tends to be somewhat loose.
The thumb of a classic Latvian mitten is barely discernible as the patterning of the thumb mirrors the patterning of the hand beneath. These thumbs make a left and a right mitten, unless the patterning is all-over and Round Tip Shaping is used. In Latvia, pointed tip shaping is common which further defines the Mitten Gender. Interestingly, I noted that the Latvian mittens in my collection don't exhibit thumb rotation and the thumb is situated right on the fold of the mitten. After counting lots of stitches, I realized that the thumbs are so roomy, there is enough space to counteract the torque–no ½" allowance is needed.
This beautiful traditional Latvian mitten, knitted by a Latvian, is comprised of 72 sts. One-fourth of that is 18 stitches. The stitches allocated for the thumb numbered 17! (Can you see the thumb there?) It doesn't look like one-fourth of the stitches are used for the thumb, but they are! Generic (non-Latvian) mittens that are constructed this way utilize around 1/5 to 1/6 of the total stitches for the thumb. It looks nice, it fits OK albeit a little snug, but the mitten will rotate once it's put on, unless the thumb hole is moved in ½" from the side. (No, I don’t have the pattern to this beauty. Sorry!)
In this Fingerless Mitt, the patterning is the same all the way around and there's no tip shaping, being fingerless, so there is no need to worry about thumb rotation. It has 1/6 of the stitches allocated for the thumb hole and I have moved the hole over a few stitches out of habit, thought I didn't really need to.
Here I am taking the waste yarn out of the afterthought thumb hole so I can pick up the stitches to knit the thumb. Since this is not a mitten, but a fingerless mitt, my thumb is not a full ¼ of the total stitches. Because the top is open and won't show any torque I can get away with fewer thumb stitches so the open thumb will fit snugly.
Tags: centering motifs, fingerless mitts, Latvian mittens, Mitten Gender, mittens, Norwegian mittens, Palm Thumb, thumb gussets, torque
October has indeed been a busy time, as I am getting back into freezing and canning food and baking bread regularly. The neighbors just got chickens and I had to visit to see those lovely happy free-roaming hens, crooning and pecking in the yard. Life in Vermont! It's the best! The trees have been spectacular this year, probably because of all the rain we had this summer, but the peak is over, at least on my hill. The next best thing is walking down the dirt road swishing the leaves with your feet. Another wonderful sound of the season. Since I was a little girl, I could swear the sky is a different, richer kind of blue in October, and I still think so!
On the Knitting Front, I have been focusing on my Latvian Mitten workshop, reworking the sampler to include motifs which have three colors in one round. Most knitters gasp in dismay and avoid such an ordeal. But the more I work with three colors, especially in smaller sized motifs, the more I enjoy it. The key is being comfortable working with a yarn in each hand, plus being comfortable working two yarns in either the left or the right hand. Once you have those skills, three or four yarns in a round don't seem quite as intimidating. Here is my new sampler for my Latvian Mitten class:
I made a discovery when I was working the thumb. It is tricky to get good tension of the two (or more) colors on the thumb. At first I was stranding the yarns, and I found the base of the thumb restrictive. Then I lapsed into twined knitting, which makes 3 color knitting even easier, and the thumb loosened up, and actually is warmer now because of the twining. You can even see how the thumb expands at the point where I switched methods. I plan to work all my thumbs in twined knitting from now on.
Tags: apples, Autumn, canning, Latvian mittens, three yarns in a round, twined thumbs