This is the index post for the Knitting FAQ. I'll be adding links to the answers as I post them. If you have any questions you'd like to see answered, please comment on this post! Don't be shy, ain't no such thing as a stupid question.
----
Getting Started
Q: What materials are recommended for a beginner to get?
A: Beginner Materials
Q: How should I hold my knitting? What about posture?
A: Ergonomics and Posture
Tools and Materials
Q: What are stitch markers and how do you use them?
A: Stitch Markers
July 20, 2008
July 19, 2008
Knitting FAQ
After a bit of Googling, I've discovered everything that claims to be a FAQ on the topic of knitting is either very specific ("What gauge is most traditional for Fair Isle?") or is actually a sprawling instructional site rather than a list of Q&A's. Now, I've been known to ask some pretty specific questions myself (I just stumped the 'Tips & Techniques' group on Ravelry for like a week by asking how you do plaited basket stitch in the round), and I love those instructional sites as if they are delicious candy (just look at my sidebar links), but I feel there's a need for a sort of quick-reference to basic, general questions. Questions like, "My scarf is fifteen feet long; how do I stop?"
I'm going to need your help for this. I know there aren't a lot of people reading right now, but I also know y'all are smart and curious folks, and you have friends. You see where I'm going with this. Would you darlings be so kind as to ask me questions, and see if other people you know have questions? Anything you've always wondered about? Problems you've come up against?
Especially useful:
- Questions so basic you feel silly for asking them.
- Questions to which you've found multiple conflicting answers.
- Meta-questions; that is, not about the actual knitting or its materials, but about how to find out things, why information is given in a certain format, etc.
- Goofy, funny questions.
Peripherally related questions on other topics, like spinning, crochet, felting, or weaving, are also worth asking, though my answer might well be "Durr, I dunno!"
I'm still working on how best to format this for accessibility, so if there's a particular format you like to see FAQ's presented in, I'd love to know.
Thankee!
I'm going to need your help for this. I know there aren't a lot of people reading right now, but I also know y'all are smart and curious folks, and you have friends. You see where I'm going with this. Would you darlings be so kind as to ask me questions, and see if other people you know have questions? Anything you've always wondered about? Problems you've come up against?
Especially useful:
- Questions so basic you feel silly for asking them.
- Questions to which you've found multiple conflicting answers.
- Meta-questions; that is, not about the actual knitting or its materials, but about how to find out things, why information is given in a certain format, etc.
- Goofy, funny questions.
Peripherally related questions on other topics, like spinning, crochet, felting, or weaving, are also worth asking, though my answer might well be "Durr, I dunno!"
I'm still working on how best to format this for accessibility, so if there's a particular format you like to see FAQ's presented in, I'd love to know.
Thankee!
July 14, 2008
Simple hat in plain English, with long notes
I remember how tricky it was, when I first started knitting, to find patterns that explained what I was supposed to do instead of presenting me with a wall of abbreviations and numbers. Even though I'm much better at reading patterns now, I still lose my place when I blink, and for simple projects I wish people would just say things like 'decrease 8 stitches on every other row' rather than 'row 30: k [x], *ssk, k[x]*; row 32; k[x-1], *ssk, k[x-1]*' and so forth. Bleargh. If you can tell me the basic principle in a single breath, then do so, rather than making me count my stitches.
So in the expectation that I'm not the only one who likes to be told how a thing works (rather than having to figure it out from blindly painting by numbers), I'm going to post the basic templates I use to knit some common items, and explain every dang thing as plainly as possible. If there's a question I didn't answer, no matter how basic, please ask it!
Basic Hat Template
This is a beginner-level knit, but if you use it as a jumping-off point for fancier stuff, the sky's the limit. I'll mention some of my favorite embellishments afterwards. If you're not used to using double-pointed needles, this would be a good project to try them out on.
Here's the abbreviated version, the notes I work from myself:
Using worsted weight handspun on #5 dpn’s:
co 80 st on 4 needles (20 ea), join
2x2 rib 8 rows
k 30 rows (total incl. rib 5.5 in)
pm at center of each needle
dec row: ssk at beginning of each needle, after each marker
k 2 rows
dec row
k 1 row
dec row
k 1 row
dec until 8 st remain, break yarn, sew tail through and draw tight.
And now here's the verbose version, where I explain EVERYTHING!
Materials:
-- About 50g/1.75oz of worsted-weight wool. Most skeins are at least that much, so one skein should do it. Worsted-weight is about 12wpi (wraps per inch); if you're not sure, you can test it by wrapping a length of it around a ruler. Hats are pretty forgiving, so you've got some wiggle room here.
-- A set of five double-pointed needles. I generally use size 5 (3.75 mm) needles, but again, you have wiggle room. You can go up or down sizes to get gauge, or just use your favorites and wing it. The hat will fit somebody. (You can also use a circular needle if you prefer them; I hate them for anything smaller than a sweater, but that's just me.)
-- Four stitch markers. You can get cheap plastic ones at your local yarn store, but I prefer the dangly kind with glass beads and whatnot. Not only are they more fun to look at, they're just a tad heavier and the rings are metal, so they're easier to move from one needle to another; just scoop them up and they slide into place, tick!
-- A tapestry needle or yarn needle for sewing in the ends of the yarn when you're done.
Skills:
-- Some kind of cast-on. I like the long-tail cast-on, but any kind will do really.
-- Knit and purl stitches.
-- Some kind of decrease. Use ssk if you want it to look like the picture.
Excellent instructions and handy videos of all these things can be found here: knittinghelp.com
Time:
-- A hat like this usually takes me three or four hours. Even if you're learning as you go, you should be able to do one in a weekend.
