Until further notice: Judy’s Designs’ STORE HOURS are changing
Monday – Closed (Dedicated Sewing Day)
Tuesday – Closed (Dedicated Sewing Day)
Wednesday through Saturday – 1:00pm to 5:00pm
Sunday – Closed
Why the change?
These considerations needed to be addressed:
I need to be able to have one day off a week. I have been working seven days a week in order to stay on top of the demands of the store. That is just not sustainable anymore. I want to be able to love my job. By allowing a few extra hours each day to be able to work uninterrupted, I hope to reach a healthier, more sustainable work schedule, while still meeting my customers’ needs.
If I hire someone, I won’t be able to afford to maintain current pricing. I don’t want to have to increase my prices; life is expensive enough for people.
I want to be able to accommodate my customers’ needs with regular, predictable hours.
I want to maintain as quick a turn-around for sewing jobs as is humanly possible, while also maintaining the high quality and reasonable prices that people have come to expect from me.
Need to pick stuff up or drop stuff off outside of the new hours?
The Drop Off Station will continue to be open Monday – Friday 9am to 5pm
Let me know at least a full day ahead of time. We can arrange for you to pay by E-transfer and have your order ready in the drop-off station for when you can get in.
Know what you need? Send us a list over email or on Facebook and we’ll gather your order. You can pay by E-transfer and then pick up your order in the entryway. I can’t do these over the phone. Give us at least a full day’s notice for this.
Coming from out of town? Conflicting work schedule? Contact me in advance by email or on Facebook and we can schedule an appointment. I can’t do this on the phone.
Wowzers! The store was incredibly busy this week. Between the sewing techs being here to service machines, Halloween coming up and the cooler weather inspiring more knitting projects, we definitely saw more folks this week. I assure you that I am celebrating that fact and not complaining. I’m so glad that I took the time to organize my leftover yarns right away. This is my Frankensocks week. My immediate inspiration was obviously Frankenstein’s Monster since I would be cobbling socks together using leftovers. However, as I was imagining my kids choosing which ones they want for Christmas, it occurred to me that it could also reference Frankincense and gift giving. So there we go! Two for one! I like it.
As the sewing work floods in, I have been very happy to keep the socks fairly simple this week. However, my Yarn Chicken exploits have simply continued from last week. There won’t be much of anything left in my bin when I’m all done. That’s excellent. That takes away any twinges of guilt I might have felt in expanding my stash again.
Despite keeping the socks simple, I had some mishaps.
I’ve been knitting each pair of socks and leaving them on the machine until the week’s worth are done, to close all the toes in the evening afterward. Because I had all those other socks attached to the machine, I was loath to start any socks over when things went sideways.
One of the stripey pairs of socks gave me some trouble. I finished the first sock just fine. In the second sock, when I switched from the first stripey yarn to the second one, I discovered that not only was there a knot, but they didn’t bother to make sure that the colour transitions were right when they tied the new section on. Ugh. The knot was messy and caused a bunch of stitches to drop. The combination of that and the wrong stripes just wasn’t what I wanted. I started to tink, but we’re talking about 8 rounds. Instead I dropped the whole sock off and unraveled the last batch of yarn. I took it back to the previous transition and rehung the stitches. Since I had marked the number of rounds when I switched yarns, I knew what to reset my counter to, thankfully. Good heavens! It took me about an hour to get it back on the correct needles and all the stitches knitted up to where they needed to be. Then I removed the offensive section of yarn from the ball so I could make my stripes match the first sock and finished the 20 or so rounds of the foot and the toe and knitted off the waste yarn. Unfortunately there was a twisted stitch or two that I didn’t notice until later. By that point, I simply didn’t care any more. I just left it.
That was painful! But I managed to get it all done. Hurray!
At the beginning of each pair of socks, I weighed each of the balls of yarn, of each of the colours, to determine which were the smaller ones respectively. I made the first sock using the smaller balls so I wouldn’t be as worried about running out on the second sock. I still ended up running out on the second half of the toe on one pair. Let’s face it. Those digital kitchen scales are great, but weighing yarn as you are removing yarn from the ball is a subtle operation. The weight changes by fractions of a gram as you go. With the balls weighing in at 12 or 13g, it may be unrealistic to think you can truly trust the scale to be accurate enough. So it’s close, but even thinking I was starting with the smaller ball, I had some surprises.
There was one issue that occurred a couple times that I thought I would mention. I was knitting along and found that suddenly the yarn felt really tight. It took a bit to realize that the yarn had hooked itself around one of the guides in the threading assembly. So words to the wise: if you feel resistance, be sure to stop right away and check the threading assembly to be sure that nothing has gone awry.
