Friday, July 8, 2011

More pictures about pooled knitting



I'm thinking that pooled knitting is a lot like turning the heels on socks. You look at the directions and think WTF? However, when you get started they start to make sense.

Of course, that may only be me, but I don't think so.



Anyway, for those of you who need another illustration of this, I started another one as an example to take the guild last night, and I took lots of pictures this time.


The very first picture shows the yarn stretched out and making sure that it will pool the way I need it to.


The second picture shows that after I wound it into a ball, I pulled out several paint repeats and put knitter's safety pins where the rows end/start. You may ask, how did you make them stay? Easy, I put them through the plies of the yarn.

Gladys, who inspired all this, uses a backwards e-loop cast on to get started. I rarely use this cast on, but I did for my samples. I discovered something very interesting when I started swatching, but I didn't take pictures of it at the time.


What I will do is do another cast on and show you my discovery. It's so simple you'll smack yourself on the forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"


In all honesty, I'm sure I'm not the first knitter to notice it either, I just haven't searched around to see where else it might be on the interwebs.


Picture number 4, the blurry one, shows my first attempt at matching up colors and getting gauge. As you can very easily see, gauge was off that time.


I tinked that first row and reknit it, using my cunning discovery, and as you can see in the final picture, I got it right that time.



Full disclosure time. I got it right in two tries on this one because the first one was so (and still is) very fiddly. I think this one will work without needing two different sized needles for gauge.


For the record, this colorway is one I dyed, but this was a test or seconds skein. As you can see in the first picture, the yarn didn't dye very evenly with those dye concentrations. I put it aside, thinking I'd probably overdye it at some point. However, with the vivid colors, I thought it'd make a great, easy to see, example of pooled knitting. I'm pretty sure I'm just going to knit it up to have as a show sample for when someone asks what does "pooling" on the label mean?


It's Friday! Have a great weekend! I'll be back with spinning pictures.

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