How to make the hat:
-- Knit a gauge swatch. I get 4 stitches per inch (which is 16 per 10 cm) with worsted on 5's. Knit a little square, measure an inch's worth of stitches in the middle of it, and see what you get. If you're noticeably off, you'll probably want to try bigger or smaller needles. Or you could adjust the number of stitches; as long as it's a multiple of 8, you'll have no problem with the decreases.
-- Cast on 80 stitches on 4 needles. That's 20 per needle. It's tricky to get 80 stitches on one dpn, so there are a couple things you could do. What I usually do is cast on 21 stitches, slip the most recent stitch onto the next needle and cast on 20 on that needle, etc. This means you've got a dangling chain of needles hanging out of your hand, but if that doesn't bother you, it's pretty simple. Just gotta remember not to end up with one extra stitch on the last needle, since you're not slipping it anywhere. Another option is to cast onto a straight or circular needle, then slip the stitches onto your dpn's.
-- Join, being careful not to twist. Patterns always say this. The day you scoff at 'being careful not to twist' is the day you'll twist it and not notice for an hour; do not tempt the knitting gods.
-- Work knit-2 purl-2 ribbing for 8 rows. Knit two stitches, then purl two stitches; keep doing this. If the number you cast on is divisible by 4, it'll line up right. The number of rows you do it for is fungible. You probably want at least 4 to keep it from curling; other than that, it's totally up to you.
-- Knit until the hat is about 5.5 inches long. That's 14 cm, and the measurement includes the ribbing. Most hat recipes say 6 inches, but I find that a frustrating length; long enough to meet my eyebrows and make me look like an ape, not quite long enough to turn up the brim. You can, of course, alter it if you want your hat taller.
-- Place a marker at the middle of each needle. Since there are 20 stitches on each needle, there'll be 10 on either side of the marker.
-- Decrease at the beginning of each needle and after each marker for one round. That's a total of 8 decreases; you should now have 9 stitches on either side of each marker, 18 per needle total.
-- Knit 2 normal rounds. No decreases, just knit.
-- Do another decrease round. Just like you did before; beginning of each needle, and after each marker.
-- Normal round.
-- Decrease round.
-- Normal round.
-- Decrease every round until 8 stitches are left. You can even go as far as 4 stitches left, but that's just one stitch per needle; your needles are going to want to slide out, especially if they're metal.
-- Break yarn, leaving about 6 inches. Or cut it. The only reason patterns say 'break' instead of 'cut' is because a clean-cut end is harder to splice. You don't need to splice this.
-- Thread tail through remaining stitches and draw tight. I find it easiest to use the yarn needle as if it's another knitting needle, and just slip the stitches onto it from the dpn's, then pull the tail through once the dpn's are out of the way. They're kind of a hedgehog at this point, so it's easy to get tangled otherwise.
-- Sew in ends. Poke your needle through a stitch near the ring you just drew tight, rather than through the center; the yarn will hold better that way. Then just sew the yarn through the backs of a few stitches on the inside. Cut the excess, leaving at least a cm to keep it from pulling loose. Then thread the tail from where you started onto the needle and sew that inside the same way.
-- Show everyone your fab new hat. I still do this, no matter how many I've made. :D
There are lots of ways you can make this hat your own. I personally like to knit it plain and let the yarn speak for itself; I'm proud of my handspun and like to showcase it. But I've sometimes added stranded colorwork patterns, embroidery, beads, little fleece flowers, etc. Most knitting stitches will work just fine, too; ribs, cables, moss stitch, various pattern stitches. Even fairly dense lace stitches will work, although if you go to a thinner yarn you'll get an awfully floppy hat.
Have fun! And again, any questions at all, just ask. I want these instructions to be plain as day even if you're a total beginner.
So in the expectation that I'm not the only one who likes to be told how a thing works (rather than having to figure it out from blindly painting by numbers), I'm going to post the basic templates I use to knit some common items, and explain every dang thing as plainly as possible. If there's a question I didn't answer, no matter how basic, please ask it!
Basic Hat Template
This is a beginner-level knit, but if you use it as a jumping-off point for fancier stuff, the sky's the limit. I'll mention some of my favorite embellishments afterwards. If you're not used to using double-pointed needles, this would be a good project to try them out on.
Here's the abbreviated version, the notes I work from myself:
Using worsted weight handspun on #5 dpn’s:
co 80 st on 4 needles (20 ea), join
2x2 rib 8 rows
k 30 rows (total incl. rib 5.5 in)
pm at center of each needle
dec row: ssk at beginning of each needle, after each marker
k 2 rows
dec row
k 1 row
dec row
k 1 row
dec until 8 st remain, break yarn, sew tail through and draw tight.
And now here's the verbose version, where I explain EVERYTHING!
Materials:
-- About 50g/1.75oz of worsted-weight wool. Most skeins are at least that much, so one skein should do it. Worsted-weight is about 12wpi (wraps per inch); if you're not sure, you can test it by wrapping a length of it around a ruler. Hats are pretty forgiving, so you've got some wiggle room here.
-- A set of five double-pointed needles. I generally use size 5 (3.75 mm) needles, but again, you have wiggle room. You can go up or down sizes to get gauge, or just use your favorites and wing it. The hat will fit somebody. (You can also use a circular needle if you prefer them; I hate them for anything smaller than a sweater, but that's just me.)
-- Four stitch markers. You can get cheap plastic ones at your local yarn store, but I prefer the dangly kind with glass beads and whatnot. Not only are they more fun to look at, they're just a tad heavier and the rings are metal, so they're easier to move from one needle to another; just scoop them up and they slide into place, tick!
-- A tapestry needle or yarn needle for sewing in the ends of the yarn when you're done.
Skills:
-- Some kind of cast-on. I like the long-tail cast-on, but any kind will do really.
-- Knit and purl stitches.
-- Some kind of decrease. Use ssk if you want it to look like the picture.
