Discovering the incomparable sheen of Fibra Natura's Flax Lace - yum!

Summer is coming! Time to knit with those lovely, light, plant fibers! This week we get to play with Fibra Natura’s Flax Lace, a lovely complement to Flax, Fibra Natura’s double knitting weight 100% pure linen yarn.

Fibra Natura Flax Lace - one hank each of beautiful, bright Turquoise, subdued blue Mineral, and pure, pure White

Flax Lace comes in 11 of the 26 colors available in Flax; taupe; pale blush, potent berry, blue spruce, jade, turquoise, mineral, white, pewter, black, and purple. Flax Lace extends the style possibilities of Flax by making such features as lacy cap sleeves, openwork midriff sections, or lacy yokes possible. Our sampling and posts this week are done in mineral, a soft, greeny-blue, and white - a pure, pure white. The turquoise and mineral are for "something blue". Yes, we're doing a wedding theme this week!

Today, though, we're talking about the fiber itself. Linen is a bast, or plant, fiber, which grows in the stem of the flax plant. There are several varieties of flax: the one that produces fiber grows to about 5 feet tall. The fibers extend right down in to the roots. Preparing the fiber for spinning is labor intensive: the plant is first retted, a process of soaking the stalks of the plant to rot away unnecessary components of the plant. The stems then go through a process to break away additional unwanted parts and separate the long, strong fibers (called line) from the shorter fibers (called tow - pronounced as in tow truck). Both line and tow fibers can be spun into yarn, but the best linen is “wet spun” from the line flax.

Why wet spun? Because linen fibers are actually stronger when wet. Incorporating water into the spinning process helps smooth the fibers and lends a sheen to the yarn that rivals a silk blend! 

Look at that sheen! Would you ever guess from this photo that this is a linen yarn?

Over time, the sheen may soften, or even disappear, however, over time, linen garments become softer and more (and more) comfortable.

Linen is an exceptionally absorbent fabric (it is more absorbent than cotton). It wears well and dries quickly - that's why it makes excellent tea towels. It has no elasticity, whatsoever, except for what our knitted stitches might allow. For this reason, clothing made from linen yarn (woven or knitted) has plenty of drape. Plant fibers (cotton, linen, ramie, and bamboo) have little insulation value, so they’re far more practical for summer garments than they are for winter ones.

These luxurious facecloths are all made from three skeins of sportweight linen yarn

I designed these luxurious face cloths for A Needle Pulling Thread magazine for a sport weight linen yarn. Even though the cloths are lacy, they are sturdy, and will outlast any similar cloths made from cotton yarn.

Although the processing requirements of flax makes linen an expensive fiber, it wears extremely well. Projects made from linen last for years, which makes it a good investment for classically styled garments.

Tomorrow, we’ll take our Flax Lace yarn out for a tension swatch!

Share your huggable baby knitted creations to win!

Through May, Red Heart has been hosting a Snap & Win contest! You can enter to win a $100 yarn prize package by sharing photos of your baby knits. I know this is the end of May and you're looking at the calendar with a slight panic, but there's still time left. This contest doesn’t wrap up until May 31^st.

Dust off your tripods and get ready for the full photoshoot experience. Click through to enter the contest.

Let’s go over the requirements for submission to Snap & Win. I know this is always the most confusing part for me. The photos don’t have to actually have a baby in them, have no fear about getting permission from parents and scheduling time with a baby for a photoshoot. Your photos only need to have something knitted (or crocheted) for a baby, made with Red Heart’s yarn. 

You don't always need a baby as your model. This is a photo from a free pattern on Red Heart's website called Personalized Baby Blanket. The pattern is for crochet, but can easily be adapted for knitting.

If you're having trouble placing your garments in a favorable position without a model, and you have no cooperative baby handy, I suggest substituting fur babies. It will add a bit of interest to your photos. On more than one occasion I have shamelessly used my cats to model kitted things. I did have to bribe them with treats, pets, and no small amount of grovelling, but they didn’t seem to mind too much. 

