Tuesday, February 9, 2016

the same but different...

I'm calling this the 'oxymoron scarf'...
I have this half cone of a fairly fine ribbon yarn, 'Gummy' from Silk City Fibers, 70% viscose, 30% polyamide, 4250 yds/lb  - it's a really pretty red so I'm going to use it now because of the colour and because it is thin enough for this project and because I have no idea when I would ever use it again - I used it before at T4 stockinette and paired it with velveen/woolray for a striped cardigan for Lindsay which made an interesting combination of textures, (KW#41 'Juxta-pose').
Based on my final observations of the royal blue piece from yesterday, I'm only going to use 2 rows of the racked cast-on, so it is less noticeable and, at only one number tighter than the main tension, for it to be stretchy enough to match the width of the English rib.
End needles? I didn't talk about this for the last project, except to mention one on either bed, opposite sides. Generally when I get into ribber fabrics, I say have the end needles on the non-patterning bed, which, for the first English rib (tucking on main bed), is the ribber but when you switch to the opposite and tuck on the ribber you don't want to have to change so when I made my swatch, I just watched to see what worked better and having both end needles on the ribber worked and looked best.
I did have to insert the close knit bar - my first swatch, I tried T3/3 and when it was tucking on the main bed, was getting several tucked stitches hanging up on the main bed and I went to T4/4, same thing so for the next sample, I put in the bar, used T4/4 and all was well!
My swatch (15-0-15 ns) - I started off with waste yarn and 2 rows circular ravel cord (white). RC000. H4. CAR. ZZ, T3/3, K1R. Rack to H5, bring ns out. T4/4, K1R. Set to tuck on main bed, T4/4, K18R. ZZ, K2R. Tuck on ribber, K18R. ZZ, K2R. Repeat once. CAR, ZZ, T4/4, K1R. T8/8, K1R. Ravel cord, circular, T4/4, K2R. Waste (Note: I found that using a slightly heavier waste yarn here(TAMM trenzi  at a tighter than normal (T5/7) tension works better for manipulating those tiny stitches for the cast-off) still circular, K20R. ZZ, K2R. Drop. Steam waste yarn. Unravel the zz rows and latch the last row, from side to side as described in the circular scarf.
Now, just let it rest awhile - double bed stuff and especially tuck stitches need to relax maybe overnight to adjust from the stretching etc of the knitting operation - before measuring and then do the real thing!
TTYL!

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