Excellent instructions and handy videos of all these things can be found here: knittinghelp.com
Time:
-- A hat like this usually takes me three or four hours. Even if you're learning as you go, you should be able to do one in a weekend.
How to make the hat:
-- Knit a gauge swatch. I get 4 stitches per inch (which is 16 per 10 cm) with worsted on 5's. Knit a little square, measure an inch's worth of stitches in the middle of it, and see what you get. If you're noticeably off, you'll probably want to try bigger or smaller needles. Or you could adjust the number of stitches; as long as it's a multiple of 8, you'll have no problem with the decreases.
-- Cast on 80 stitches on 4 needles. That's 20 per needle. It's tricky to get 80 stitches on one dpn, so there are a couple things you could do. What I usually do is cast on 21 stitches, slip the most recent stitch onto the next needle and cast on 20 on that needle, etc. This means you've got a dangling chain of needles hanging out of your hand, but if that doesn't bother you, it's pretty simple. Just gotta remember not to end up with one extra stitch on the last needle, since you're not slipping it anywhere. Another option is to cast onto a straight or circular needle, then slip the stitches onto your dpn's.
-- Join, being careful not to twist. Patterns always say this. The day you scoff at 'being careful not to twist' is the day you'll twist it and not notice for an hour; do not tempt the knitting gods.
-- Work knit-2 purl-2 ribbing for 8 rows. Knit two stitches, then purl two stitches; keep doing this. If the number you cast on is divisible by 4, it'll line up right. The number of rows you do it for is fungible. You probably want at least 4 to keep it from curling; other than that, it's totally up to you.
-- Knit until the hat is about 5.5 inches long. That's 14 cm, and the measurement includes the ribbing. Most hat recipes say 6 inches, but I find that a frustrating length; long enough to meet my eyebrows and make me look like an ape, not quite long enough to turn up the brim. You can, of course, alter it if you want your hat taller.
-- Place a marker at the middle of each needle. Since there are 20 stitches on each needle, there'll be 10 on either side of the marker.
-- Decrease at the beginning of each needle and after each marker for one round. That's a total of 8 decreases; you should now have 9 stitches on either side of each marker, 18 per needle total.
-- Knit 2 normal rounds. No decreases, just knit.
-- Do another decrease round. Just like you did before; beginning of each needle, and after each marker.
-- Normal round.
-- Decrease round.
-- Normal round.
-- Decrease every round until 8 stitches are left. You can even go as far as 4 stitches left, but that's just one stitch per needle; your needles are going to want to slide out, especially if they're metal.
-- Break yarn, leaving about 6 inches. Or cut it. The only reason patterns say 'break' instead of 'cut' is because a clean-cut end is harder to splice. You don't need to splice this.
-- Thread tail through remaining stitches and draw tight. I find it easiest to use the yarn needle as if it's another knitting needle, and just slip the stitches onto it from the dpn's, then pull the tail through once the dpn's are out of the way. They're kind of a hedgehog at this point, so it's easy to get tangled otherwise.
-- Sew in ends. Poke your needle through a stitch near the ring you just drew tight, rather than through the center; the yarn will hold better that way. Then just sew the yarn through the backs of a few stitches on the inside. Cut the excess, leaving at least a cm to keep it from pulling loose. Then thread the tail from where you started onto the needle and sew that inside the same way.
-- Show everyone your fab new hat. I still do this, no matter how many I've made. :D
There are lots of ways you can make this hat your own. I personally like to knit it plain and let the yarn speak for itself; I'm proud of my handspun and like to showcase it. But I've sometimes added stranded colorwork patterns, embroidery, beads, little fleece flowers, etc. Most knitting stitches will work just fine, too; ribs, cables, moss stitch, various pattern stitches. Even fairly dense lace stitches will work, although if you go to a thinner yarn you'll get an awfully floppy hat.
Have fun! And again, any questions at all, just ask. I want these instructions to be plain as day even if you're a total beginner.
July 9, 2008
More loot-whoring, but this time for a good cause
Get handspun, handknit goodies dirt cheap, and help me help a friend at the same time! Details here!
July 8, 2008
Shameless Loot-Whoring
I generally try not to post just to say 'I PUT THING IN STORE, YOU GO BUY!' Cuz it's rude, yeah, but that probably wouldn't stop me if it wasn't also boring. So I don't do it. BUT...
Well, I'm just so amused by myself today.
Yep, I made buttons. They are all fiber-geek related. Here's the master sheet (click for make bigger):
Thassawl. Now back to my busy schedule of -- no, actually, I think I'll go snuggle Seebs. I have had enough busy today. :D
Well, I'm just so amused by myself today.
Yep, I made buttons. They are all fiber-geek related. Here's the master sheet (click for make bigger):
Thassawl. Now back to my busy schedule of -- no, actually, I think I'll go snuggle Seebs. I have had enough busy today. :D
July 3, 2008
Geekings and Sparklesnot
Warcraft Geekery meets Fiber Art
I have a massively nerdy plan. See, I'm a big gamer geek. Me and my boy are pretty much Gabe and Tycho with hippie hair and sexors. And my biggest game addiction is World of Warcraft. (Wanna see my tailor? So close to max skill! So close!) So when I thought of a way to combine that with my other addiction -- fiber -- I did a little dance of nerdish joy. No, I'm not going to knit a guild tabard.
I'm going to spin Imbued Netherweave.
Now, I know the 'weave' in that implies that it would be a woven fabric. But let me have my fun. I'm going to dye a variegated deep purple, card it with clear angelina, and -- and what? Does it need something else? Beads? Little felted voidwalkers? Hell, I dunno. It's just an idea so far. I try to avoid spinning sparklesnot into my yarns because the result is usually fugly and useless, but this is conceptual, man.