The love of knitting runs strong in my cats. This blanket was knit from Red Heart's Super Saver yarn in a color that is discontinued.

Aside from the ah-mazing Snap & Win prize, your photo could be featured on Red Heart’s website. Try to get the best possible photo you can. A tip for photographing your garments; make sure you have excellent lighting. Natural lighting is best, colors are more true-to-reality and if you’ve done any fancy stitch work it will look great! While natural light is best, direct, glaring light is not. My favorite thing for diffusing natural light is sheer curtains. It softens the light very well, and they're a neutral color, so it doesn’t give an unsightly hue to my knitting.

The photo is a little darker than I would like it to be, because normally you don't try to show what is diffusing your light. Those would be the curtains I am talking about. Yarn doesn't normally give off a glow, so why should it in your pictures?

For your actual submission, I have peppered the entry link throughout this article, you can also click here. There's an enter contest button, which opens the submission form. You'll be required to enter your name, email address, upload your photo, caption your photo, your birth date, skill level, and if your interest is knitting, crochet, or both. Then click the very large ‘Enter’ button beneath that! Officially entered!

With Love, the perfect baby garment yarn. Check in May 30, 2017 for coverage of the newest addition, Stripes!

Two winners will be randomly chosen and announced on June 8^th, 2017. The Snap & Win contest will close May 31 at 3:01pm EST. I know we have many talented knitters out there; this is your time to shine! May your photos be adorable and good luck to all of you! 

What does dropped stitch lace look like?

This week I've been writing about knitting socks and dropped stitch lace using Wisdom Yarn's Prose. Today I'll reveal what the dropped stitch lace looks like after you drop all the stitches. Here's a before picture and you can read more details about this in yesterday's post.

This is a "before" shot of what dropped stitch lace looks like. Get ready for all to be revealed.

And this is what it looks like when I have dropped every other stitch on this row and made a yarn over in each one's place.

Unblocked dropped stitch lace isn't really anything to write home about, but get that knitting onto a blocking board or foam and see everything transform into a new look!

In the above unblocked swatch, there isn't much that is special there, is there? Well, this is one type of lace fabric that truly does benefit from the magic of blocking. 

This is what dropped stitch lace looks like when it's blocked. To add some interest, I had to add these little leaf-like motifs that disrupt the ladders and create an over all polka-dot-like look to the lace.

Prose yarn was perfect for this lace and for blocking because of the wool content. I know that it would have a great "memory" for its blocking measurements and sure enough, the final piece stayed as it should after removing it from the blocking board.

The cast on edge for knitted lace is a little tricky. My first efforts lacked enough "give".

If you've read any of my blog posts from previous weeks or months, you'll know that I like to learn from my swatches, as they are some of the best teachers in the knitting world.

As you can see above, my cast on was a bit too tight, despite several tries and experiments with different cast on edges. I finally came up with a solution which will be in the pattern below.

When you make a mistake in dropped stitch lace, there really isn't an easy fix.

One important aspect of knitting dropped stitch lace is making sure you count your stitches and that you don't set the work down mid-row and come back to it later. As you can see, I have a column of stitches that I can't drop. At the top of the swatch (out of the frame of the photo) I worked the wrong stitches together when I was making a leaf motif and I just couldn't undo that column of stitches below and it affected the whole works. But I remain optimistic that with this pattern you'll be able to make a lovely version of this lace as a rectangular stole with some colorful self-striping yarn like Prose.

To make this swatch, you need to cast on 27 stitches, but if you'd like to make a cowl or a stole that is a little wider, simply cast on a multiple of 16 stitches, plus an extra 11. Use a long-tailed cast on.

Set-up Row 1: K2-tbl, *drop next st off LH needle, yo, ssk; rep from * across, to last st, k1-tbl. (You should now have 15 sts—or a multiple of 8, plus 7)
Set-up Row 2: P2-tbl, [p1, p1-tbl] across to last st, p1-tbl.