I ended up breaking the latch off one of the needles. It took about three rounds before I actually clued in as to what was happening. It was creating a lot of resistance because the yarn was accumulating loops (like a slip stitch to the back) behind the needle. I suspect that the latch broke because of how tight the yarn became when it was caught in the threading assembly. When I discovered the missing latch, I was able to simply replace the needle. I used the needle to latch up those three or four stitches and carried on.
I found a couple balls of yarn that were almost a full measure.
After two weeks of yarn chicken, it was so nice to just make the socks and not worry about how far I’d get before I would have to incorporate yet another colour of yarn.
It’s been really fun to see how the socks turned out these past two weeks. As much as there is a part of me that really likes the patterns in the yarn to match up on both socks, I really had to let go of that during this process. Because it was down to inches of extra yarn in some cases, I didn’t have the luxury of aligning everything to make them all matchy-matchy. But it turned out okay. It’s really obvious that I used the same yarns on each of the socks in each pair. Just because the patterns don’t match up exactly doesn’t mean that they don’t still look like they belong together. That was actually a lot of fun. It took away any pressure to make them perfect. That’s a good thing.
Things have been picking up in the sewing department of the store and I had to think about how to approach this week of sock knitting in a way that didn’t pull the rug out from under me. After looking through my bin of leftover sock yarn it occurred to me that this would be a great time to use up a bunch of those leftovers. There wasn’t enough of anything to make full sized socks, but ankle socks… yeah. I figured I could do that. So needless to say, I spent my week playing yarn chicken.
Yarn Chicken! I assume most everyone knows what this is. If you don’t, then let me clarify.
It references the game of chicken that is played in cars. Understand that I do not in any way recommend playing this game with a car. The idea is that two drivers drive their cars toward each other as if to have a head on collision. The first one to turn away loses. If you are into 80’s movies, think Footloose, where they played it with tractors. So that’s the reference. Clearly, when you have some yarn and you think it’s enough for your project but you aren’t sure… you begin a round of Yarn Chicken. (Epecially when the yarn is discontinued and you can’t get any more.) You get within sight of the end and you watch each meter of yarn disappear into your project and you pray that you’ll get to the last stitch before you run out. That was my week!
I still had one chart from the previous week that I wanted to work up. I started the week by finishing that. The big take away from that project was that it’s exceedingly helpful to make sure that in the very first round that you have purl stitches, to immediately reform those stitches, especially when you have a round or two after the hung hem before the pattern begins. It’s so tricky to figure out which stitch to start your purls in. This is especially true if you wait until you’ve done over 15 rounds. Putting a stitch marker into it is all good and fine, but the stitch marker tends to get in the way. So I would definitely encourage that. Also, I found that reforming the purl stitches in a simple column is best done every eight to ten rounds. If you leave it longer, you run the risk of dropping stitches in the process. This way, it’s pretty efficient. Keep the cable to 2×2 at the most and if you want them side by side, definitely put a column or two of purls in between. This will prevent needle breakage.
Back to the leftovers.
I weighed out all my leftover balls of sock yarn. Well, not all of them, but many of them. I had one that I thought should be enough and I figured I would start with that. It weighed about 40g. I got to the toe on the second sock and ran out. I figured, “hey, it’s just socks!” and I found some other yarn that matched and finished the toe with that. It’ll still fulfill its function.
A number of the other balls had only in the neighbourhood of 30g. I gauged that by starting the cuff in a contrasting colour, if I also contrasted the heels and toes, I might just squeak by with some of the smaller balls. Even doing that, it was really close! There were literally only meters of yarn left after finishing a couple of the pairs. Then I stumbled on a ball that had been hiding from me. It was 46g so I thought I would take a chance. I managed to complete both socks. There was literally nothing left; I had exactly enough. I actually was so excited I got up and did a little happy dance!
It was interesting that the ankle socks with contrasting yarns took me longer to knit than a full sized pair in a single colour. I suppose it makes sense. You do have to take time to switch out each time you change the colour. The plain coloured ones went fairly quickly, which was nice. I really didn’t have a lot of spare time this week.
I’m very curious to play around with lace techniques.
When you knit lace by hand, you switch up whether you “knit two together” or do a “slip, slip, knit” before and after your “yarn-overs”. This affects the directions of the lines that are created in the fabric as you knit. I’m curious to play around with how to do this to get the same affects using the knitting machine. I suspect that when you double up stitches on one needle to create your yarn-over, that you might have to lift the stitch off the target needle before you place the other stitch that empties the adjacent needle. Hmmmm… I wish I would have the time to explore this fully in the coming week. With all the sewing jobs that have come in, I am going to have to be careful that I don’t burn myself out on this. So, maybe next Socktober.
