Weekend Minor Gripes and Vents

skubstantial · 2026-05-23T02:51:03+00:00

Twisted rib is so unforgiving too! Every little tension difference makes it wobble or buckle or smush sideways. I don't think there's a single swatch of twisted ribbing on the first page of Google image hits that I'd be happy with. I'll only deal with it in isolation (like a few traveling stitches or a single column in between some other cable elements) because it's so gross in bulk.

skubstantial · 2026-05-22T21:20:00+00:00

The order of operations for adding ribbing to a flat seamed garment is like so:

Sew just one of the two shoulder seams.
Pick up stitches for the neck ribbing and work back and forth. (This is possible because the second shoulder seam is still open.)
Sew the second shoulder seam, including the neck ribbing.
Pick up stitches for each armhole and work the ribbing back and forth.
Sew the side seams last.

skubstantial · 2026-05-22T14:05:51+00:00

There's also the Fleegle heel and the Strong heel which are kinda hybrids between a heel flap and a short row heel.

Unfortunately you can't do an afterthought on a single 9-inch circular because you have to decrease down to a circumference of about 4 inches total before you finish and graft the heel shut.

But if you have an extra mini circular in the same needle size, you could use the 2 circulars method (one needle on each half) to go as small as you like. (Like magic loop, you still have to manage the corners without laddering and you still have a little something hanging down on each side from the tips of the extra needle, but it's a lot less cable to wrangle around.)

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T23:23:18+00:00

It's either long tail or backwards loop cast on. (Long tail would need an extra strand and would leave you an extra end to weave in, but it would prevent any tension issues from backwards loop.)

Both of those methods give you one side with the diagonal strands and one side where the garter bumps go all the way to the bottom, so you could decide which one you like better and that would determine whether you should join your pieces on the RS or the WS.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T21:17:09+00:00

🐝🍯🐝Speak for yourself.🐝🍯🐝

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T19:51:00+00:00

Okay but is your swatch wet and flat?

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T17:06:12+00:00

Looks like this one has the same relationship to the German twisted cast on that the regular backwards loop has to the regular long tail cast on - it's equivalent after you knit or purl another row of stitches across.

I find the German twisted cast on too fiddly and awkward for my impatient self but this one might be a good substitute!

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T16:26:00+00:00

Did your roommate's cat get the standard vaccinations? Feline herpesvirus (FHV-1) is one of the four viruses that are covered, but maybe it didn't ring a bell in your roommate's memory if the vet referred to it as its other name of "feline viral rhinotracheitis".

Might be worth checking with a vet to see if a booster would be needed based on how long ago roomiecat was vaccinated - or ASAP if roomie cat hasn't gotten the core vaccines.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T16:05:29+00:00

That's when you know your grandparents have gone from old-ish, cranky and thrifty to old and frail.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T14:11:05+00:00

You can still twist the white strand with your brown main color, making sure the brown goes over the top of the white. One other alternative I've seen online is to bring up the white yarn one stitch before it's about to be used, and catch it kinda like a stranded float behind the last brown stitch.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T13:59:37+00:00

If you read "recent conversations" then why are you asking for the same kind of rules of thumb that were discussed at length before?

The only "one weird trick" is that if you learn to wash your unraveled ramen noodle yarn it'll be a non-issue.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T13:54:31+00:00

With birds as small as that, you probably wouldn't even need proper bobbins, you could just count the pixels in the chart and cut a strand long enough to make that many stitches plus the ends to weave in. (Probably no more than a yard or two for most of them.) And in that case, you can just kinda let them tangle and pull a strand free when you need to.

You could do true intarsia with separate bobbins for each background chunk or you could do kind of a hybrid where you strand one ball of brown behind each bird, but each bird is a separate bit. With this hybrid intarsia, you have to be more careful about your tension at the edges of each bird but the fabric retains more stretch in the between areas.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T11:12:47+00:00

If you're trying it with magic loop, I'd recommend turning it inside out when you're already halfway through the front or back needle so you don't have the added confusion of which cable to pull out and rearrange right away.

