#knitting increases

[ub-sessed]

Toe-up sock knitters:

What's your favourite increase for knitting the toe?

[chiropteracupola]

once again i am posting hand-woven images!

[loxare]

Achievement Unlocked!

Learned how to fix wrong stitches on the previous row without having to do any frogging!

[jonphaedrus]

i picked up this yarn on a whim because of how in love i was with the gradient and this is not either of the projects with deadlines i should be working on but it's the one i've been doing non-stop all week and i literally just want to stare at it for hours. i don't want to do anything else.

[moongothic]

So, back in early 2023, our local yarn shop sadly closed down, and I got some Really Nice Yarn at a really, really good discount. Like I would not have bought this Malabrigo yarn ever had it not been on discount. And, because it's nice yarn, I had been saving it up for a good, long while. Mainly because I had other projects I wanted to finish first, but also because this Really Nice Yarn, and I wanted to make something really nice with it, with care.

I wanted to make something wearable with this yarn, but at the time I had little knitting experience. I do love making things in crochet, but I don't like crochet on wearables, and crochet eats up so much more yarn I did not want to risk running out of yarn. So yeah, I left the yarn to wait, and over 2023 I got better at knitting by just knitting a lot of small shit, and this year I made my first knitted sweater. With all that I did finally get enough confidence to finally get working with this yarn. And over the last year I had had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to make with it specifically.

I wanted to try to make a colorwork sweater.

Now specifically, I wanted to practise doing colorwork. A traditional colorwork sweater (with colorwork all across the yoke and maybe even the whole thing) seemed like too much for me to figure out, like that's a lot of floats to manage and tension to figure out. For a long while I was thinking a peppermint themed sweater with vertical stripes could be super cute, and relatively simple (at least in design) but also the floats of that intimidated me a lot. But also, I'm working with red and white here, what else can I do with this color palette? I did also think about knitting like a ribcage pattern on the sweater, but that also intimidated me a little bit.

Then I had another idea; what if I do a sweater with an intarsia section? That would allow me to practise doing colorwork, managing floats and figuring out my tension, but at a smaller scale. I can just do a topdown raglan like my previous/first sweater, and amp up the difficulty just a little bit (instead of a lot) And... yeah, with this colorpalette in mind, I had one idea for what I could try to knit; a bleeding, anatomical heart.

So I bullshitted a chart together

(Blew it up to a bigger size when actually using it)

And I just. Got to knitting.

Honestly I don't even have much to say about the knitting process, it went smoothly and I had fun, although I was very worried about my tension the whole time, unsure if I was knitting it too tight or too loose, and praying blocking the sweater would help it in the end.

But yeah, once the knitting was done, it was time to block.

Took one photo of my floats before blocking

And then. Disaster struck.

Now, in hindsight, thinking about it deeply, I think the seller at the yarn store might've actually warned me about this, but I had completely forgotten about it until now. But the red dye started bleeding from the yarn while blocking. I had a fucking meltdown y'all. Like I started seeing the water in the lil tub I was blocking the sweater in turning a little pink and I was getting worried, I pour the water out and rinse the sweater with running water hoping the red dye hadn't stuck to the white yarn, but it had. In utter desperation I flung this thing straight into the washing machine (either a wool cycle or a quick wash), hoping a quick rinse would help the red dye come off. I did so much shit, in complete panic, just desperate to make my sweater not pink.

But it was too late, I had been too slow to react.

The white yarn, previously a stark white, now has a pink undertone to it.

Okay it's not so bad, you can definitely see it better in person than in the photo, but regardless, after all the time I spent working on this damn thing the dye bleeding really did just wreck me, to the point I left the sweater to sit by itself for a month, still kind of unfinished, because I could not bring myself to even look at it.

But yeah, eventually, I got over the yarn staining, and returned to the sweater. I had some loose ends that needed to be weaved in still, yes, but also.

My colorwork was kind of shit and I had to do something about it.

I had done a decent job with the red floats, maybe a bit too tight in some places but not too bad. The white floats however, were far too fucking loose, and so there was massive gaping on the sides of the colorwork. And while I could kind of pull the white floats inwards, they would come loose again and the gaping holes would return.

A normal person would realize you just have to frog the whole sweater and redo it because there's no fixing shit tension like this. But, look. If there's something I've learned from doing comics, it's that while I could spend months trying to master this one thing, I could also, instead, just call it a day and move onto the next thing. Or, in this case, try to bandaid the issue and improve my tension with my next colorwork project (whenever that may happen).

So I did spend some time trying to find any suggestions on how one could try to "fix" this shit tension, but I couldn't really find anything. But after futzing around with the yarn and the floats, I wondered... If I somehow managed to hold down the white floats on the inside of the sweater, could I not artificially tighten the tension and fix the gaping?

So I grabbed a small crochet hook and...

You know when you drop a stitch when knitting and then rescue it with a crochet hook, looping each round of yarn with the next? Yeah, I just. Did that. Creating a little chain stitch. And just to hold THAT down and keeping from unravelling, I grabbed a little bit of sewing thread and knotted it at the top of the stitch so I can't fall out.

