Thu 15 May 2008
Well, here we are at Thursday already. And what do I have to show for it? Not much on the knitting front. See this?
That, my friends, is a parallelogram. And it is not a rectangular one. I knit up a swatch of the alpaca the other night, and it has a huge bias.
If it were a small bias, I think I’d ignore it and just say that you block the heck out of lace anyway. But it’s not a small bias. According to the Knitter’s Book of Yarn, I should “choose a project that incorporates both the knit and purl stitches.” Or, use a needle half a size smaller, or rewind the yarn by balling it opposite to the direction in which it was spun.
The ball winding didn’t seem to do much. As I said, this is pretty biased; the singles twist seems to be much tighter than the plying twist. I’m not surprised that twisting as minimal as ball winding isn’t changing anything.
Lacy things and smaller needles don’t work together so well.
This leaves me with choosing something with knit and purl stitches. Fortunately, most lace is really good at pairing decreases, too, which should help to counteract the twist issues. The only problem is that I can’t find a lace I like for this yarn. I’ve tried several, and I’ve been through the Walker books at least a dozen times (I don’t think that’s even an exaggeration). Nothing is speaking to me. Well, actually, a couple of things did, but then they didn’t look good in this yarn. I need a fairly open pattern so that I get enough stretch to make something decent-sized from the small amount of yardage. But if a pattern is too open it looks strange done in such a heavy yarn. I love the way my first lace project came out, and it was a lace pattern with a heavy yarn.
The problem? All of the patterns that I am drawn to that meet the criteria above are very similar to this one. If the colors were really different, I’d be ok with that. But they’re so similar that I want to use very different stitch patterns.
So, unfortunately, I am stymied on this project for the moment. I’m sure something will turn up for this yarn, but I’m not sure that now is its moment (which is too bad…I’ve really been enjoying petting it…). I might give it another night of pattern gazing before returning it to the stash pile, but now I need a backup plan, just in case. This might require another trip to the stash…
Here is some crazy talk – what would taking an entrelac approach do? I"m not sure if breaking the bias up in lots of little rectangles would help or just make it more chaotic.
Another thought – though not so good from the small amount of yarn available standpoint – what about a circular pattern? The bias might make a spiral.
It will be fun (and educational) to see what you come up with.
I hate it when inspiration fails to match the realities of a particular yarn. It's probably worth waiting for just the right thing for a yarn like this, though, and meanwhile, you can always pet it! (Honestly, I sometimes wish I had kept a skein of alpaca from my sweater just to pet…I'm weird, I know.)
Wow, that is one heck of an impressive bias! What about a scarf with a reversible lacy motif? That is, the designer intentionally balances out the pattern so that you get equal doses of the motif on either side. Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer (Heartstrings Fiber Arts) has done this in a few of her scarf patterns. Anyway, that'd give you the balancing of knits and purls without forcing you to go straight to ribbing. Just a thought. Good luck!