in the pink...

Next on my knit list is to make that same long, button-front, hoodie using my One-Row-Tuck (IRT) technique. If you’re unsure what that is, check out https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2020/05/change-is-as-good-as-rest.html

I’ve talked about this so many times and I wanted to try it out in this shape. Reasons: slightly different texture, not as boring as knitting stockinette, spring is coming sometime, could use something lightweight in a cotton, keep knitting, use up yarn, yadda, yadda, yadda…Anyway, I want to do a bit of research before I commit to one for myself. You know, make sure I have all the angles covered so mine is perfect ;)!

So, here I am, making this cotton candy sugar pink thing (2 ply cotton, used double-stranded) in a tuck stitch – you know, if you’ve been following me for any length of time, you probably know, after teal, pink is like my least favourite colour but I have sisters! I’m fairly certain Janet will wear this! I do have some ‘paper bag tan’ in the same yarn that would be fabulous but am uncertain as to how far it will go so, experimenting with the pink has value! I have 3 cones of about 300g each (pink) so should be fine. Remember when they used to say tuck stitch uses more yarn and ‘they’ probably even gave a percentage, like 30 to 40 percent more…than what? and who is ‘they’?

Brings me to the subject of research books – just thought I’d throw this in here. At one time I had a plethora of books on machine knitting, some good and some not so good – I’ve weeded them out, passed them on and the ones I have left are these three -

Regine Faust, ‘Fashion Knit Course Outline’ – a very good, quite old (1978 ), beginner to intermediate epistle with tons of information in a very readable, simple format with lots of exercises as examples – it was used as the basis for the 2 year fashion knit course at Sheridan College in Canada and at FIT in New York.

Mary Weaver, ‘Machine Knitting Technology & Patterns’ another very good, old (1979), tons of info, and easily explained.

The last one, Susanna Lewis, Julia Weismann, ‘A Machine Knitter’s Guide to Creating Fabrics’ https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2014/05/whats-another-word-for.html a valuable research book for someone who wants to go beyond the basic.

If you can find any one of them at estate sales, yard sales, etc., do not hesitate, pay whatever pittance they are asking!

Anyway, some where it was lodged in my brain that tuck knitting requires more yarn that most any other single-bed technique and I guess it’s because they were referring to that bubbly, blistery, baby-blanket thickness of most tuck stitches. So, my current mission, how does it relate to my 1RT? (which is knit much looser than normal to make a thinner, stable fabric but still offers the added advantage of a wider fabric - the comparison is to stockinette).

from Knitwords #9

Back to making a tension swatch – the yarn is Yeoman’s Brittany 2 ply cotton (3/14),
used double stranded. Back in the day, I would knit this in stockinette at T6,  looking for a gauge of 32 sts and 46 rows to 10 cm/4 in. after wash and dry – it’s cotton – it will shrink, so knit it slightly looser than you want to allow for the shrinkage. Here, with the 1RT technique, I knit 60 rows at T7, T9 and T10 – the T7 would be what you would regularly knit this at (again, ‘they’ said to knit tuck one full number higher than stockinette) but because I want a thinner, drapier fabric, I go with the 9 and 10 and have the T7 as comparison.

Measure the swatch after laundering. T7 was 26S X 56R. T9, 26S X 50R and T10 gave 24S X 42R. Note the big change is in the number of rows.

I started off with the hem I used on the lace swatches and later separated the T9 and T10 swatch on the 2-row marker row to try out another hem technique.