Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Kid Silk Rage

WARNING - POST CONTAINS VIOLENCE AGAINST YARN - WARNING

Admire the lovely Rowan Kid Silk Haze.


It wants to become the lovely Butterfly from Rowan #37.

It makes me feel unstable. I don't like to feel unstable. It is uncooperative. It misbehaves. It sticks to my bamboo needles, it sticks to my plastic needles, it even sticks to my metal needles. Who knits with this ridiculous yarn? I must punish this yarn.


If I didn’t believe that my life would be made much, much better by owning and wearing “butterfly” I would throw the lot of it out window. (I am reminded that I would be throwing roughly $75.00 out... gah!) Please tell me that there are some tricks out there for working with spider-web thin merino silk blends....

And what up with the English patterns? I am a pretty fearless knitter, but everything that I have taught myself to date has been in “Amurican” english. “Butterfly” is written in 'propah' English. I am confused by “yfwd” and “yon” - am I to assume these are two ways of writing “YO”? Or is this something that I have not encountered in my vast (two years) experience of knitting? And also how does one read “(K1, yfwd) twice”? Does this mean knit that pattern two times? Because as I read the next row and come to the corresponding stitches I come across “(K1, P1) into double yfwd of previous row”. Seemingly that would mean that the first “yfwd” is a double “YO”? Is there a conversion chart out there in the knitting universe somewhere...

Help me before I do other unspeakable things to my Kid Silk Haze involving Aztec Gods and popsicle sticks...

3 comments:

Christie said...

I'm planning on making that pattern too, but out of the Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud...now I'm afraid...I haven't read the instructions at all!

I think that yfwd and yon are the same as yo.
I think that the (K1, yfwd) would mean do that twice, K1 (yfwd) twice would mean double yo.

But I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just a novice...yeah, that's it.

Anonymous said...

Love the yarn abuse photo!

I didn't get a chance to look at the pattern last night, but until I get a look at it tonight, here are my thoughts:

1) ynfwd and yovr are both ways of making yos. The difference, if I remember correctly, has to do with whether the stitch preceding and following are knit or purl stitches. I'll double check in some references tonight -- and I'll get you some translation resources.

2) (K1, yfwd) twice works out to: k1, yfwd, k1, yfwd. Normally! But given that the next row says to work 2x into the double yfwd, clearly something else is being requested. I promise to take a look at it and help to unlock it's mysteries. Until then, just step away from the yarn...

Kid Silk haze is going to be sticky! Don't under any circumstances try to frog this stuff.

Once you get the pattern down, try to knit loosely, I would recommend checking gauge on smaller needles with the yarn held lightly to help make it easier to work the pattern and minimize the frustration of stickiness. Pointier needles will also help with a lace pattern.

The results are worth this hassle. I think this yarn rocks and make a habit of collecting it, much to the consternation of my checkbook.

Christie said...

I did a little more recon on the query. yfwd is yarn forward and I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the same as a yarn over. '(K1, yfwd) twice' is K1, yfwd, K1, yfwd. If you look to the last part of the instructions for the first row, there is a '(ywd) twice', which is a double yarn over. That's the double yarn fwd that's what is referred to in the second row.

I hope that helped!