Row 1: K-tbl twice, [k1, k-tbl] 6 times, k-tbl.
Row 2: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 6 times, p-tbl.
Rows 3-4: Repeat rows 1-2.
Row 5: K-tbl twice, [k1, (k-tbl, yo, k-tbl) in next st, k1, k-tbl] 3 times, k-tbl.
Row 6: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 9 times, p-tbl
Row 7: K-tbl twice, [k1, k-tbl] 9 times, k-tbl.
Row 8: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 9 times, p-tbl.
Row 9: K-tbl twice, [k1, s2tog-k1-p2sso, k1, k-tbl] 3 times, k-tbl.
Row 10: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 6 times, p-tbl.
Row 11: K-tbl twice, k1, k-tbl, [k1, (k-tbl, yo, k-tbl) in next st, k1, k-tbl] twice, k1, k-tbl twice.
Row 12: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 8 times, p-tbl.
Row 13: K-tbl twice, [k1, k-tbl] 8 times, k-tbl.
Row 14: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 8 times, p-tbl.
Row 15: K-tbl twice, k1, k-tbl, [k1, s2tog-k1-p2sso, k1, k-tbl] twice, k1, k-tbl twice.
Row 16: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 6 times, p-tbl.
Rows 17-28: Repeat rows 5-16. (The number of times you wish to desired length)
Row 29: K-tbl twice, [k1, k-tbl] 6 times, k-tbl.
Row 30: P-tbl twice, [p1, p-tbl] 6 times, p-tbl.

Last Row: Repeat Set-up Row 1.

Cast-off loosely purlwise.

Abbreviations
k = Knit; k-tbl = Knit through the back loop; p = Purl; p-tbl = Purl through the back loop; s2tog-k1-p2sso = Slip 2 stitches together knitwise, knit 1, then pass slipped stitches over; (k1-tbl, yo, k1-tbl) = Knit through back loop, leaving the stitch on the needle, then yarn over, and then knit into the same stitch through back loop.

If you'd rather work from a chart, you'll find one below. The set-up rows are not included, though.

This easy-to-follow chart may be just the incentive you need to give dropped stitch lace a try.

I hope you've enjoyed our foray into using Prose sock yarn for toe-up socks and for dropped stitch lace this week. We have some more exciting yarns and ideas coming in May.

It's like magic, really, drop stitches in the right places and you get quite the dropped stitch knitted lace.

How dropped stitches create a knitted lace pattern - surprisingly beautiful

This week I'm knitting with Wisdom Yarn’s Prose Sock Yarn, but I’m leaving yesterday's socks behind to explore knitting dropped stitch lace.

This Prose colorway called "Menswear" makes a great men's sock, but the colors are too exciting to hide inside shoes, so I thought you'd like to see what it looks like knit up in dropped stitch lace.

Dropped stitch lace consists of planning to unravel certain stitches in your knitted fabric ahead of time to create that familiar “ladder” that forms when you drop a stitch and the ones below it slip out of the embrace of the ones above.

It’s possible to work dropped stitch lace ladders in short sections that are deliberately placed to create a lace texture in just certain sections of a finished piece or across a whole set of rows, or it’s possible to work the dropped stitch lace all over an entire knit fabric. I know you'd love to see an example of what I'm talking about, but it's going to be a surprise all revealed tomorrow!

What looks like regular stockinette stitch actually contains sections of stitches that are waiting in line to be dropped! But fear not! The whole piece will not unravel.

What you see in this swatch is the precursor to dropped stitch lace. All the stitches are knit and it just looks like regular stockinette. However, I’m sure you can see there are some irregularities in the fabric and if you look closely, you’ll even see that some of the stitches look uneven or twisted.

Every other stitch is twisted both on knit and purl rows to provide stability to the untwisted stitches when they are unraveled.

