Knitting Kninja

Yesterday I posted about the wear and tear on five sweaters, and today I have five more to talk about. All of the sweaters today have actually held up very well, so hooray for that! No more disasters like my poor Yoke Sweater.

Francis Revisited

Francis Revisited was an impulse cast on knit between other projects last winter. I used Cascade 220 at a very loose gauge, and that loose gauge means it probably won’t hold up as well as it would at a tighter one. However, Cascade is a workhorse yarn, and while the sweater pills a bit, it’s still in excellent condition. I tried to get a picture of the pilling, but it’s so minor that I don’t think it really shows in the photograph. My favorite thing about this sweater is the color and that has not faded or changed in any way. It’s hardy and has softened with wear. There’s a reason Cascade is such a popular yarn, and that’s the winning combination of a low price, wide selection of colors, and a hardwearing yarn. (My daughter has a toy cat I knit her in Cascade 220. It shows almost no wear on the yarn despite the fact that she drags it around with her. The stuffing’s shifted, but the yarn itself remains sturdy.) You can find fancier or softer yarns, yes, but for the money, Cascade 220 delivers exactly what it promises.

Flutter Sleeve Sunniva

I made two versions of my sweater Sunniva, and this yellow one was the first and the last. First because I started it first, but I had to rip it when some aspects went very wrong, and I put off starting over until after I’d finished the purple version. This version of Sunniva is knit in Malabrigo Sock. It’s shown pretty much no wear, and has held up very well, with a lovely drape, a lovely color, and a very soft hand. My only complaint is my own fault: as you can see, this sweater is embarrassingly uneven in terms of my stitches. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that it was knit and then ripped, but some of it is likely my own knitting. I’m not sure how that happened, as I think my knitting is usually pretty even, but multiple blockings have not made the stitches lie flat. At a distance, this is not very visible, but it bugs me every time I look at it closely. I have not had this issue with Malabrigo Sock past or since. I don’t know how Malabrigo managed to make a sock yarn that is almost as soft as their one ply and still have it be sturdy enough for garment knitting, but they have. This is a great yarn and I love this shade of yellow.

Long Sleeve Sunniva

This version of Sunniva is knit in Orange Flower BFL 4 ply, which is unfortunately very very hard to get these days. Orange Flower updates sell out in like five minutes flat, and that is not an exaggeration. However, if you can manage to snag some of it, do, because this sweater, which I wore pretty much constantly last fall and winter, looks brand new still. BFL is amazing. I wear this sweater against my skin. It does not itch, and there is no major pilling. The photograph is of a high stress area under my arm. (I put a false seam on this version of the sweater, which is not included in the final pattern.) Although I wore this sweater all the freaking time, and although my arm rubs that area a good deal, there is no real wear on it. It is soft, warm, breathable, and beautiful. I want to knit all my sweaters in BFL.

Atalanta

Atalanta is a younger sweater than many of the ones already discussed, but it’s still worth talking about because of how well the yarn’s holding up so far. Atalanta is knit in Knit Picks Shine Worsted. I was a bit wary of cotton and cotton blends. So many of them are hard on the hands, and then the growth rate after knitting can be immense. Soft cottons sometimes flake or become shoddy very quickly, like dishcloth yarn. Shine is a cotton/Modal blend, and it seems to avoid cotton’s sins. I think it looks great, and it has not stretched, faded, flaked, or shown any of the unpleasant qualities that I think sometimes crop up with plant fiber yarns. This is a very soft yarn, but it’s not a shoddy one, and the price is fantastic. This sweater has gone through the wash a number of times, and I don’t think it shows.

The Ever Popular Drops Sweater

I saved the Drops Sweater for last because it’s probably my most worn of all of them. I knit this in 2008 when everyone and her mother was making one of these. It’s an easy, fast, free pattern from Drops, and it doesn’t have an actual name. I knit mine in Rowan Scottish Tweed Chunky that my husband gave me as a gift. Scottish Tweed Chunky is not a soft yarn, but oh does it wear. And wear. And wear. I am constantly in this sweater from the moment it gets cool in autumn until winter is well over and we’re out of the spring chills. Yes, it has pilled a little, but considering how often I wear it, hardly at all. It is hardly different than the day I finished knitting it, and that includes the fact that our now deceased rat Daisy once took a small bite out of it. I darned it with a little leftover yarn, and the thick, tweedy texture of the yarn makes it next to impossible to see where unless you are looking for it. This yarn is impervious. Rowan has of course discontinued its Scottish Tweed line, because Rowan is constantly discontinuing its various tweed lines and replacing them with something new. I suspect that the current Felted Tweed Chunky, while not of the same composition, would be a similarly hard wearing and long lasting yarn. I do love the sport/DK Felted Tweed, and Chunky is the same stuff writ large. Rowan yarns are not cheap in the U.S., but I think they can be a very worthwhile purchase for a quality product. Just don’t get the RYC stuff!