Hm, I might actually weave fabric from it. Sew a bag. Guess I could knit a bag. I dunno, would you be bothered if something was called an Imbued Netherweave Bag and it was actually knitted? I just know my pet autistic supergenius is going to have a problem with it.
My Kind Of People
There's a new craft store in town. I walked over there today and had a look. They didn't have much of anything I wanted to buy except knitting needles, but I still love them lots. See, they're my kind of people.
I mentioned in a previous entry how the local yarn store, Digs, is also a lots-of-other-things store. What I didn't mention was the attitude. Digs gives off a certain vibe. It's a stylish, clever, self-satisfied, hipster kind of vibe. I once went in there to buy some fabric (to make little pouches for my dpn's so I'd never again have to squint at every single #4 I own in the hope that one of them is secretly a #3, a project I have still not managed to complete) and couldn't find a single thing I was willing to pay money for. Every damn bolt of fabric in the place was hipster retro flowers and 70's wallpaper patterns in robin's egg and brown or chartreuse and pink, I fucking swear. The yarn they have is wonderful, all crazy textures and colors and sparkles and concepts -- but only about one-tenth of it could conceivably be used for anything other than an accessory scarf. Basically, the Malabrigo and the Brown Sheep Superwash are of use to me; everything else is for teenage girls with peg looms. Oh, and you have to walk through aisles of $40 scented candles to get to the yarn. So yeah... not feeling real comfy there.
No, I'm a craftsman, not a hipster. I'm a worker. I do things because they want doing, not because they make my friends squeal. I don't need hot pink mohair/angora at $21 per ounce. I need a wall of wool/nylon self-striping sock yarn.
The new store does not have this. Yet. What they have is every product Red Heart makes. Which means all they have is acrylic. I don't use acrylic. Even the stuff that feels nice doesn't wear well and isn't warm, and I've seen pictures of what it does to you if it melts to your skin -- you wanna cozy up by the fireplace in an acrylic sweater? Hello skin grafts! So... no, they don't have what I want a craft store to have, in terms of products. BUT. Big but. Wait, lemme get you a bigger one.
BUT. What they do have is the right attitude. When I asked if they planned to get in some natural fiber yarns, the lady behind the counter, whom I believe is the owner, got out a notebook and asked if I had any other suggestions. She wrote them down. She told me lots of people were asking for 100% wool and for sock yarns. When I told her what kind of stuff I like to work with, she took notes. She was really pleased that I liked the Takumi bamboo dpn's, and asked what sizes I'd like to see in stock. When I told her their selection of quilting fabrics is wonderful, she glowed.
If she wasn't the owner, she was at least a partner. She was a dumpy, cheery, Mom-ish woman in a sweatshirt and jeans, with no-time-for-curlers hair. Not a sleek shopgirl with a plastic smile. The shelving was all cheap and functional, the lighting was bright, there was no attempt to create a 'mood'. But everyone who was shopping there -- and there were quite a few -- looked relaxed and satisfied. The prices were pretty damn good too.
It's clearly a shop for people who want materials for exercising their own skill and creativity, a workmanlike shop, a shop for getting things done. Not an ironic hipster sparklesnot shop full of things for show and giggles. Once the new place gets their sock yarns in, I'll be doing all my shopping there.
Fugly
And while I'm being catty, I have to tell you about the Fugly.
People who are old enough to remember the last 'crafting renaissance' in the 70's know what I mean. If you're too young, ask your mum; she'll make amazing faces as she recalls it. The macramé owls with wooden bead claws clutching a piece of driftwood. The avocado green and mustard acrylic zig-zag afghans. The fringed purses, the appliqué dishtowels, the VESTS. Oh god the vests. Quilted ones, knitted ones, macramé ones, wobblishly hand-woven ones, all made of unshaped rectangles in dreadful poopy-diaper 'earth tones'. I love the colors of the earth, let me point out; nothing soothes my soul quite like seeing 'espresso' and 'parchment' paired in clean stripes, or a mottling of forest greens leavened by granite gray. But these earth tones looked like nothing found in nature. They looked like things found in the bottom of the crisper drawer upon returning from a two-week vacation.
So as crafting resurges again, I've been fighting not to cringe. I lived through hand-sewn backpacks with yellow rickrack and iron-on ladybugs. I do not want my art, about which I really care, to be compared with the kind of therapy-for-shut-ins yarn-poop that defined the 70's for me. I've been trying not to jump at shadows, trying not to defensively insist that the flame-colored laceweight merino I'm spinning is very high quality lovely stuff suitable for heirloom knitting, and is not orange dammit.
On occasion I've wondered if the 'art yarn' contingent might be where the fugly is. Certainly it's possible to attach some really stupid shit to your lumpy yarn and call it art yarn. If you talk a good line, you can get $50 a skein for forty yards of grab-bag-fiber rope and half a dozen doll heads. It is to describe this nonsense that Luka coined the term 'sparklesnot', in fact, and I've found the word very useful. But some art yarn is awfully nice; I wouldn't work with it myself, but I can see the appeal. And the same goes for free-form knitting; while I myself would neither make nor wear a hat that looks like the 'after' picture from a piñata party, there's a certain DIY, fuck-you appeal to the stuff.
And then, just when I was starting to relax... I found the fugly. Have you heard of the 'butterfly loom'?
It's a way of making sloppy-looking squares with loopy fringe all around the edges. You can make many awkward and stupid things by attaching these objects together. Like purses that look like tangled yarn globs, or scarves that look like tangled yarn globs, or ponchos that look like you dove headfirst through a landfill and kept whatever stuck.
This shit is absolutely equivalent to the worst fug of the 70's. It, like that fug of bygone days, is a ton of fun if you're teaching kindergarten, and absolutely unacceptable in the decorating scheme or wardrobe of an adult. It, like fug of yore, has been 'raised to an art form' by people who want kudos for genuine craft without bothering to develop any genuine skill. It is the real deal.