I still have a lot of leftover yarn. What with Halloween coming up, I was thinking that maybe what I could do is make what I lovingly call “Frankensocks”. What I would be inclined to do, is weigh out my leftovers, divide each ball in two equal smaller balls and then use up any yarns that look relatively good together. They might turn out to be monstrous, but it could be really fun. I also would love to be able to use up more of my leftover sock yarn. There’s a lot of it. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do. If I take the time to sort out the yarn all at once it should be manageable. Lace techniques are going to have to wait… sadly.
Cables on the circular sock knitting machine… ACK!
My mission this week was to explore cables and twists. Sound fiddly? Holy Moley, no kidding! There was just no realistic way to get seven pairs of cabled socks done. But I did manage four.
I thought I would start simply. A single 2×2 cable up the center back of each sock. I just wanted to dip my toes in the pond. After all, no need to turn my brain inside out, right? I did all the cables in the same direction and it went well enough that it gave me some courage to try something else.
Next I tried some symmetrical rows of traveling stitches. I started with two side by side at center front and moved them outward. Because I wasn’t really sure what to look for, I honestly didn’t even know how to take notes for this. I finished up the first sock, did my best to peek at it to see if there were glaring mistakes and moved on to the second. There were a few twists that I had done in the wrong direction, but since this was all about learning, I left them. I thought I was doing the second sock the same as the first but I wasn’t. There was less space between the rows on the second sock.
What I found with the traveling stitches (twists) was that using two hook-tools was easiest. The stitch that travels has to be placed first. So if the traveling stitch goes to the right, you place that stitch from the left to the right first and then cross the one from the right over it to the left. It’s a little confusing since you look at some of the stitches from the inside and some from the outside. It’s in the round… yeah, it kinda made my head hurt. With one hook, I took the stitch off the target needle first, then with the second hook, I moved the other stitch directly onto the target needle before crossing that first one onto its respective needle.
What I learned from that second pair of socks is that you really want to work from a chart. Even if you think it’s simple, by the time you place the stitches, it’s inevitable that you’ll get lost. I use a program called Envisioknit to draft charts. It’s a fantastic program and it’s so much easier and cleaner than mapping things out on graph paper. I thought I’d play around with some ideas and then try them out just to see what happened. I’d done a lot of cabling by hand, but never on the machine. If you need to make purl stitches to create definition, you have to reform those stitches manually. I did that on the first pair after I had the cables done to the top of the heel. I then placed a stitch marker into the first stitch I was purling from. That way, I couldn’t accidentally unravel it all the way. I then unraveled one column at a time and immediately (using my latch tool, though you could use a cylinder needle) reknit them as purl stitches. They then (of course) look like knit stitches on the inside of the sock.
I made up some charts and figured I’d dive in.
I had some Wollmeise Twin yarn leftover from a pair of socks I had made by hand and I figured if I just made the leg short I should be able to get two socks out of that ball. I was so excited that I had the cuff done before I thought about gauge. That was dumb. Especially knowing that this yarn tends to be thicker than other sock yarns. I got to the toe and realized that this sock would fit a Sasquatch. I walked away in disgust; I knew better; I was just being lazy. (Gauge testing is actually important.) In that chart, I had a whole bunch of twists all around the leg and down the center of the foot. I was honestly just curious how well it would show up without any purl stitches. It gave a subtle lacy effect.
When you have vertical columns of purl stitches to add in to your pattern, it’s really easy to drop those stitches down and reform them once the leg is done. A caution though, if you are doing traveling stitches that weave in and out of purl sections, you must do them as you go. That in itself is tricky. Your chart is your friend! You seriously don’t want to have to unravel and relatch this stuff! OMG! NO!
It is extremely tedious to do intricate cable patterns on the machine; it requires unimaginable focus; it’s still quicker than knitting it by hand. It’s a very different experience than hand knitting cables. It takes some practice to get accustomed to what you need to look for as you go. Because you are looking at the knit side of the stitches at the front of the machine and the purl stitches at the back of the machine, you do need to take the time to double check that you have moved those stitches correctly. Once you have prepped all those cables, they have to be knitted still. The temptation is to count that prepping round as done. All you did was place the stitches where they need to be to receive the yarn for that cable round to knit. Having a chart with row numbers on it is essential. You can’t see the finished fabric until you knit a zillion rounds of waste yarn or remove it from the CSM. There is no checking it. Keep an eye on the row counter to be sure you are on track. This has a significant learning curve, but it’s very satisfying to see the results. I found it mentally exhausting. I trust that with practice (and without any deadlines looming) it will get easier.
During my second week of Socktober I focused on changing colours on toes and heels in the most efficient, yet structurally sound way. There are so many subtle things to think about. Funny how things that are normally completely automatic fall out of your head when you change things up.