To prevent the whole lot of stitches to simply unravel into a pile of knots and kinked yarn, it’s important to flank either side of the dropped stitch lace stitches with twisted knit stitches on the right side of the fabric and twisted purl stitches on the wrong side.

The other irregularities you're seeing in this swatch are a series of multiple increases and decreases which may look like flattened nupps or bobbles. Tomorrow will be the big reveal when we see what happens when I drop all my stitches. And now the requisite artsy photo of the swatch.

The waves and tucks in this swatch will become an important feature of this dropped stitch lace motif. Be sure to come back tomorrow to see what it looks like.

For now, try the following swatch and unravel some dropped stitch lace yourself!

Cast on 17 stitches.

Knit 4 ridges of garter stitch.

Row 5: K1, [yo, k2tog] across—9 sts and 8 yarn overs.

Row 6: P1tbl, [p1, p1tbl] across.

Row 7: K1tbl, [k1, k1tbl] across.

Repeat Rows 6 and 7 to desired length ending with an even row.

Next Row: K1tbl, [drop next st off left-hand needle, yo, k1tbl] across.

Knit 4 ridges of garter stitch.

Cast off.

Abbreviations

k= knit; p = purl; yo = yarn over; tbl = through back loop; tog = together; st(s) = stitch(es)

Now, wrestle with the swatch and force those dropped stitches to ladder right down to the bottom of the swatch! Do you like what you see?

Things I will and won’t do again in cuff-down knitted socks...

This week, I’m knitting cuff-down socks with Wisdom Yarns' Prose. Yesterday I summed up 7 great sites with lots of information about toe-up socks, and today I’m looking at cuff-down socks and blurring the boundaries between stripes.

Prose would work as a wrist warmer or for mittens and gloves as well as for socks. I'm just sparing you from seeing my toes.

I’m wearing this sock on my arm; suffice it to say, I’m not a foot model. In these cuff-down socks, I’m trying to smudge the edges between the stripes with different techniques. The first one was to use purl rounds to create garter stitch ridges right where the yarn changed color. I’m not impressed. You can see the ridges between the first light gray stripe and the dark gray stripe. Just looks like the wrong side of a new color join.

I tried several ways to blend the edges of the stripes. The first was to use purl rounds to create garter stitch ridges.

Then I tried to work a fancy cross over tuck stitch into lace eyelets over garter stitch ridges.

I worked tuck stitches into yarn-over eyelets created several rounds earlier. (light gray stripe)

This is kind of cute, but the crossed tuck stitches were supposed to be in the orange and cross over the light gray into the eyelets. This didn’t work for me, partially because the light gray stripe was too narrow—one more garter stitch ridge may have done the trick—partially because I started the eyelet row too early. The other reason I didn’t like this approach was that it really leaves a raised bumpy ridge around the sock. These will end up frogged or adopted by my wife Pam, because she likes the textural changes.

Finally, the technique that I find works well and is closest to what I'm looking for are the lengthened slip stitches that I stretch over the garter stitch ridge. To do this, I knit stockinette rounds up to the point where I have enough yarn to make only one more round, then I work the following on an even number of stitches: *K1, knit 1 but wrap yarn twice; repeat from * around.

For the next round, I purl each knit stitch and for the double wrapped stitches, I slip them purlwise but with the yarn in back. This happens for two rounds.

Then I knit the fourth round. This pulls the slipped double wrapped stitches up across 3 rounds and extends the first color across the ridges of the new color. It’s a fun and easy effect.

But when I got to the heel, I decided to stop the blending for two reasons. First, the texture was actually annoying to me. I was that kid who hated store-bought socks when they had that ridge of thread right by the toes, if you know what I mean. Second, with the widening of the instep and the short rows, the striping became less predictable.

This is a heel knit with a double series of German short rows.

Things I will and won’t do again in cuff-down socks...

I won't use German short rows for the heel and while I like them because they're invisible for single ridges of short rows, I don’t like them when you need to have one ridge of short row turns immediately after the first to give the 90-degree change in the orientation of the sock.