I find it a huge relief. If this is the extent of our fug, I think we'll be all right. No one outside the art-therapy room will even pretend to take it seriously, and meanwhile, real craftsmen and craftswomen are producing things like this: Susanna Hanssen's Bohus knitting page.
Yeah, I guess there's hope for crafting in the 21st century. Just do me a favor and don't put avocado next to burnt orange EVEN FOR FUNNY. My heart can't take it.
I have a massively nerdy plan. See, I'm a big gamer geek. Me and my boy are pretty much Gabe and Tycho with hippie hair and sexors. And my biggest game addiction is World of Warcraft. (Wanna see my tailor? So close to max skill! So close!) So when I thought of a way to combine that with my other addiction -- fiber -- I did a little dance of nerdish joy. No, I'm not going to knit a guild tabard.
I'm going to spin Imbued Netherweave.
Now, I know the 'weave' in that implies that it would be a woven fabric. But let me have my fun. I'm going to dye a variegated deep purple, card it with clear angelina, and -- and what? Does it need something else? Beads? Little felted voidwalkers? Hell, I dunno. It's just an idea so far. I try to avoid spinning sparklesnot into my yarns because the result is usually fugly and useless, but this is conceptual, man.
Hm, I might actually weave fabric from it. Sew a bag. Guess I could knit a bag. I dunno, would you be bothered if something was called an Imbued Netherweave Bag and it was actually knitted? I just know my pet autistic supergenius is going to have a problem with it.
My Kind Of People
There's a new craft store in town. I walked over there today and had a look. They didn't have much of anything I wanted to buy except knitting needles, but I still love them lots. See, they're my kind of people.
I mentioned in a previous entry how the local yarn store, Digs, is also a lots-of-other-things store. What I didn't mention was the attitude. Digs gives off a certain vibe. It's a stylish, clever, self-satisfied, hipster kind of vibe. I once went in there to buy some fabric (to make little pouches for my dpn's so I'd never again have to squint at every single #4 I own in the hope that one of them is secretly a #3, a project I have still not managed to complete) and couldn't find a single thing I was willing to pay money for. Every damn bolt of fabric in the place was hipster retro flowers and 70's wallpaper patterns in robin's egg and brown or chartreuse and pink, I fucking swear. The yarn they have is wonderful, all crazy textures and colors and sparkles and concepts -- but only about one-tenth of it could conceivably be used for anything other than an accessory scarf. Basically, the Malabrigo and the Brown Sheep Superwash are of use to me; everything else is for teenage girls with peg looms. Oh, and you have to walk through aisles of $40 scented candles to get to the yarn. So yeah... not feeling real comfy there.
No, I'm a craftsman, not a hipster. I'm a worker. I do things because they want doing, not because they make my friends squeal. I don't need hot pink mohair/angora at $21 per ounce. I need a wall of wool/nylon self-striping sock yarn.
The new store does not have this. Yet. What they have is every product Red Heart makes. Which means all they have is acrylic. I don't use acrylic. Even the stuff that feels nice doesn't wear well and isn't warm, and I've seen pictures of what it does to you if it melts to your skin -- you wanna cozy up by the fireplace in an acrylic sweater? Hello skin grafts! So... no, they don't have what I want a craft store to have, in terms of products. BUT. Big but. Wait, lemme get you a bigger one.
BUT. What they do have is the right attitude. When I asked if they planned to get in some natural fiber yarns, the lady behind the counter, whom I believe is the owner, got out a notebook and asked if I had any other suggestions. She wrote them down. She told me lots of people were asking for 100% wool and for sock yarns. When I told her what kind of stuff I like to work with, she took notes. She was really pleased that I liked the Takumi bamboo dpn's, and asked what sizes I'd like to see in stock. When I told her their selection of quilting fabrics is wonderful, she glowed.
If she wasn't the owner, she was at least a partner. She was a dumpy, cheery, Mom-ish woman in a sweatshirt and jeans, with no-time-for-curlers hair. Not a sleek shopgirl with a plastic smile. The shelving was all cheap and functional, the lighting was bright, there was no attempt to create a 'mood'. But everyone who was shopping there -- and there were quite a few -- looked relaxed and satisfied. The prices were pretty damn good too.
It's clearly a shop for people who want materials for exercising their own skill and creativity, a workmanlike shop, a shop for getting things done. Not an ironic hipster sparklesnot shop full of things for show and giggles. Once the new place gets their sock yarns in, I'll be doing all my shopping there.
Fugly
And while I'm being catty, I have to tell you about the Fugly.
People who are old enough to remember the last 'crafting renaissance' in the 70's know what I mean. If you're too young, ask your mum; she'll make amazing faces as she recalls it. The macramé owls with wooden bead claws clutching a piece of driftwood. The avocado green and mustard acrylic zig-zag afghans. The fringed purses, the appliqué dishtowels, the VESTS. Oh god the vests. Quilted ones, knitted ones, macramé ones, wobblishly hand-woven ones, all made of unshaped rectangles in dreadful poopy-diaper 'earth tones'. I love the colors of the earth, let me point out; nothing soothes my soul quite like seeing 'espresso' and 'parchment' paired in clean stripes, or a mottling of forest greens leavened by granite gray. But these earth tones looked like nothing found in nature. They looked like things found in the bottom of the crisper drawer upon returning from a two-week vacation.
So as crafting resurges again, I've been fighting not to cringe. I lived through hand-sewn backpacks with yellow rickrack and iron-on ladybugs. I do not want my art, about which I really care, to be compared with the kind of therapy-for-shut-ins yarn-poop that defined the 70's for me. I've been trying not to jump at shadows, trying not to defensively insist that the flame-colored laceweight merino I'm spinning is very high quality lovely stuff suitable for heirloom knitting, and is not orange dammit.