The first major thing I changed was to replace my original yarn guide. I am now using one with slots rather than holes. That came with its own learning curve. If you aren’t careful during transitions, the yarn can pop out and suddenly your work just dropped off half a dozen needles! All in all it’s a lot easier once you get used to it.
The first contrasting heels and toes, I joined the new yarn immediately at the colour change.
That meant I had tails for both, on either side of the heel. That might seem like a no-brainer, but I was concerned about the stability of those joins that take a lot of stress. I didn’t want to create a failure point, or a hot spot against the ankle either. I tried to imagine a way that I could incorporate enough stitches with both colours of yarn to allow me to simply cut off the yarn I’m done with and feel confident that everything will be solid.
I ended up adding the heel colour to the base colour carrying the two together from the 9:00 position to the 6:00 position, lifting my rear needles to prepare for the heel and then continued with both yarns to the 3:00 position. I allowed about 4 inches of the new colour and cut the base colour once I got to the 3:00 position. I start my heel at 3:00. I lift the first target needle and then crank back. When I got back to 9:00, I added the tail to the working yarn and knit them together. I built my heel and on my last pass of the heel from the 9:00 position, I reintroduced the base colour and knitted it along to the end of the heel. I cut the heel yarn. I made sure the base colour was threaded through the yarn assembly (not in the heel spring). I incorporated the base colour tail into as many stitches as possible on the next round.
I started the toe in the same way, incorporating the second colour from the 9:00 position, pausing at 6:00 to lift the rear needles and continuing on to the 3:00 position. Obviously once the toe was finished I worked several rounds of waste yarn to prep for the next sock.
When working on a heel or toe on a sock machine, you alternate cranking forward and back as you build the short rows. The back half of your needles are in the non-working position as you focus just on the working needles at the front. As you deal with all the little things like lifting or wrapping needles, cranking, adjusting the fork weights and keeping the yarn moving smoothly through the assembly, it’s easy to go into a sort of auto-pilot. The more you do it, the more automatic it becomes. Unfortunately, as soon as you add one new thing, auto-pilot is no longer your friend.
At one point, I discovered I had a broken needle.
I picked up the resulting dropped stitches and replaced the needle. Without taking a moment to check, I started cranking and quickly realized that I had cranked in the wrong direction. My working thread was wrapped around the back needles. UGH! I tinked it back and recovered. In the next round I realized that I had broken another needle in trying to get that all sorted. I fixed those dropped stitches, switched out the second broken needle and carried on.
When I wound the dark green yarn onto a cone, it wound very tight. I probably should have rewound it looser a second time, but I was too lazy. No excuses; I did notice ahead of time. Between that yarn having a bit of tooth and grabbing onto itself and getting caught underneath the “ball” on the cone, I ended up with that heel knitting much tighter than I actually wanted it to. This led to one of the broken needles I mentioned. Because the orange yarn I used for a subsequent pair was the same yarn as the green, I took the time to wind it twice. It moved through the assembly much more smoothly.
I ended up giving up on the ravel cord thing for this week. I tried to use ravel cord directly on my cast on bonnet as the separation to the first sock. Unfortunately, I ended up with two or three stitches from my cast on bonnet being knitted into the first sock. I sacrificed the bonnet in the process. I made a new bright orange one though. I’ll go into the details another day.
When I Kitchener the toes closed, I typically will put a stitch marker through the two final stitches at the end of the row. By the time you get there, what with the waste yarn underneath, it can be really tough to see. It’s really easy to miss one stitch. It’s a pain to have to recover that after you have woven your ends in. It was a good reminder why skipping this step is just a bad idea.
Because I was using several different yarns this week I was also reminded of the importance of actually thinking about the colour, weight and texture of the waste yarn. Doing the Kitcheners was challenging!
I feel really good about what I learned and accomplished this week. I have made a lot of socks on my machine since I got it last January. I built up a solid routine that minimizes my mistakes. This week offered a very clear view of how easily a routine can be upset by new parameters. It take focus to try new things.
There are so many ways that you can personalize your Socktober. I don’t know many people who can either knit fast enough or find the time to knit an entire pair of socks by hand each day of the month for 31 days in a row. If that’s you, I bow to your superpowers! I thought I would embrace Socktober this year and use it to motivate me to learn new techniques on my sock knitting machine.
I was thinking about how I could make my Socktober manageable.
After all, I still have a business to run and we’re leaping headlong into the busy season for both sewing and yarn sales. Using a sock knitting machine means that it is definitely within the realm of possibility to knit a pair of socks each day. But I want to be realistic so that I don’t end up burning myself out on something that I want to be fun and skill-building. I hope to average one pair per day, but I reserve the right to consider it seven per week rather than one per day. I’ll include photos of all the socks I have done each week and talk about the new skills I worked on mastering. The blogs themselves may end up being a bit shorter than usual. (I typically try to write 1K words.) I’ll just see how it goes.