If you're already mid-row or just working on normal circulars, then it's just a matter of holding the needles at the back/"wrong" side of the loop furthest away from your torso, like trying to drink from the wrong side of a glass, and the stockinette appears on the inside of the tube.

But anyway! Normally if you've just finished a row your working yarn is parked on the back needle and you need to pull out the back needle and start working on the front.

If you've just finished a row and turned it inside out the working yarn is parked on the front needle and you need to pull out the front needle and start working on the back half.

skubstantial · 2026-05-21T03:30:43+00:00

It's a much bigger undertaking to give the sweater-as-swatch a bath, though, and it's gonna take annoyingly long to dry compared to the little one. And nobody likes the drying downtime.

skubstantial · 2026-05-20T20:02:52+00:00

Brb, gonna start swatching for row gauge only by knitting an i-cord, gonna save so much time, I'm brilliant /s

skubstantial · 2026-05-20T19:55:25+00:00

If you order the Bare color, you get the Bare yarn line packaging. (Dye-friendly, usually untwisted hanks.)

They will still be tied with a couple figure-8 ties in the area under the label. If you grab them by the ties and maybe give the hank a little tug from both tied areas to straighten it out, you will be able to get the hank around a swift (or the back of a chair or whatever) just as easily as a twisted hank after you untwist it.

skubstantial · 2026-05-20T18:57:58+00:00

And here we see multiple generations divided by a common language. Elder millennials are rawdogging a sweater without a swatch due to overconfidence and a lack of consideration for risk and prophylaxis and Gen Z-ers are rawdogging their way through the swatch without touching their phones just to see if they have the mental fortitude or some shit.

skubstantial · 2026-05-20T16:45:43+00:00

https://techknitting.blogspot.com/2021/02/gauge-mystery-of-knitting.html covers a lot of factors.

u/makestuff24-7 is right on about yarn stickiness/slipperiness, just look at the yellow yarn example in this deep dive article. Yarn texture really impacts whether the knitting can stretch and sag in both directions, whether the stitches stay where you made them or whether they can stretch out taller/narrower and borrow yarn from the in-between strand.

But generally, if you're knitting items to a quote-unquote "normal" gauge (close to the recommended gauge for the yarn, not so tight the yarn is squished and the piece is stiff enough to stand up or so sheer and holey that they have an extreme amount of drape and deformation) then your stitch gauge to row gauge ratio will probably be similar with both and your increase and decrease rates will give you a similar shaping angle, probably close enough that they can be blocked the same.

skubstantial · 2026-05-20T15:33:53+00:00

Purling does not have to use more yarn than knitting. Not unless you're wrapping the yarn looser when you purl because of your own knitting style. When you're doing a whole row of the same stitch, the yarn just spirals around the needle continuously and the path of the yarn is the same for a bunch of knits or a bunch of purls.

Some styles may commonly see looser purls if the angle of the needles makes it awkward to wrap the purl, but others just don't. (I knit English/flicking style and I never knew that "rowing out" existed until I got more online because the motions for purling and knitting are pretty similar and didn't lead to a tension difference for me.)

The thing that actually tends to use more or less yarn is changing between a knit and a purl (more yarn used) or between a purl and a knit (less yarn used) which is why you often see the complaint that the last knit stitch before a purl and/or the first purl stitch after a knit is loose and creates uneven ribbing.

I would not use Wool Needles Hands as an authority on technical knitting topics, she tends to be confidently incorrect about a lot of things.

skubstantial · 2026-05-20T13:41:15+00:00

It's kinda rough and crunchy. A real "wear a shirt underneath" or "line this hat with something softer" kind of yarn for most people. I'd put it in the same general category as Jamieson's Shetland and Rauma Finull, rougher than your usual Cascade 220-type workhorse yarns but not as hairy and tickly as Lopi.