On occasion I've wondered if the 'art yarn' contingent might be where the fugly is. Certainly it's possible to attach some really stupid shit to your lumpy yarn and call it art yarn. If you talk a good line, you can get $50 a skein for forty yards of grab-bag-fiber rope and half a dozen doll heads. It is to describe this nonsense that Luka coined the term 'sparklesnot', in fact, and I've found the word very useful. But some art yarn is awfully nice; I wouldn't work with it myself, but I can see the appeal. And the same goes for free-form knitting; while I myself would neither make nor wear a hat that looks like the 'after' picture from a piñata party, there's a certain DIY, fuck-you appeal to the stuff.
And then, just when I was starting to relax... I found the fugly. Have you heard of the 'butterfly loom'?
It's a way of making sloppy-looking squares with loopy fringe all around the edges. You can make many awkward and stupid things by attaching these objects together. Like purses that look like tangled yarn globs, or scarves that look like tangled yarn globs, or ponchos that look like you dove headfirst through a landfill and kept whatever stuck.
This shit is absolutely equivalent to the worst fug of the 70's. It, like that fug of bygone days, is a ton of fun if you're teaching kindergarten, and absolutely unacceptable in the decorating scheme or wardrobe of an adult. It, like fug of yore, has been 'raised to an art form' by people who want kudos for genuine craft without bothering to develop any genuine skill. It is the real deal.
I find it a huge relief. If this is the extent of our fug, I think we'll be all right. No one outside the art-therapy room will even pretend to take it seriously, and meanwhile, real craftsmen and craftswomen are producing things like this: Susanna Hanssen's Bohus knitting page.
Yeah, I guess there's hope for crafting in the 21st century. Just do me a favor and don't put avocado next to burnt orange EVEN FOR FUNNY. My heart can't take it.
June 17, 2008
Stash; process; tubes.
Wow, it's been a while since I posted. Didja miss me? I've been Action Guy instead of Words Guy for a while. Which sounds much cooler than it is; most of that action has been of the knit-one-purl-one and ply-from-both-ends-of-the-ball variety. I haven't done anything blogworthy, just a lot of the same stuff I always do. I haven't even dyed anything technically interesting. Cool-looking and fun to spin, yes, but by the tried and true method of putting the wool in a pot with some dye and making it hot for a while. I did a couple things where after that I put the wet wool in a baking dish and sprinkled more colors on it, then made it hot some more. Then I rinsed it, let it dry, and made it be yarn. This involved moving my foot up and down for a long time. See? ACTION!
At long last, though, I have words. Mainly because I've been reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's books. Damn she's a funny writer. If you don't know the Yarn Harlot, you must read her blog immediately.
Stash:
According to the Yarn Harlot, the 'low-stasher' is a rare bird. From what I've seen in knitblogs and Ravelry and whatnot, she's right. Knitters like to buy far more yarn than they can use. I've seen pictures of stashes that have more wool than my favorite yarn shop. And it's not a small yarn shop, either. (It's not hard to have more yarn than my local yarn shop, Digs, which is also a fabric, soap, clothing, book, card, candle, and randomgirlyshit store. This upsets me more than it should. I just want the yarn.) Apparently, it just ain't normal to buy only yarn you have a use for.
Well, I'm not used to being normal. It would weird me out if I were normal. Me, I leave the yarn store without yarn more often than not. Yeah, you heard me. I walk out with no yarn. More than half the time.
Why? Well, I got to thinking about why, and this is what I came up with:
1: I spin. I spin quite well. I like my handspun better than almost all commercial yarn. So I often find myself picking up something lovely, thinking, "This would be just perfect if it was 100% merino instead of merino/mohair, if that brown was a little deeper and it had green instead of blue, and it looks splitty, it could stand to be spun just a teensy bit tighter..." -- and I rush home to dye and spin the yarn in my head. I imagine the almost-perfect yarn waving forlornly at me as I leave, then going to post Evanescence lyrics on its Myspace.
2: I'm picky. This kinda goes hand in hand with #1, but I was picky even before I learned to spin. I touch everything in the store, just like the people with the huge stashes, but I guess I don't like what I'm feeling as much as they do. It's not really a matter of scratchy versus soft, because sometimes I'm in the mood for a little texture and will deliberately pick something that's not too soft. But the texture, the color, the weight, everything has to be just right or I don't even pick it up.
3: And thirdly, probably the most important contributor to my small-stashy-ness, I'm a night owl. My 'OMFG gotta cast on rightnow!' urges tend to occur at about one in the morning. If you know of a yarn store that's open at one in the morning, by all means let me know. Now, I know some people stockpile yarn against these occasions, and I do occasionally buy something because it's just the kind of thing I most often use -- I do have some stash. But then when the urge occurs, I use one of those things I stockpiled. So it gets used up. So the stash stays small. Voila.
I'm not by any means saying that other people ought to be the way I am. In a way I kind of envy the people with huge stashes. But when I envy them, I don't think about having all that yarn, I think about using all that yarn. When I have an idea that I could use some of my stash yarn for, that adds extra joy to the project. It's like... processing the yarn through, turning it from potential to actual, is what gives me joy.
Yeah. It's like that. A big stash just looks to me like... backlog.
So that's why my stash all fits in one bookshelf, and is likely to continue to do so. Granted, there are yarn deposits all over the house, wherever I happen to have been working on a project -- a small pile on the dining room table, a layer on the top shelf of my Etsy-business area, and quite a thick stratum of mostly-finished projects on my desk -- but if I gathered it all together, it would just about fill the empty bottom shelf of the bookshelf my stash lives in.