So leading up to the first week of October, I was watching some CSM videos. One of the knitters uses a ravel cord. I knew about ravel cords but had never used one. When you use a sock knitting machine, you use waste yarn to start out the project. It also acts as a divider between items. This is especially great on a sock machine because it means you don’t have to do a full set up for every sock. You just keep starting new ones after making a dividing strip of waste yarn. So a ravel cord is typically something that has a stiffer texture. You only knit it into one row or round of stitches and you don’t overlap any of them. In other words you don’t knit any of the needles more than once with it. So the idea is that you knit your waste yarn, the ravel cord and then start your actual project yarn. When you are finished, you simply find the middle point of the ravel cord, draw one of the loops of it out of its stitch and gently pull it out of the knitting. Presto, the project is separated from the waste yarn! WOW!
That was the first new thing I tried.
I only tried it on the very beginning of the socks because I was a little scared to do it on the toes. I used a fairly stiff crochet cotton. I think it was South Maid #10. It feels almost like it’s starched. I put it through the yarn guide assemble and pulled enough off the ball so it wouldn’t bind once I started cranking the machine. I very carefully started it on the needle just past my six o’clock needle mark. I knitted that around to the needle in the six o’clock position and then trimmed it off with about 4 inches to spare. I plan to reuse these ravel cords.
It actually went really well!
It worked exactly as it should. It also had the added benefit that it was super easy to see where the loops of the first round sat. The texture of it is very different than the sock yarn which also helped with that. So when I put the first round stitches over the needles for the hung hem, it was easier to see them.
Well, I had been planning to try making a pair of socks with contrasting heel and toe for some time. I already had the yarn wound onto cones and ready to go. Since it was sitting there, ready to go, I figured I would go ahead and try that on my October 1st socks as well. (Mostly because I was too lazy to wind another cone with different yarn.)
I must say that I really hate weaving in ends. So I very clumsily fought with those ends to try and get them knitted into the heels and toes as I went along. It went okay, but the key word here was definitely “clumsy” (although lumpy might also apply… LOL). I want to try that again, maybe a few times, to see if I can’t come up with a method that will be easier and give a really smooth result without having to hand weave the ends in.
I suppose having only one pair to show for my blog this week is a little underwhelming, but it will have to do. Now to decide what I want to try for the next ones.
If you decide to do some sort of Socktober, I’d love to hear what that looks like for you.
So you have your pattern, your fabric and all the beautiful colours of floss.
Your hoop and needles are ready to go. You lay everything out on the table and take in the cross stitch graph… and you think, “what have I got myself into? Where do I even start?” Not to worry, I’ll help you get started.
Organize the floss
Your pattern will have a legend with a description of each of the colours in your project, a symbol that represents that colour on the graph and a DMC colour number.
If you bought a kit, those might be organized on pieces of cardstock, with the colour numbers next to them on the card. If so, you will definitely want to draw the matching symbols next to the corresponding floss. Take your time and double check that you are putting the symbols in the correct place.
Trust me, this will make your life way easier!
Skeins of Floss
Starting with full skeins? One option is to wind it onto bobbins. Take the colour number from the skein and tape it onto one wide end of the bobbin so you can see the number clearly, before you get started. I recommend you also put a temporary label with the symbol for that colour on the other end of the bobbin. (You will remove this once your project is complete.) Keep all those bobbins in a container like a tin or a floss organizer box to keep them clean and safe when not in use. Bobbins are available in cardboard and in plastic. You can buy sets with a ring to keep them all together.
Take your time to be sure that you have put the correct symbol with each colour.
You could make an extra label to tape around each skein with its respective symbol. You can simply pull a length of floss out of the skein, separate the strands as you need, and attach the extra strands around the skein until you need them. I have found that this method can get very messy, and as you use up the floss, the labels can fall off. So although it works, you have to be really careful to manage everything as you go along.
You can also cut your skeins of floss into shorter lengths, say 18″ long or so, lay them together and put them onto a home made floss organizer. You can make one or more using thin cardboard from a cereal box and a hole punch. Just make enough holes for all the colours. Label them carefully as you go with the number and the symbol and keep them in a tin or other organizer when not in use. Prepare one skein at a time to avoid confusion.
Prepare your pattern
Whether a small or large pattern, mark the center of the graph. Now pull out your pencil crayons or markers and choose a few bright colours that are distinct from one another. For a large pattern use at least three different colours. Using a ruler, draw over the heavy lines that mark each section of ten stitches. Alternate the coloured pencils in the same order across the graph and the from top to bottom and left to right.