I'll read the advice on short row heels from yesterday's round-up again and try something else next time.

I also have a high instep, so I usually increase a few stitches on the underside of the foot which gives a wider circumference for the gusset but doesn’t interfere with the neat decrease line created by paired gusset decreases; I'll do this again.

Here's a great tip for socks headed to a wearer with a high instep: hide a few increases under the heel to allow the sock to rise up over the instep. Four or (in this case) six stitches will give the wearer just the right amount of ease to slip that sock on and off without a struggle!

I lost 3 colors in the stripe sequence with this monster short-row heel. I recently watched a video podcast by Sockmatician (Episode 42b) and he discussed how he winds off a small amount of yarn to use for the heel so that the stripe sequence from the cuff through the instep and down the gusset and towards the toes is never interrupted. Unfortunately, I saw that episode too late and ended up with this, but I'll try this next time.

3 of the colors in the stripe sequence are missing because of the heel. There is a solution to this though, winding off a small amount of the same colors that would appear in the heel and use them to knit the heel so that when you resume the rest of the stitches, you still have those colors of stripes on stand-by.

Lastly, I did learn that I like the old Norwegian cast on or the twisted German cast on (it has several other names) for a really stretchy edge to my ribbing that easily gets past my instep and monster heel. So if I EVER knit a cuff-down sock again, I'll definitely use it. For now, I’ll adopt it for any other item I knit in the round that starts with a band of ribbing.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at a completely different application for Prose yarn as we leave socks behind and explore dropped stitch lace.

7 go-to recipes for successful toe-up socks

This week we're knitting with Prose by Wisdom Yarns. Yesterday, I delved into Prose's colorways, structure, and characteristics. Today we'll look at knitting toe-up socks.

I love the width of the stripes in Prose, not too thick, but more than 1 round's worth.

I'm working on a pair of cuff-down socks. I keep asking myself why I did this. I mean, I love toe-up socks. I always knit toe-up socks. I haven't knit cuff-down socks for years. I guess I just wanted to try something different. But I’m going back to toe-up socks next time.

I thought I’d be really smart and do some research and increase my knowledge about toe-up socks and have a lot of wisdom to share with you about knitting toe-up socks with our Wisdom yarn Prose. Then I read a lot and took some notes and realized, there's a thing called a listicle, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I’m sharing a list of 7 great web pages about toe-up socks.

Wisdom yarns free toe-up sock is a no-nonsense pattern akin to what some knitters call "vanilla socks."

1. The free pattern that comes with Prose yarn is a no-nonsense, straight forward toe-up sock pattern with no deep analysis or tricky math.

2. Cassy’s anatomy of a toe-up sock heel made with a heel flap is a very in-depth review of how to make a heel fit your foot in the most comfortable way possible, as in the picture below from Knit the Hell Out.

Stitch markers and good notes go a long way to making successful heel flaps (Photo by Knit the Hell Out)

3. To add a little texture to your sock pattern, try Hermoine’s everyday sock recipe by Erica Lueder. It’s a great way to use up small scraps of sock yarn that complement other sock yarn with less yardage.

4. Tanis shares 3 different short row heels that she likes to use with toe-up socks, as in the photo below by Tanis Fiber Arts.

These short-row heels seem to fit just fine! I'm going to try these out! (Photo below by Tanis Fiber Arts)

5. Louise Tilbrook shares some ideas and tips as in her photo below on easy and well-fitting toe-up socks with self-striping yarn, perfect for knitting up a pair with Prose.

This heel would look awesome in Prose! I'm going to cast on my next pair soon! (Photo by Louise Tilbrook Designs)

6. Fleegle really gets into the shaping of gussets in this post.

7. Clare studies toe shaping and different cast-ons to make your toes super comfy in their toe-up socks.

So that’s the round up for today. Tomorrow, I’ll share more about my cuff-down socks.