Uh-huh, my stash area has an empty shelf. Has done for at least a year now. I'm a freak. A FREAK I TELL YOU! I'm super freaky. Yow! *James Brown dance*
Process
I think my stash minimalism is closely tied to my knitting style. You may have heard that there are two types of knitters, 'process' knitters and 'product' knitters. Process knitters are about the knitting, and project knitters are about the having-knitted. Of course every knitter's a mix of these. If you like knitted objects but don't like knitting, you'll just buy something someone else knitted. If you like knitting but don't like having knitted objects, you'll... um. What would you do? Make one scarf six miles long? Knit bizarre art emplacements that trail off in knotted strings and found objects, and sell them to museums for millions? (Note to self: find out if it's been done.) Anyway, it's like the Kinsey scale for knitting.
Me, I'm pretty far over on the 'process' side of the scale. I don't even like patterns, because that's too much thinking and not enough knitting. I'll happily make ginormous garter-stitch afghans, which most knitters consider the equivalent of rolling a rock up a hill over and over for eternity. Hell, maybe I'd enjoy rolling a rock up a hill. I like sweeping. And digging holes. I once had a job taking tags off tiny decorative objects and putting different tags on them; I was happy as a clam doing nothing but picking tags and sticking tags all day. I find repetitive activity soothing, I guess.
Where this ties into stash is in the method I use for deciding what to knit. I don't generally think something like, "I want to make a cropped, cabled cardigan out of blue-green wool-silk tweed." My thought process is more like, "I want to make a flat thing with small needles." Sometimes it's just, "Makes mor loopz now!" I know I don't look like a lolcat, but occasionally I'm just... not complex.
So I get this urge, at one in the morning, to make a flat thing with small needles. I go to the cylindrical pottery thingummy that I keep my needles in, and see some needles that look about the right amount of small, and I take them. Sometimes I look at them and discover that they are, say, size 4 needles. Sometimes I don't even look. They feel about right, that's what counts. And I have an idea of what kind of yarn feels right on this size of needles, so I grab all the yarn that feels right-needle-ish.
So I'm holding these needles -- usually scratching my head with them -- and looking at this pile of yarn. My stash is, as I mentioned, small, so there's maybe half a dozen yarns there at most. I might pick them up one at a time, or poke them, or wind a strand around my finger. Now I'm thinking about the flat thing. I feel like flat. What things are flat? Scarves, afghans, parts of sweaters. No, parts of sweaters aren't flat enough; they're meant to join up, so you have to think about them as round. Scarves and afghans. Do I have enough for an afghan? Nope. Looks like I'm making a scarf. Images of possible scarves flit through my head as I look at the yarns. As soon as I see a picture I like, I grab the yarn that inspired it and put the rest back.
Then I sit down and cast on, and gleefully make mor loopz all night. It keeps my hands happy while I watch videos or read. (Yes, you can read while you knit! They make little book-holder-upper doodads, you can get them at most big bookstores.) When my project is done, I give a little sigh of sadness. No mor loopz. All goen. Sigh.
Pause.
Ooh, I want to knit a round thing on big needles! *rush to stash* *grab size 9 dpn's* *ponder several colors of Lamb's Pride Worsted for five minutes* *cast on hat*
Tubes
Which brings us to my favorite thing to knit. I reckon most folks, if you ask them what's their favorite thing to knit, will describe a finished item. Sweaters. Mittens. Baby blankets. But I, well, I am superfreaky, as we have already determined. My favorite thing to knit is tubes.
Tubes are, of course, very useful in knitting finished items. Socks, hats, sleeves -- really, the human body can only be properly fitted by making tubes. But the freaky thing is, it's the tube part I like. Having to put a heel or a toe on it kinda... dilutes the joy. Oh, I do it, of course. I put thumb holes in wrist warmers, heels on socks, round tops on hats (with the keen spirally decrease, I do like how that looks). But if I had my druthers -- if I could think of a use for it -- I'd just knit a humongous tube, and I wouldn't cast off until it was so long it was a pain to turn around.
Having realized this, I think I'm going to knit a series of arm and leg warmers for my Etsy shop.
Hm, and maybe neck warmers. The kind that are just a soft, stretchy cowl with no shaping. Just round and round and round. Mmmm, tubes.
Scuse me, I have to go plunder my stash.
At long last, though, I have words. Mainly because I've been reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's books. Damn she's a funny writer. If you don't know the Yarn Harlot, you must read her blog immediately.
Stash:
According to the Yarn Harlot, the 'low-stasher' is a rare bird. From what I've seen in knitblogs and Ravelry and whatnot, she's right. Knitters like to buy far more yarn than they can use. I've seen pictures of stashes that have more wool than my favorite yarn shop. And it's not a small yarn shop, either. (It's not hard to have more yarn than my local yarn shop, Digs, which is also a fabric, soap, clothing, book, card, candle, and randomgirlyshit store. This upsets me more than it should. I just want the yarn.) Apparently, it just ain't normal to buy only yarn you have a use for.
Well, I'm not used to being normal. It would weird me out if I were normal. Me, I leave the yarn store without yarn more often than not. Yeah, you heard me. I walk out with no yarn. More than half the time.
Why? Well, I got to thinking about why, and this is what I came up with:
1: I spin. I spin quite well. I like my handspun better than almost all commercial yarn. So I often find myself picking up something lovely, thinking, "This would be just perfect if it was 100% merino instead of merino/mohair, if that brown was a little deeper and it had green instead of blue, and it looks splitty, it could stand to be spun just a teensy bit tighter..." -- and I rush home to dye and spin the yarn in my head. I imagine the almost-perfect yarn waving forlornly at me as I leave, then going to post Evanescence lyrics on its Myspace.