Prepare your fabric
Find the center of the fabric. Mark it with one horizontal pin and one vertical pin. If you want to be really fussy about it, you can count the stitches on each side to make sure you are at the center. Using this as a guide, locate the closest heavy lines on the pattern, relative to the center and mark them with either a pin or a needle. Thread a needle with sewing thread in the colour that matches that line on the pattern. You will put a running stitch along all those ten-stitch lines on the fabric to correspond to the way you drew it on the pattern. Double check it! You want to be able to easily identify that coloured grid to orient where you are on the fabric relative to the pattern. If you are doing a small project this will go quickly. If you are doing a large complex project, trust me, you will thank me for urging you to take the time to do this. It may seem like a lot of preparation when you just want to get started already, but it’s worth it.
Once you have prepared all that, decide which area you want to stitch first. Find the square on the fabric and mark it with a pin or needle. Arrange the fabric in your hoop so that you can easily access that area, making sure you are orienting the fabric in the same direction as the pattern (top is at the top).
Check the instructions to determine how many strands of floss you need to use. Depending on the stitch count, you will need one, two or three strands. Choose the colour you want to start stitching with based on the symbols in the area you chose. You will want to have a manageable piece of around 18″. One by one, gently pull out the number of strands you need and lay them side by side. Align the ends and thread them into your needle. For your initial start, leave a long enough tail so you can weave it in behind the work.
It’s important that all the crosses lay in the same direction.
If they don’t, the light will catch it and it will show. Follow the graph and stitch the crosses accordingly. When you get to the end of your colour or thread, weave in the end of the floss immediately and trim the tail as you go. Lightly colour in the completed squares on the pattern as you complete them. Using a pencil allows you to erase mistakes, or erase and reuse the same pattern again later.
Take your time, double check your work and pick out mistakes; this requires precision.
Cross stitch is growing in popularity. I’m seeing more and more people in my store, looking for supplies to get started. I’m seeing more kits available through my suppliers, and although it never fully went away, there is definitely renewed interest in this beautiful form of fibre art. If it’s new to you, it can be hard to know where to start. Hopefully I can help you with that.
Purchasing a kit
You can purchase kits that provide you with everything you need from Aida cloth through all the many colours of floss and a needle. Some kits will have the floss separated out and labeled with the colour numbers, some will come with a bundle of floss tied together and you’ll have to sort it all out and figure out which is which. That can be a challenge if there are many shades of any particular colour. So if you are getting a kit with a lot of different colours, be aware that you may need to spend some time separating out and sorting the colours before you get started. Some kits include a hoop, some don’t. If you are a beginner, look for a smaller kit that comes with everything you need to complete the project.
Purchasing a pattern
When you purchase a cross stitch pattern, be aware that the pattern is all you get. You will need to purchase all the floss and fabric separately. That doesn’t have to be an issue. Allow yourself lots of time when you go to purchase your floss. It won’t be a quick process. You’ll want to use tapestry needles sized for the fabric gauge.
Purchasing Floss
Be aware that DMC makes a gazillion colours of floss and it’s pretty rare for any craft store to have all the colours on hand. When purchasing the floss, you will want a list of colour numbers and if they give you the names, that is very helpful to have on hand. Ask the store owner to guide you through how they organize their floss. You may want to purchase bobbins to wind the floss on as a way to keep it organized. Be sure to label the bobbins! Ask whether the store is willing to bring in the colours you need that they don’t have on hand.
Purchasing Fabric
There are a number of fabrics you can use for cross stitch projects. The most commonly used is called Aida. You can also use Hardanger. Both of these have clear little holes at the corners of where your stitches will sit. This makes it easy to see where to pull your needle through as you stitch. There are also even-weave fabrics like Lugana cloth or Belfast Linen. These are woven so that the warp and weft are perfectly even. On even-weave fabrics, you count the threads to determine where to place your stitches. If you are just beginning, look for Aida cloth.
The next thing you need to know about Aida is that it comes in different gauges. The gauge is measured as a stitch count. The stitch count is in reference to inches. So, if you are getting 14 count Aida, you will have 14 stitches to every inch. Typically we see 11, 14, 18 and 28 ct. The higher the number, the finer the stitching. It comes in different colours as well. For a beginner, I would urge you to choose a light colour such as white or ivory. I would discourage working with black or navy blue until you have some confidence with this discipline.
You will need to know how many stitches there are across the width and the height of your pattern before you purchase the fabric. Some stores carry Aida cloth on a roll and some carry “quarters”. Quarters measure 19″ x 27″, and you can turn them either way to suit your pattern. Obviously the number of stitches you can fit on a quarter will vary depending on the stitch count. The higher the number in the stitch count, the smaller the completed design will be. Be sure to allow enough fabric around the outside of the stitched pattern so that you can mount the finished work. How much you leave will depend on how you want to mount it.