A sneak peek at my cuff-down sock in Foxy Prose!

Knitting with Prose self-striping sock yarn

This week I'll be knitting with Prose Sock Yarn. It's a superwash wool yarn that is produced by Wisdom Yarns.

Prose sock yarn, in this fun colorway called vegetate. reminds me of a backyard garden at fall harvest. There's eggplant, red cabbage, squash, sunflowers, pumpkin, and sage leaves.

Below, you can see the “Foxy” colorway. I really like the blend of warm grays and taupe with the bright stripe of a warm, foxy orange. Prose Sock Yarn is wound in these oblong skeins, but they aren't official pull-skeins. On my first skein, I had no problem finding the end on the inside so I could pull it out, but with the other one, about ¼ of the yarn came out in a lump, which untangled easily.

Start knitting now to wear "Foxy" socks with your back-to-school or fall outfits! It's also perfect to wear with your khaki's.

There are a generous 459 yards in each 100g skein, enough to make a pair of men’s socks, not to cover an entire men’s calf, but not an anklet sock either. It comes in 6 colorways (scroll down on the linked paged), and while I know that some guys only wear grey, black, navy and brown socks, my sons and I would happily wear socks in any of these colors. I’m sure that women would like all the colors, too.

I just read the above and see that I’ve used the word “skein” a couple of times, and this reminds me of 2 recent discussions I’ve had with friends at my knit-night group. First, when is a ball of yarn a skein, and second, is it pronounced skeen or skayne. So I’ve done a little research. Lisa Shroyer, the editor of Interweave Knits magazine has illustrated and described a comprehensive list of different “put-ups” of yarn and what they're called and I thought I would share it with you here.

Lisa Shroyer's helpful infographic showing 12 types of put-ups or formats for yarn.

So in fact,  Prose Sock Yarn is a bullet skein.

As far as how to say “skein”. The way it is pronounced varies by geographic region. Why a given pronunciation was adopted by different regions is of course a topic that a linguist may enjoy pursuing, but we won’t go into that. For example, why do the British say petrol, but in North America we say gasoline or gas? Why do Canadians and some folks from northern states say “pop” while east and west coast people say “soda” and in the south it’s called “coke,” even if you’re drinking a lemon flavored soft drink? Here's a link to a linguistic map of soft drink names. Language does vary from region to region…but let’s look at skein.

Do you remember this poem?

"i" before "e", except after "c"
or if sounded as "ay" as in neighbor and weigh

that means that  skein pronounced as /skayne/ not /skeen/

Regional differences aside, I haven’t met an English speaker from anywhere that says “welcome to our kneeborhood” or “how much does that bag of potatoes wee?” So I’m going to say it’s safe to say that “skayne” for skein is the more accurate way of saying it.

Need a more subdued colorway to go with corporate or tech-colors in your wardrobe? Use the "Menswear" colorway of Prose sock yarn to fill that void and still have a stylish sock collection. The boxes inserted after the photo was taken highlight "mistakes" that produce intentional flecks in the yarn.

Now that we've settled that, I’ll tell you more about Prose sock yarn. You can see I’ve highlighted some specks of different colors that appear within the stripes. Some of the colorways have more of these tweedy spots than others. These "irregularities" give the appearance that this yarn is dyed by hand, rather than on a painting machine. Don’t think that there's a problem with your skein -- it’s only part of the dye job.

Prose is a sturdy workhorse -- a 4-ply sock yarn spun out of superwash wool and nylon.

Prose sock yarn is made of 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon and is a 4-ply sock weight. It can be worked on your preferred size of sock needles or you can play around with it to get the gauge you want. For a project I’ll share with you a little further on in the week, I actually knit it with US 6 [4mm] needles. Here’s what the swatch looks like:

Mystery swatch! Come back to see what I'll do with this cool mix of twisted and not so twisted stitches.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some more excellent uses for Prose self-striping sock yarn.