Yeah, this is not an Elegant Solution, this is an Improper Knitting Technique and Most Shameful, I should just frog the project and redo it and Git Good.

But like.

It kinda really did work, man.

Now I did pull the chain a little too tight in a few spots so I created new issues (in the form of buckling) lmao, but like. There's no more gaping holes. Like, I dunno what to tell you man, it kinda worked, the main issue I was having and most unhappy about is gone. Like I wanna take that W, man.

Anyway, there were other issues with the sweater, a quick rundown:

I made the sleeves too long, the yarn switch was meant to happen at the same height as the torso but the sleeves really stretched the fuck out when blocking and so not only is the color change in the wrong spot but also they're just too long. Whoops. (Thankfully I can just fold the sleeves over, it's just the ribbing won't be the same lenght as the bottom of the sweater)

I dunno what I did but the sleeves are a bit too big and so the fabric of the sweater just kinda creates these weird folds in the upper arm that annoy the shit out of me (I'm just confused because I did it the same as my previous sweater but I didn't have this problem with it??)

The yarn is thin, and so the sweater is shockingly seethru. Like, you can see the black Roadhog Overwatch t-shirt I'm wearing underneath it, which is mildly annoying. Just, gotta wear white and/or plain t-shirts underneath this thing, I guess.

When bullshitting my chart together I may have stretched the heart out a little too much so it looks maybe a smidge too elongated, and generally speaking the heart looks a bit off (but that's more of a "I don't know how to create an image that reads nicely when knit" problem) (Also I could fix some of it by duplicate stitching on top, if I felt like it)

In hindsight, maybe using this superwash wool wasn't a great pick for colorwork since the yarn won't stick to itself (which you would want with colorwork, right?)

So the human heart lies about in the center of your chest if a smidge to the left, and so I tried to do that "just a smidge to the left of the center" positioning. And like, while the pattern did go exactly where I wanted it to go, I did the math right, maybe in hindsight I should've moved it just a little bit more to the left because right now it looks like... unintentionally off-center??? Like had I moved it 5 more stitches to the left it'd probably look more intentional (despite the position being intentional to begin with)

Aside from that though, it turned out Relatively Decent. Not as good as my previous sweater, but it's fine, I'll wear it, and I learned a lot during this process. And that's what really matters, doesn't it.

[mintowls]

im going to make a really long cat wish me luck everyone

[dyke-arachne]

Crossed the 15% mark

[motorharp]

The back of the Delineator magazine from November 1918 published by Butterick. Instructions for knitting two socks at the same time on the same needles.

[mutantenfisch]

Look! I've got new socks!

Pattern is Herbstblattsocken by Maren Wilczek (German)

[gardenvarietycrafts]

Day 7

I finished the first sleeve! Only one more to go. I have short arms, so I did have to make some changes to the pattern to make all the decreases fit in the sleeve, and I have some ideas for next time to make it fit me better, but so far I'm happy with it! Hoping to finish the second sleeve tomorrow but I don't know if I will be able to based on how long the first sleeve took me.

I've also used about 2 less balls of yarn than expected. The first sleeve only took one ball of yarn, so I'm anticipating the second to take the same, bringing my total to 7 balls of yarn (approximately 1400 yds) vs the 9 balls I expected (a little less than 1800 yds). I'm not sure if the pattern just gave a lot of wiggle room or if not, where I used that much less yarn, but I have about 1000 yds of this yarn left over, since I usually buy a little extra just in case, and used less than expected. If you have any ideas for what to make with what's left, let me know!

[frmulcahy]

So when is someone who knows how to write knitting patterns going to make a pattern for Claudia’s season 2 zig zag beret because I HAVE A NEED 🧍🏼

[ub-sessed]

In an effort to learn more about how different increases behave, I've decided to knit a bunch of swatches like this:

I am especially fascinated by the lack of symmetry: Why is the left side of the triangle longer than the right side? This is not blocked or pulled on in any way; the tape is just there to keep the swatch flat enough to photograph, and to line up that line with the middle column of stitches.

I'm gonna make a pile of these and then post my results.

What other increases should I test? What are your favourite increases?

If I'm still feeling motivated when I'm done, I may do the equivalent swatches with decreases.

[jemmo]

I may have had to rip out 30 rows on the body and sleeves after blocking bc they were too long and re-do all the ribbing, but it was worth it bc she cute

[yyyyanyan]

I made a hat using the very easy and very elegant Not another bulky beret pattern and I'm very happy with it! I used Knitpicks Dishie in the color Dewdrop and Blue Sky Fibers Brushed Suri in the color Snow Cone held together (lol).

[music-for-them-asses]

The older I get, the more apparent it is that western society (America in particular) is solely built on the idea of the single family home unit. Church used to be the social network that connected people. But as people have become less religious, nothing new has replaced it. As the average age of first marriage increases, and more people are forgoing kids, there are no communities or social bonds. Corporations step in and take advantage of the loneliness by selling us goods we don't need OR are bad for our health. Meanwhile, treatment for mental illness like depression is placed solely on the individual rather than a community problem. Do you see what I'm saying

[chiropteracupola]

my body is but a machine that turns yarn into rats and podcasts into mysterious and ethereal dreams