Hoops
Hoops are available in wood or plastic. Some are “locking” hoops and others are not. Which type you choose to use will be a question of personal preference. Wood hoops are generally cheaper to purchase. Choose a hoop size based on the size of your project. If your project is small, use a small hoop. I personally don’t like to use a hoop that is more than 9 inches in diameter, even on large projects.
Stretchers
Hoops are not the only way to hold the fabric while you stitch. Stretchers can be purchased in a few ways. You can purchase ones that lock into each other. You buy two sets of two pieces, based on the measurements of the width and height of the fabric. Typically you would use your office stapler and staple the fabric onto this and work on it this way. Not everyone likes this, especially on a larger size. These can also be used as a mounting structure to go inside a frame when the project is done. Adjustable stretchers usually have flat sides and round spanners that go across the width of the project. Often they have fabric on the round spanners so you can baste your Aida cloth onto it on either end. You then roll it to the place you want to work and tighten the spanners onto the sides with wingnuts. You can buy stretchers in sets with varying lengths of sides to accommodate most any size of project. Stretchers work well with floor frames. Floor frames just allow you to have both hands free to work.
Next time, I’ll go into how to actually prepare your fabric and pattern, and what to watch out for.
We were in the thick of a heatwave with chokingly thick wildfire smoke, and Mother Nature flipped a switch. The most welcomed rains have cooled things down and cleared the air. It’s been about a week of easier breathing; I’m so grateful. I left the window open and woke up in the middle of the night freezing cold. I got up and pulled out the feather duvet to throw over our summertime collection of sheets and crawled back into bed. When DH got up, the weather report predicted a high of 15 degrees Celsius for the day. Brrrrr! (Of course, wait 5 minutes and that can change.) After all that hot weather, it truly feels like fall today.
And fall means it’s time for warm and cozy things like sweaters and wooly socks and knitting and crochet! Hurray! (Judy does a happy dance!)
When I first started selling yarn almost seven years ago, I had no idea what would sell or how much to buy. I also had no idea how often new colourways of sock yarn are released each year. In my naivete, I not only reordered sock yarns but I reordered full bags of sock yarns. (This is one of the few types of yarns they allow you to purchase half bags of. There’s a reason for that.) As the new yarns come and go, these overstocked yarns patiently wait for their turn to become socks.
Especially with self patterning sock yarn, it’s challenging to imagine how the yarn will knit up.
Some labels offer a small photo of the knitted colourway, which is wonderful. But many don’t. Often people struggle with the decision to purchase a yarn because unless there are samples knit up, it can be nearly impossible to visualize what the socks will look like once they’re done. Of course, for some people, that’s half the fun. Knitting up samples is time consuming, especially hand knitting socks to keep up with all the constantly changing sock yarns. I love hand knitting socks, but not for samples that will hang in the store.
Last winter I purchased an Erlbacher Gearhart circular sock knitting machine. Yes, it’s a knitting machine and yes it definitely speeds up the process of knitting socks. You still have to manually make the socks with the machine, but it means that selling hand made socks is within the realm of reason. It still takes time and you’ll never get rich doing it. But for me, it means that knitting sock samples doesn’t consume all my evenings and that some of those sock yarns that I ordered way too much of (and that get overlooked by folks shopping for yarn) can become socks for those who don’t knit… or don’t knit socks… or want to give socks as gifts without the time commitment to knit them.
I pulled one line of sock yarn that has long since been discontinued and started making it into socks earlier in the summer. They look fantastic. It’s exciting to know that I’ll be able to offer ready to wear socks for sale. The first of these are officially on display. My fingers are crossed that people will want to buy them. With the summer heat and all the wildfire smoke we had in the air, I had lost my enthusiasm for working on these socks. But today, I’m feeling all fired up to get back at them. I have a number of yarns in mind to knit up. My fabulous graphics gal designed labels that I can easily print up on cardstock for when they’re ready and I’m chomping at the bit.
So far, as of today, I have been knitting up a line of cotton blend yarns.
I brought them in as an alternative for folks who don’t like (or can’t wear) wool. I want to finish up the rest of this particular “family” of yarns before I move on to the wool blends that I want to knit up.
The second half of August and most of September are usually fairly quiet for me. The flower garden is well established and the seasonal rains are doing the watering for us. The sewing department is usually quiet until the frost hits. I hope to take advantage of this shoulder season to put together a nice inventory of ready to wear hand made socks to sell in the store. Hopefully they will be well received. I don’t see myself doing custom socks at this time, since this is something I’m doing in between all my other work and I’m not charging enough to justify the extra work involved in customizing them. Perhaps once I have sizes well established I might consider it, but I’m definitely not there yet. We’ll see; never say never.
