the ends: part 3

It seems that all blogs go through periods of involuntary hiatus, and this blog got hit with one pretty quickly. Sorry about that, folks. The culprits this time were overtime and being under the weather (the humid, icky, nasty weather).

On to the ends. This is the last post I want to write for a while on this topic. Okay, so you've knitted in the ends as much as you can, and the rest you've worked into the seams (if any). But you've got ends at edges where there are no seams. Now what?

In between going into the office on Saturday and wishing the humidity would go down to a reasonable level, I've been working on the Lace Wings shawl pattern (in Toronto Canada, you can get this at Lettuce Knit. I have no idea where to get it otherwise). It's supposed to use exactly one ball of Handmaiden Sea Silk, but I got greedy and worked a couple of rows more than I should have, and ran out of yarn halfway through the cast-off. Luckily, I had some leftover sock cotton that matched fairly well. This meant I had four ends to weave in on this shawl - cast on, cast off, and the joining of the new yarn, with nowhere to hide any of them. Here's the finished shawl:



I tried to take close-ups of the three places I had to darn in ends, but you couldn't see them in the photos. Um, I guess that means they turned out right. Here's the scoop in text form:

• The cast-on tail got hidden on the wrong side of the very first row. I worked up and down through about eight purl bumps, then worked back. Because the Sea Silk is spun fairly tightly, I didn't try to split the yarn.


• The yarn-join and final cast-off end were woven into the cast-off row. I could have gone verically so I wouldn't have to worry about stretch, but this would have been more visible in the lace. I just wove through about eight stitches, then wove back. This time I did a backstitch or two on the second-last working-back stitch to help secure the ends before clipping.

Some general hints:

• If the end is in an area that stretches a lot with wear (like the ribbed cuff of a sock), weave in the end perpendicular to the stretch direction. So for a ribbed sock cuff, you would weave up the sock rib, not across.


• For intarsia work, try to weave in the yarns along the colour join lines. Try to match the yarn to where it was used.


• For items that are seen from both sides (like shawls), stay as close to the edge as possible. If you're following a pattern and the designer didn't make room for ends (and they do this all the time), think about adding an edging so you have somewhere to finish.


• Above all, use your best judgement. I know knitters trying something new hate it when people say that, but the truth is your gut is a lot smarter than most of modern society realises. Did you know that part of your digestive system works almost like a second brain? It does. Listen to it.

Next post: the myriad ways to increase, and why I can't figure out why you would ever use some of them.

the ends: part 2

This post is about hiding ends in seams. Weirdly, it's harder to write than the previous post, even though it's simpler. Basically, this is what should be happening:

• Since you're concerned about darning in ends on something seamed, that means there's a seam to darn in ends on. You thought ahead and left 10-15cm for a tail, right? If not, see my hints section below. Work on the wrong side. With a tapestry needle, work the yarn through 5-8 stitches.


• Now work back through the stitches you just worked, piercing the tail yarn that's already darned in as many times as you can.


• When you are back where you started, clip the yarn leaving about half a centimeter.

The tail now runs in two directions and pierces itself. It isn't unravelling anywhere until you tell it to.

Unlike the plethora of seaming sites I found, a quick Google only turned up one result showing how to actually darn in ends. It's right here. This only demos the first pass of the darning-in method I described above. Traditionally, this is as far as you get. I like to do the second pass, though, because it absolutely locks the tail in place so it won't pull out.

Interestingly, I did find a lot of sites that mention to darn in the ends, but not how to do that. So what are they saying? That people should know how to do this, but are too stupid to know when to do it on a piece of knitting unless it says so right in the pattern? That strikes me as a little illogical. Oh well.

Hints

• If you were in dire straits, desperately running low on yarn, and dramatically finished with only 3cm or so of a yarn tail left, put the needle through the stitches first, then thread the yarn, then pull it through. You'll probably only have enough yarn to darn in one direction. If you're not confident that the tail will stay darned, tack it down with some sewing thread (sewing thread in knitting? Yup. Remember, the divisions between the crafts are artificial. Any skill can be applicable, and often is.).


• If you worked with a slippery ribbon, mercerised cotton, or other yarn that seems like it would work itself out, tack it down with sewing thread. This goes for novelty yarns with bits hanging off the main thread too.


• Speaking of ribbon, splitting it as given above may not be a good idea for some fancy-texture yarns. If splitting it in half doesn't seem like a good idea, just work back in the opposite direction and don't pierce the yarn. A tail doubled back on itself is more locked than a tail that is not.

Next post: how to darn in ends when there's no seam and you couldn't knit in.

the ends: part 1

I realised when I started to plan this post that there are way too many ways to darn in ends than can be easily covered in a single post, so I'm going to start with knitting in ends. This is a good way to handle ends if:

• you're working in the round, so there won't be any seams to hide ends in


• you're working with intarsia


• you're working with a striped fabric


• you're working with stranded knitting


• you're afraid that if you don't use every available centimetre of yarn you'll run out


• you're working with yarn that has so many knots in it you have to cut and re-join too often for the "only join at the end of rows" rule to apply nicely

Your results with this method may not be good if:

• you're working with a loose tension (like for some mohairs, or for a mesh look)


• you're working with ribbon or something else that's super-slippery and shows every tension change


• the right side of your work is the purl side, or you have to change yarns on a wrong-side row (if is possible to knit in on a wrong-side row, but not with these instructions, although if you can follow these instructions I'm sure you can figure out how)
  

Knitting in ends is the same as weaving in the non-working yarn when you have an extra-long float in stranded knitting, or if you like to weave in the non-working yarn for every stitch. The basic method goes something like this:

1. Leave about 10cm for the tails of the old and new yarns.


2. Knit the next stitch with the new yarn.


3. Take the yarn tails and take them under the working yarn and flip them up over the needle (see photo below).
   
   


4. Knit the next stitch, then take the yarn tails and flip them down, over the working yarn (see photo below).
   


5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have 6-8 stitches worked this way, ending with a tails-down step.