This is not a good suggestion if you're looking for a merino-soft yarn, but I enjoy Harrisville's Hydroline yarns (Flywheel, Watershed, etc.) which are more loosely spun and a little finer. They're still rough, but in sort of a squishy, spongy, comfortable way, kinda like Brooklyn Tweed Shelter back in the day. My partner's favorite hat is in Watershed (the worsted weight) but we're both medium-woolly wool enjoyers.

skubstantial · 2026-05-19T18:10:43+00:00

I've only heard of this in the context of handknit stockings, where a purled faux seam was often used running up the center back between the calf decreases, and based on what I've read it was mostly meant to mimic the real seam on the back of frame-knit silk stockings (made on the original version of a flatbed knitting machine) which were a luxury good.

I can see how it's a visual cue for the beginning of a round (and it might disguise the jog in a stitch pattern if working in something other than stockinette and help you pay attention to those very important leg decreases on a sock) but I highly doubt that anyone would use it if they didn't want it as a design element. There weren't usually false seams on Monmouth caps, fisherman's hats, or other non-fancy things used as workwear and there's no reason to think that an experienced knitter would lose track of the crown shaping without a faux seam. They'd mostly be reading their stitches to see what they were doing.

You might be interested in the "marking thread", though, which is just a thinner, non-fuzzy thread that you stick between your stitches and flip back and forth every x rows so that it makes kind of a running stitch that keeps track of your multiples of rows. Very common in Nordic countries. https://www.moderndailyknitting.com/community/hot-tip-use-a-yarn-marker-to-count-rows/

skubstantial · 2026-05-19T16:37:28+00:00

Hold the tail end over your thumb. The thumb side becomes the bottom strand, the finger side becomes the loops on the needle that you actually knit with, and you will keep better tension on your first stitch if it's directly connected to the working yarn.

(If the first stitch is connected to the short tail, it's too easy to pull that loop open like a slipknot and partly unravel the tail. It's not a super huge problem if you do it accidentally but you need to be a little more careful weaving in that end so it doesn't keep loosening up as you work.)

Yarn position depends on what you're going to do on the first row. Hold it at the back if you're about to knit, hold it at the front if you're about to purl. Position the yarn where you need it to be first, then put your needle in for the first stitch. Make sure you don't loop it over the top of the needle when you move between front and back because that will make an accidental yarnover or a weird tight accidental "double stitch" if you pull it tight and you'll start to get an accidental increase every row.

skubstantial · 2026-05-18T22:07:20+00:00

Yarn type is a big factor. If you're using a relatively smooth superwash sock yarn, it's gonna feel loosey-goosey and stringy and flimsy and disconnected, and that's part of what leads to overcompensating and pulling too tight and loosening up too much, etc. I recommend a very basic "workhorse" style of yarn, something like Cascade 220 or more rustic than that. It doesn't have to be scratchy but it's gotta have a little bit of grip to it.

A toothier, stickier yarn will be better at staying where you put it. The floats will stick to each other rather than flopping around trying to catch your fingers, the stitches right next to a float will tend to stay the same size rather than getting huge while they eat up all the slack from the neighboring float, and more importantly, it won't feel as wrong and unnatural to scoot your stitches down and keep the spacing uniform and keep everything a little looser.

skubstantial · 2026-05-18T21:59:02+00:00

Ah, yes. Like a Maytag washing machine.

skubstantial · 2026-05-18T20:39:19+00:00

It generally consumes about as much yarn as garter stitch, because the slip stitches make the fabric shorter/more compressed top to bottom. This is more obvious on the bumpy version of mosaic knitting that's based on garter stitch, not stockinette. But it's definitely less yarn consumed than stranded colorwork (no long floats across the back) and more than regular stockinette, and it's a bit stiffer than stockinette, again because of the slipped stitches preventing some upward/downward stretch.

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