In the meantime, I’ll keep plugging away. With new sock yarns already on their way, and more to arrive in October, I need to make some room on the shelves. We certainly have a lot of variety of sock yarns on hand to choose from and that isn’t likely to change (since sock knitting is my happy place).
I’ve had some people ask whether I will start up Social Saturdays Stitching Circle again. I am taking a wait-and-see approach to this. What with the Delta variant moving through our province I want to be sure that we are not putting anyone at risk. For now, I just don’t feel comfortable starting it back up. When the time comes, I’ll definitely put the word out though.
Wowzers. After lockdowns and multiple covid waves, then a heatwave and a Delta variant, forest fires (just in time to impact our summer tourist trade) and now a thick blanket of smoke that just wants to hang out and be friends with us: I’m tired. I know I’m not alone. I think most of us here in BC are tired. In all fairness, probably everyone in the world is just tired of it all right now… I understand that there are areas elsewhere with flooding! With so much stuff dragging us down it’s so important that we find ways to take care of ourselves. We need to unwind. As a knitter, knitting is one of the ways that I am able to unwind. Lately in more ways than one.
I knit the samples that hang in my store. Over the years I have made all sorts of things.
Sometimes I just make things up as I knit them. Sometimes I make up items from German patterns. Of course the downside of that has been the fact that when a customer comes in and likes it, I can’t offer them the pattern to make it. So I thought I should probably use patterns that I have on hand for sale so that when someone sees a sample and loves it, I can actually provide them with what they need to make it for themselves.
I like to try out patterns using yarns that are different than what the pattern was tested with. More often than not, people substitute the original yarn with what is either in their stash, easily available or the yarn they fell in love with. Of course this can lead to some challenges. Gauge is really the biggest challenge in this process. Although yarn manufacturers do their best to offer a gauge on their yarn labels, there are so many variables that you can’t even really be sure of that. Every knitter has their own particular tension, and often that can change with the weight and texture of the yarn and needles. Last week I started a cardigan. I thought I would use some discontinued yarn that I still have a lot of stock of. It’s so pretty and I thought that perhaps if I did up a cool modern styled garment that people might be inspired. I would love to sell that yarn so I can bring in something new to take its place.
I checked the label and the gauge of the yarn I chose looked like it should match the pattern just fine. Both were marked as “Chunky”. My gut feeling was that I should use a finer needle. Instead of a 6.5mm, I used a 6mm. Now the pattern doesn’t show photos of the back of it, so I wasn’t sure how full it was meant to be. Although there were a lot of stitches to cast on, I figured it was probably just meant to be a full swing style back. There were a lot of decreases leading up to the armpits on the back so I just went with it. I decreased for the armpits and began the raglan decreases. After about 8 rows I realized that this was going to be Sasquatch-worthy in size. (And this is why good little knitters swatch. LOL) When I measured the actual knitting I realized that the texture of the yarn makes the fabric relax and expand. A small swatch wouldn’t have really even shown me the extent to which it relaxes.
Unwinding was my next step.
At first, I felt disappointed that the size was so off. The reality is that while I was knitting it, I was giving myself permission to simply enjoy that process. I wasn’t thinking about how long it would take to complete the sweater; I was just enjoying the texture of the yarn and the gentle rhythm of the knitting. There was no reason to feel bad about frogging it and starting over. When I began unraveling it, I focused on the feeling of the stitches releasing and unwinding, one by one, from the project. It was mesmerizing. With each unwinding stitch I found myself unwinding too. I placed the end of the yarn into my ball winder and wound it as I went. I unraveled a few rows and then wound it onto the ball. The winding had its own rhythm too. It felt good to just focus on that feeling. By the time I was finished, I had three freshly wound balls ready for a fresh start. More than that, I felt relaxed and calm. The project was unwound and so was I.
I took some time and played around with smaller needles. I was a little surprised at how worn out I felt once I finished my new cast on and got the first row completed. I’m not sure where my head was on the second row though. I was supposed to be doing garter stitch. You can’t get much more simple than that. And yet, on row three I was quite astonished to realize that half of stitches were actually stockinette. I took my time, carefully reworking the stitches as I came to them. By the time I finished the mere six rows of garter stitch I was ready for a nap.
With the garter stitch hem completed, the next section is stockinette and I find myself looking forward to when I can curl up with this project again. I’m determined to simply allow myself to be mesmerized by the texture of the yarn and the rhythm of the knitting. Sometimes a project just needs to be about unwinding.
JUDY’S DESIGNS 