On the wrong side, your work will look something like this:



When you're done working the piece, you can either a) clip off all the ends, leaving about .5 cm to keep the tails in; or b) work back a few stitches with a darning needle, piercing each woven-in bit to lock it, then clip with the .5 cm tail as before. I usually use option b) because I'm a fanatic about locking in ends, but with the striped fabric I used for the photos I'll probably just clip. It's mostly nubby cotton, and the stuff just isn't going anywhere on its own.

Variations:

• for lighter-weight fabric or looser-tensioned stitches, you might want to knit in one tail on the first row, then the second end on the next row (with this option I usually knit in the old end first)


• knit in one tail on the first row, then knit in the other end on the following row, to make one long skinny woven-end section instead of a shorter fat one

Next post: hiding ends in seamed knitting

the "S" word

My favourite part of Debbie Stoller's Happy Hooker book is right in the introduction, where she talks about the amazing work her relatives did in all sorts of textile craft. They used what was right for the job, and didn't worry about what "craft" it was.

Luckily for me, I was taught in a similar tradition (Dutch? Stoller and I are both Dutch, but somehow it seems it should be a pan-ethnic thing). So by the time I learned how to knit, I'd already had a few years of wielding a tapestry needle for cross-stitch and tent stitch. Therefore seaming was never a big deal. Nor was embroidery on knitting, while we're at it. I swear these separate categories of "crafts" - knitting distinct from embroidery distinct from lace-making and so on - were invented by marketing people.

The main objections I hear from people who hate seaming seem to revolve around the fact that it's Not Knitting. Well, duh. Neither is weaving in ends (more on that next time). If all you want to do is knit, use spit-splice friendly yarn only and always make yoke sweaters in the round, in single colours.

But if you soak up what you can of all the needle know-how the world has to offer, all of a sudden your horizons broaden considerably. You can make flat or circular pieces at will, as it suits you, and connect them up together as you see fit. You can add selvedges or steeks as it suits you. A properly-done seam is virtually invisible from the right side, so mixing and matching methods in a single garment need be only a way to suit construction to your favourite techniques.

I use mattress stitch for virtually all my seaming - half a stitch in for most plain fabrics, a full stitch for stranded knitting and intarsia, which tend to distort at the edges. I'm not going to put my own directions here - these fine people have already done a great job of explaining:

• An article from Knitty. Why do people always have to preface an article on seaming by putting it down first? A good explanation nonetheless.


• Domiknitrix with great photos showing how the seam thread (and the seam) are nigh-invisible when you're done. This illustrates how to seam from the top down. Funny, I usually go from the bottom up. Same idea.


• Lana Grossa. This shows how to work reverse stocking stitch too (garter works the same way as reverse stocking, and if you can get this far, figuring out how to do seed stitch is a snap).


• Yarn-store.com. This one shows how to seam using a one-stitch selvedge instead of the usual half-stitch.

Next up: creative darning in of ends.

begin at the beginning

I very rarely block any of my knitting. In fact, my Oma (that's "grandmother" for the non-Dutch/German/Slavics) was quite disdainful of people who did block.

This paragraph is inserted so all die-hard blockers can pause to regain normal blood pressure.

All right now? Good. Now, here's the kicker: Oma's work, and thus my work since I learned from her, generally looks blocked, or at least very even. I get told I knit like a machine a lot, which mostly annoys me, but I think what people mean is that I don't have the odd loose stitch, and my knitted pieces come out even unless I mis-measure. Generally speaking (everyone has bad days, every knitter has bad projects), our knitting looks very much the same blocked as unblocked, so we just don't bother.

I've nothing against blocking, and will haul out my blocking wires and use them if something needs blocking, but that's only once every... I don't know, five years? I've had my blocking wire set for over ten years now and I've used it about three times.

So the first "finishing tip" is:

How to get evenly-stitched fabric without blocking

If you're not going to block the fabric into even-ness, that means you're going to have to make it even while you're knitting it.

Now, remember when you were learning how to knit and someone told you (or you read), "It doesn't matter if you're tight or loose, it just matters that you get well-formed stitches. Tightness or looseness is a personal expression of yourself through your knitting. Celebrate who you are through your tension." Know what? They lied to you.

Let's correct that paraphrase: it doesn't matter how tight or loose your knitting is while you're in the learning phase, where you're just trying to remember how to form a stitch. After that thirty- to sixty-minute interval, it starts to matter.

Take some of your knitting that's on a straight needle (always knit on circulars? get a pair of straight needles from the closet, knit a few rows and try this. Work with me here.). Hold the needle by the knob end and let the point end hang towards the floor. If the work starts falling off the point of the needle, you knit too loosely. Yes, there is such a thing.

Now hold the needle by the point end. Rub the stitches back and forth along the shaft of the needle as fast as you can. Is it hard to move them? Are there squeaking sounds? If so, you knit too tightly.

If your knitting passed both these tests, you're in "the zone". You may be looser, you may be tighter (believe me, I've had wildly different gauges with the same yarn on the same needles but still been in "the zone"), but if you're in "the zone" you will probably knit pretty evenly.

Side benefit: you tend to hit the "recommended gauge" listed in printed patterns on the first try, with the recommended needle size. So now you can save time by not blocking and not bothering with a gauge swatch. Measure for gauge after you get about twenty rows done, though, just to be safe.

Next stop: seaming, which fortunately can be a briefer post.