I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

All of this experimentation with spinning twist and plying twist has had the unexpected consequence of renewing my interest in knitting with my handspun. While I was rooting around in the roving cupboard, I came across a fingering-weight 2-ply that I spun from some yummy Shetland.

Last year I saw a cute scarf that Brooke knit from a stitch pattern Barbara Walker calls Scrolls. I bookmarked the page on Brooke’s blog but I didn’t even have to pull out my Barbara Walker Treasury because I found a free scarf pattern on the Kollage Yarns website that uses the stitch.

I haven’t knit much on the scarf since I’m trying to finish up a secret project, but I’ve knit enough to realize that the edges of the finished scarf are probably going to roll . . . a lot.

A quick check on Ravelry revealed that at least one person who used this stitch pattern for a scarf reported that the edges on her scarf curl.

I’m contemplating frogging and working the stitch pattern in garter stitch instead of stockinette. Anyone done that with this particular stitch pattern or am I on my own??

I spent a little more time last weekend exploring the relationship between spinning twist and plying twist. Although I agreed with most of Abby’s piece in SpinOff, I admit that I was dubious about her belief that the problem of unbalanced yarns leading to biased knitted fabric is exaggerated.

So, I took carded roving and used it to spin some high-twist singles and some low-twist singles. I used the high-twist singles and some of the low-twist singles to create balanced 2-ply yarns. I used the rest of the low-twist singles to create an unbalanced 2-ply yarn by putting in a lot of plying twist.

I readily admit that the unbalanced yarn with the low spinning twist and the high plying twist feels infinitely softer, nicer, and less like rope than the balanced yarn with the high spinning twist and high plying twist even though the grist is nearly identical. But what about my fears of bias?

Well, I then set the twist in the unbalanced yarn so the mini hank hung perfectly straight.

The yarn, of course, is not really balanced no matter how straight the hank looks.

How can I be so sure, Michaele??

Because I knit up a swatch.

Yes, I admit, it looks perfectly square. But here’s what happened when I got it wet and set it to dry flat:

It biased, of course. Not really a problem for a swatch, but a disaster in the making if you’re using the yarn to knit, say, the sleeves of a sweater.

So what’s my conclusion? Unless I’m making something worked entirely in garter stitch or a lace piece that will be blocked severely, I think I’ll stick with spinning balanced yarns.

Next up in the endless stream of recently spun yarns is a three-ply I spun from some basic wool roving I bought from Amy. I dyed it myself last year and immediately predrafted it. But then I tucked it away and basically forgot about it until last week.

Unfortunately, I knew as I was spinning that I was putting too much twist in the singles. I suspected that the finished yarn would feel more like rope than yarn.

But, after reading Abby’s fascinating article in the latest issue of Spin Off, I decided to continue with the tight spinning twist and fool around a little when I Navajo plied the singles.

I purposely underplied the first half of the bobbin. For the second half, I put in just enough twist so the plying twist perfectly matched the spinning twist. Here’s what I got (click for big; the underplied yarn is on the right):

Same singles, different plying technique, much different grist and appearance. Interesting, huh.

I took photos of the finished hanks before I set the twist. The underplied hank, obviously, does not hang straight because it’s not balanced.

The other, fresh off the niddy noddy, is nicely balanced:

After I set the twist, the underplied hank now hangs straight even though, of course, it’s not really “balanced.”

As I suspected, the underplied skein is considerably softer and loftier than the other skein. Although, the yarn is “sloppy” looking and seems a bit unstable. Clearly, Navajo plying is not a good method for fooling around with plying twist since each little section is a veritable island of twist unto itself.

But I’m not going to give up on this yarn. I might use the loftier yarn for socks and knit the heels and toes from the tightly twisted yarn.

I recently had a lengthy debate with Michaele over whether you can really “balance” a skein by setting the twist. It was my position that, no matter how straight the finished hank hangs, yarn is never balanced in the true sense of the word unless the spinning twist perfectly matches the plying twist. So, for example, a single ply yarn can never be balanced even though the hank may hang perfectly straight after the twist is set. Anyone care to join the debate??