Category: Techniques

… and changing plans

I started tricoting (I may have just made that word up) a scarf last night, and really liked it.  This morning I wasn’t so sure.  It lacked something, but I liked the way the stitch and yarn worked together.  I was also concerned about the number of balls of yarn I have (8) and the likely length of the scarf (very long).

I tried a wider scarf, but still wasn’t struck.  However, I liked the look of a shawl in the book I’m using (though there isn’t a pattern for that shawl), so thought I’d try that instead.

shawlinprogress

I started with five stitches (see notes on casting-on below) and I’m increasing in the same places I would if I was knitting this shawl – increase at each edge and two increases round a centre stitch.  The increases are worked on every forward (pick-up) row (including the first one).

Now then.  I do have an impending problem:

stitches

I don’t know how big I can make this shawl before trying to cram all the stitches onto the needle becomes too difficult.  Now I’m a huge fan of circular needles and interchangeable circulars and own a few tricot hooks to which a cord can be added.  So I didn’t think I had a problem… but the maximum size of hook that knit-pro do is 8mm.  Or at least that’s what I thought – but I’ve just found a supplier who does 10mm and 12mm in the acrylic… so I now have those on order (I wonder when they’ll be shipped).

Hazel’s Tunisian cast-on

To cast on Tunisian crochet the books all say work a chain, and then pick-up stitches along the chain.  Not having done much crochet I find I sometimes twist the chain when picking up stitches from it (which I find results in a messy cast-on).  However, there is a knitting cast-on that uses just one needle (and it’s a cast-on I use regularly).

casting-on

Here’s the 10mm tricot hook with a 5.5mm knitting needle held next to it.  I found this gave a good size for the initial stitches.  The cast-on I’ve used is long-tail cast-on.  Once the first row is completed (the reverse or cast-off row completed) the tricot can be pulled to open up the cast-on stitches:

first-row-complete

Work can then proceed as normal!

A new wheel

Today my new wheel arrived and was promptly whisked out to a craft group meet-up.  I took her to bits, gave her a polish, put her back together again and put on a new drive band. 

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I then wondered what to spin on her.

I fished out of my stash some white, grey and “black” Shetland tops took a length of each and thought about a marled yarn.  Then Secret Spinner walked past and said that she was planning a gradient yarn with her Shetland.  What could I do?  I decided on a quick spin of a small amount of gradient yarn.

I put the tops into groups working from white to black.  For the transitions between white and grey, then grey and black I held the two adjacent tops together and drafted them together.  This produced a marled rather than carefully blended single.  If I was going to do this on a larger project I would go to the effort of blending the transition colours together before spinning.

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This evening, once I’d got the wheel set up at home, I checked the assembly instructions (they can be found on Ravelry).  I discovered that there are two bobbins for spinning singles and one bobbin for plying!  I checked my bobbins and found that two have a whorl that is slightly larger than the remaining bobbin’s whorl, so assumed that the odd-one-out is the plying bobbin.

I’m planning on Navaho plying my blue BFL.  But I don’t want to learn on that project.  So this gradient spun Shetland was the ideal candidate for practicing on.  I got in a tangle a few times (I think leaving the singles to set for a day or two would make things much easier).  However, I ended up with a beautifully balanced skein:

skein

It’s now soaking to set the twist.  What shall I knit?  A winter hat, a beret, a small scarf or a Mobius cowl?  It’s not a huge skein, but I should be able to get something useful from it.

As for my new wheel?  She is a delight to spin on.  I’m about to upgrade the flyer on my Traditional to a lace flyer, so the Haldane Lewis will fill that gap and provide me with a lovely wheel for spinning 4-ply to DK thickness yarn.