20.10.2005 | 21:13

Boring knitting (and thoughts on yarn)

This is boring knitting. I started a sweater from Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra (85% wool, 10% silk, 5% cashmere) which was a special offer at Get Knitted in August. It's knit 4, purl 2 rib and I promise you it will get more interesting.

I copied the idea from the latest Novita magazine. I'll knit the body in the round to the armpits and then I'll knit the sleeves from cuff to cuff (sideways). I guess it's a bit of Klaralund-like solution. The sleeves will start in one colour and end in another, I have Silkroad Ultra in a yellowish and a orangeish colour.

This yarn also made me think of yarm. Kristel wrote (in Finnish) about the crazy world of knitting and one of the wondrous things were acrylic yarns.

I started my knitting with some leftover yarns from my mother's stash. I think they were wool blends, maybe with some mohair in them. I really cannot tell, there were no ball bands left.

When I started buying my own yarn about 10 years ago, the acrylics yarn section in the local supermarket was a treasure trove. The colours were fairly OK and the yarn was cheap. As a student I did not have much money so cheap yarn was the only choice I had. I also hunted yarn from bargain bins (I still do) and made friends with the lady who owned the LYS. That didn't ensure huge discounts but it was fun to go there and see if she had anything on sale, something I could afford.

The sweaters behaved fairly well. I washed them in the washing machine as instructed and nothing happened. I guess the sweaters pilled a little but I thought that it is what happens when you wear them often.

Then I knitted a sweater I really, really wanted. It was a challenging project. The body was plain red with ribbing on both sides, the collar was yellow and the sleeves had black and white stripes. Vertical stripes. I knitted each stripe from a separate ball of yarn and the balls got tangled and I spent a lot of time untangling the yarn. I finished the sweater, wore it once and then washed it.

I can't remember if I had used the same yarn I used in other sweaters, for example in a Mickey Mouse as Uncle Sam pattern or if it was another yarn, but when I took the sweater out of the washing machine I almost cried. The sleeves looked like a fish net! They had stretched, the stitches were elongated, the yarn was thin-thin-thin and the whole thing was ruined.

That's when I decided that if I choose to spend two weeks or more doing something, I might as well choose the material so that the result lasts more than one wash. After all, disposable sweaters are expensive in the long run.

I have to admit that the washing accident made me suspicious. I don't trust acrylics. I'm lucky because I do not have any allergies, so as a rule of thumb, I select yarns that contain at least 50% natural fibres. I have knitted with a 100% acrylic yarn after that decision (and it felt plastic but it's another story), but the boy who got the sweater is allergic to wool so there was not much I could do. (Cotton would possibly have been a choice, of course, but his family asked for acrylic.) However, I do think that sweater was not disposable. I would have heard if it was.

I also like luxurious yarns. I wake up when I hear the words "cashmere" or "silk" combined with the words "on sale". If the yarn is cheap enough, I most likely buy some. If the price is still ridiculously high, I just sigh. Like I said, I like to hunt for bargains and sometimes I get lucky. That's how I got the Silkroad Ultra yarn - didn't I just start this entry with the words "special offer"?

I try to get the best quality with the money I'm willing to spend at that time. Sometimes I do break that 50% rule, for example when I got some Novita Hippy in a lovely Colinette-like pale pink colourway as a gift and I had to buy one more ball so I could knit a triangular scarf... But 99,9% of the time I do not buy the plastic yarns. That's sad and in a way my loss because the the colours are in most cases lovely, better than the solid colours. (I am not talking about the lilac-yellow-neon pink-teal-whatever yarn, no way.)

Oh, did I say that I do regularly fall for eyelash yarns? I have managed to skip the fanciest yarns yet but a bit of eyelash yarn here and there is fun sometimes.

I think each yarn serves a purpose and it is most important to get what's best for the project with a reasonable price. After all, you'll spend a lot of time knitting, and if you put a price tag on your knitting hours, the amount of money spent on yarn would most likely be just a fraction of the total price. Of course, you shouldn't think that way, knitting is a hobby and something you enjoy doing.

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