2: I'm picky. This kinda goes hand in hand with #1, but I was picky even before I learned to spin. I touch everything in the store, just like the people with the huge stashes, but I guess I don't like what I'm feeling as much as they do. It's not really a matter of scratchy versus soft, because sometimes I'm in the mood for a little texture and will deliberately pick something that's not too soft. But the texture, the color, the weight, everything has to be just right or I don't even pick it up.
3: And thirdly, probably the most important contributor to my small-stashy-ness, I'm a night owl. My 'OMFG gotta cast on rightnow!' urges tend to occur at about one in the morning. If you know of a yarn store that's open at one in the morning, by all means let me know. Now, I know some people stockpile yarn against these occasions, and I do occasionally buy something because it's just the kind of thing I most often use -- I do have some stash. But then when the urge occurs, I use one of those things I stockpiled. So it gets used up. So the stash stays small. Voila.
I'm not by any means saying that other people ought to be the way I am. In a way I kind of envy the people with huge stashes. But when I envy them, I don't think about having all that yarn, I think about using all that yarn. When I have an idea that I could use some of my stash yarn for, that adds extra joy to the project. It's like... processing the yarn through, turning it from potential to actual, is what gives me joy.
Yeah. It's like that. A big stash just looks to me like... backlog.
So that's why my stash all fits in one bookshelf, and is likely to continue to do so. Granted, there are yarn deposits all over the house, wherever I happen to have been working on a project -- a small pile on the dining room table, a layer on the top shelf of my Etsy-business area, and quite a thick stratum of mostly-finished projects on my desk -- but if I gathered it all together, it would just about fill the empty bottom shelf of the bookshelf my stash lives in.
Uh-huh, my stash area has an empty shelf. Has done for at least a year now. I'm a freak. A FREAK I TELL YOU! I'm super freaky. Yow! *James Brown dance*
Process
I think my stash minimalism is closely tied to my knitting style. You may have heard that there are two types of knitters, 'process' knitters and 'product' knitters. Process knitters are about the knitting, and project knitters are about the having-knitted. Of course every knitter's a mix of these. If you like knitted objects but don't like knitting, you'll just buy something someone else knitted. If you like knitting but don't like having knitted objects, you'll... um. What would you do? Make one scarf six miles long? Knit bizarre art emplacements that trail off in knotted strings and found objects, and sell them to museums for millions? (Note to self: find out if it's been done.) Anyway, it's like the Kinsey scale for knitting.
Me, I'm pretty far over on the 'process' side of the scale. I don't even like patterns, because that's too much thinking and not enough knitting. I'll happily make ginormous garter-stitch afghans, which most knitters consider the equivalent of rolling a rock up a hill over and over for eternity. Hell, maybe I'd enjoy rolling a rock up a hill. I like sweeping. And digging holes. I once had a job taking tags off tiny decorative objects and putting different tags on them; I was happy as a clam doing nothing but picking tags and sticking tags all day. I find repetitive activity soothing, I guess.
Where this ties into stash is in the method I use for deciding what to knit. I don't generally think something like, "I want to make a cropped, cabled cardigan out of blue-green wool-silk tweed." My thought process is more like, "I want to make a flat thing with small needles." Sometimes it's just, "Makes mor loopz now!" I know I don't look like a lolcat, but occasionally I'm just... not complex.
So I get this urge, at one in the morning, to make a flat thing with small needles. I go to the cylindrical pottery thingummy that I keep my needles in, and see some needles that look about the right amount of small, and I take them. Sometimes I look at them and discover that they are, say, size 4 needles. Sometimes I don't even look. They feel about right, that's what counts. And I have an idea of what kind of yarn feels right on this size of needles, so I grab all the yarn that feels right-needle-ish.
So I'm holding these needles -- usually scratching my head with them -- and looking at this pile of yarn. My stash is, as I mentioned, small, so there's maybe half a dozen yarns there at most. I might pick them up one at a time, or poke them, or wind a strand around my finger. Now I'm thinking about the flat thing. I feel like flat. What things are flat? Scarves, afghans, parts of sweaters. No, parts of sweaters aren't flat enough; they're meant to join up, so you have to think about them as round. Scarves and afghans. Do I have enough for an afghan? Nope. Looks like I'm making a scarf. Images of possible scarves flit through my head as I look at the yarns. As soon as I see a picture I like, I grab the yarn that inspired it and put the rest back.
Then I sit down and cast on, and gleefully make mor loopz all night. It keeps my hands happy while I watch videos or read. (Yes, you can read while you knit! They make little book-holder-upper doodads, you can get them at most big bookstores.) When my project is done, I give a little sigh of sadness. No mor loopz. All goen. Sigh.
Pause.
Ooh, I want to knit a round thing on big needles! *rush to stash* *grab size 9 dpn's* *ponder several colors of Lamb's Pride Worsted for five minutes* *cast on hat*
Tubes
Which brings us to my favorite thing to knit. I reckon most folks, if you ask them what's their favorite thing to knit, will describe a finished item. Sweaters. Mittens. Baby blankets. But I, well, I am superfreaky, as we have already determined. My favorite thing to knit is tubes.
Tubes are, of course, very useful in knitting finished items. Socks, hats, sleeves -- really, the human body can only be properly fitted by making tubes. But the freaky thing is, it's the tube part I like. Having to put a heel or a toe on it kinda... dilutes the joy. Oh, I do it, of course. I put thumb holes in wrist warmers, heels on socks, round tops on hats (with the keen spirally decrease, I do like how that looks). But if I had my druthers -- if I could think of a use for it -- I'd just knit a humongous tube, and I wouldn't cast off until it was so long it was a pain to turn around.
Having realized this, I think I'm going to knit a series of arm and leg warmers for my Etsy shop.
Hm, and maybe neck warmers. The kind that are just a soft, stretchy cowl with no shaping. Just round and round and round. Mmmm, tubes.
Scuse me, I have to go plunder my stash.
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