First off, I did an interview with the incredibly gracious Lumia of Worsted Knitt, so if you’d like to read it, head on over and check it out!

I’ve been meaning to do this for ages: take out old projects that I’ve worn many times and check in with how the yarn is holding up. My initial reaction to a yarn is often enthusiastic. I choose yarns because I like them, and I usually like working with the yarns I chose, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right yarn for a given project, or even that it’s a great yarn. I’m going to pull out some of my most worn sweaters and let you know how they’re doing. I have taken photos of high stress areas on each sweater, but sometimes a photo alone doesn’t convey what is right or wrong with a given yarn for a given project.

I’m going to start with the bad news here.

Joelle’s Favorite Yoke Sweater

Oh my gosh you guys. This is my Joelle’s Favorite Yoke Sweater, which I made back in 2008. The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy. I loved this sweater so much when I made it, but it has not worn well at all. Part of this is probably not the fault of the yarn – the sweater was accidentally put through the washer and dryer a couple of different times, and although the yarn is superwash merino, this is really not the best way to treat it. However, I don’t think all of this can be blamed on the washer. The yarn under my arms felted and stretched and wore very poorly. The whole sweater has almost a crispy crunchy feel to it. I have a scarf knit in Smooshy that has worn much better with hand washing and less friction, but I never wear this sweater now because it’s plain uncomfortable. It also looks kind of icky because of the fabric’s stiffness. I do not think I will use Smooshy for a garment again because of the way it’s worn in high friction areas.

O W L S

The next sweater on our tour of ugg is my O W L S sweater. The pattern itself is one of my favorites, and I will surely remake this sweater one day. However I am very, very disappointed in my yarn choice, which was RYC Soft Tweed, now discontinued. I don’t really know the intricacies of Rowan’s decision to have a separate line under the RYC label, but so far my impression has been that RYC yarns don’t hold up as well as traditional Rowan label yarns. Soft Tweed was a wool, rayon, silk, and nylon yarn that was spun in a soft, puffy multi ply that looked like a single ply. It felt heavenly when first knit up, very warm and light. It had an unfortunate tendency to grow when worn, and this had done that – a sweater that was skin tight when first knit has gradually loosened over time and become baggier. But that’s not my main complaint. The yarn itself went from being soft and puffy to dry and sort of shoddy in look and feel. High stress areas on the garment became pilly, which I don’t always object to much, but in this case, they felt first pilly and then noticeably thinner than other parts of the sweater. The whole thing now feels cheap and unattractive instead of luxurious and soft.

Maude Louise

Maude Louise II was made from another discontinued RYC yarn, Soft Lux, a blend of merino, nylon, angora, and a metallic sparkly thread. This yarn has held up considerably better than the Soft Tweed, but still has not held up quite as well as I’d hope, particularly in high friction areas like under the arms and against the sides of the sweater. It has loosened over time so that ribbed areas are now quite baggy, and the elbows have stretched out a little. It is still soft and while I think it looks less lovely than it did when I first finished it, I can and do wear it. I would use a stronger wearing yarn, though, were I to make it a third time. (I don’t foresee a third time coming up, but if it did, I think I’d pick a strong pure wool.)

McQueen Knockoff

I know this sweater looks pilly, and it is, but the news here is mostly good. This is my McQueen Knockoff, knit in Knit Picks Andean Treasure. Andean Treasure is a pure baby alpaca that comes in beautiful heathered shades and at Knit Picks’ typical excellent prices. I wear this sweater a lot in the winter, and it is crazy warm and pretty. It does pill, yes, but the sweater itself has remained structurally intact despite frequent wearings, and the yarn has gotten softer with the wearing. I do have to depill high stress areas of the sweater, and the yarn has settled a bit around the cables, making them oddly smooth, but I love this sweater so much, and I think Andean Treasure is a really nice sweater yarn. If you don’t mind going over your sweater with a sweater stone every so often, this yarn is a great choice for a late fall/winter sweater.

Liesel

Liesel was my first knit of 2010, a birthday present to myself knit out of Sundara Aran Silky Merino, one of the most expensive yarns I’d ever purchased at that point. I was very very pleased with how it looked and knit up, and overall, I am still just as pleased. I think ASM has just enough twist to the single ply to make it stronger than a one ply merino/silk blend might usually be. It has fuzzed and softened with wear, but has not worn out. Part of this is that I wear it fairly rarely, and when I do, I am very careful of the yarn. The colorway, Arabian Nights, is one of my favorites and I want it to last. It is not the strongest yarn out there, but I think it’s a good choice for Liesel, a cardigan that I wear in the spring and late autumn when the weather is sort of undecided, and that dresses up a tank top beautifully. Another reason to combine this yarn and pattern is that Liesel takes very very little yarn to knit, making it a perfect showcase for expensive yarns you might not usually buy.

I have five more sweaters that I took out, so I’ll continue this soon!