Nadina’s Free online knitting patterns

Are you knitting with acrylics, or with wool? wool fibres tend to stick to themselves just by their nature…
So, for acrylic fibers: Knitting the two ends together should be sufficient to lock in those
new balls of yarn, but if you would feel more secure, weave the ends
in for a few stitches horizontally thru your knit stitches. You can
even take a stitch or two back then along the row below if you want.
For wool fibers (I am working with right now):
I’ve attached ball o’ yarn #6 to my shole. This thing is starting to wear on me, so I thought maybe I’d stop & take care of the ends I have hanging everywhere…When I joined each new ball, I knitted or purled holding the old yarn and new yarn together for 3-5 stitches, whatever the pattern would allow (I had decided it wouldn’t be good to do this near any yo’s)…
I weave my ends in the direction I think they will be least visible…If you
are working with wool, the fact that you have already knit them together for
a few stitches should be close to enough…the wooliness with cause them to
stay attached after you have washed and blocked..

If you’ve raised livestock for very long you learn that most animals who are not healthy, die and the issue stops there. The old farmers never ate sick animals, those got hauled away/burned/buried. An injured animal that wasn’t drugged is safe to be butchered, but the degree of injury would affect adrenaline and likelihood of toughness, thus the decision would have to be made carefully and that animal might be best as dog food.

You also learn that healthy animals are grown on healthy land where they are rotated regularly to clean pastures. The individual farmer/rancher can’t afford to keep sick animals around and knows how and when to properly dispose of them.

Now the stark contrast here is the feedlot situation or chicken house situation where factory models are applied to livestock. Those are where you have diseased animals put into the food chain, not the private owners, it’s the corporate owners who aren’t actually onsite lovingly caring for all those unhealthily forcefed and drugged animals. Plenty of anonymous workers have reported illegal drug use in those animals, tipping off of when inspectors would be there, etc… The chicken house cleaning causes disabilities among the workers due to the chemicals used, fecal contamination abounds from mechanical evisceration.

You make your choice of which model to support every time you eat and I’m not advocating vegetarianism at all here. I’m advocating supporting local fibers, local foods, and building relationships with your neighbors that create trust and concern for wellbeing for everyone.

Trying to control everyone when the offenders are the corporate factory farms is just shear stupidity, because we all lose when the price of meat is too high for people to be well nourished and the cost of natural fibers goes up because the small guy who does the best job at raising good fleece and healthy animals can’t afford to keep up with govt. red tape.

Disease fear mongering is also part of the media/mind control and pharmaceutical marketing campains. Choose healthy foods and turn off that steady barage of commercials that tell you there’s a pill for everything, and this is less of an issue.

We don’t need to spend more taxpayer money just to lose more rights to LIFE and animal ownership!

- they came out beautifully! In case anyone is interested, I bought some cheap wooden picture frames, some cheap mats, and double stick tape. Stuck white paper over the cardboard backing in the frame, stuck the blocked swatch onto the paper with
the double stick tape, threw it in the frame under the mat & voila! So easy to
coordinate with your room!
And a question: when you are going to attach things together, do you block
them first? A resounding YES!!!!!!! One should block before assembling the pieces
together.

Oh yeah. You never stop ripping no matter how good you THINK you are. I’ve
been ripping out  for too many years. I almost never
take the work off the needles unless the mistake is so egregious, I have no
choice. But when I do rip each stitch out, rather than pull the yarn out of
the old stitch each time, I do an entire row (round) and then gently pull
the ripped yarn.

Btw, if you really want a frogging challenge, there’s ripping out from point
A only the stitches where lies the mistake and then reknitting them back up
to point A, leaving the rest of the knitting as is. This works extremely
well for mistakes in cables, for example. Like when you should have twisted
the cable one way and did it wrong and only noticed it about 10 twists later
. You’d simply rip out the cable stitches and reknit and twist them
using either a crochet hook or a dp. Not hard at all, just takes a little
nerve.

Btw: fixing missed yarnovers: If you miss a yarnover and catch it the next row, just pick up the running thread between the stitches and go on. Don’t twist it when you pick it up. Just scoop and knit. It will be a little smaller than
“normal” but once it is blocked no one will notice!

I’ve been using Crystal palace bamboo circulars for quite some time and it
definitely has helped with the soreness. I also am firm believer in Handeze
gloves. I know they suggest using these for arthritis but feel that the
support they give the wrist can only help. Sometimes the best thing is rest,
though…

I never block garments made of acrylic yarn. Acrylics are
plastics. Plastic has no memory-unless you apply too much heat, in which
case acrylic yarn will melt. Follow the manufacturer’s directions, i.e.,
throw it in the wash and then dry it on low for a few minutes.( Whenever I wash a garment in the machine, no matter the fiber, I turn
it inside out which decreases pilling)

Second, I have wire sock blockers, but frankly, I haven’t found them to be
of much use, except if there is a lace insert in the socks. Otherwise, I
wash, lay flat, and wear ‘em when they’re dry.

Blocking should be done with commonsense. There is no rule that says you
must block absolutely everything. AND there are several ways to block,
depending on stitch pattern and fiber. Here’s what you can’t ever block:
ribbings and cables. Here’s what you MUST block: lace and Fair Isle. Know
your fibers. Wool has excellent elasticity and memory, and can take a lot of
steam, pinning, and general abuse. Cotton, silk, and linen have little
elasticity and memory and must be blocked with care. You can never, ever
block out mistakes. If you goofed with the gauge and made the garment too
small, no amount of blocking will ever salvage it, be it of wool, cotton,
linen or your husband’s garden hose.

I either block the whole sweater or sometimes, particularly with lace, I
block each individual piece first and then do the final finishing after all
is dry. If I am dealing with lace, I wet the piece down, pin it on a padded
board w/ blocking wires and T-pins, stretching out the lace so that it opens
up. If I am blocking a Fair Isle sweater, I steam-press the bejesus out of
it, with a towel on top of the fabric and then lay it on my board to dry,
shaping it to its correct measurements with my hands. If I’m blocking a
cabled or Aran sweater, I simply wash it in the machine on knit cycle, give
it a quick spin, and then lay it flat on towels without pinning. The above
applies to natural fibers only. Acrylics, like I said, get the ole heave-ho
into the washing machine. I’ve always gotten excellent results using these
methods.

As a rule, just because the gauge matches doesn’t mean you can play fast and loose with the fiber. If it is a specialty (read fashion) yarn, I don’t substitute. If it is a generic worsted, I will. I have substituted acrylic for wool in a classic cable pattern with no problems.
Classic patterns seem to do the best with substitution. I am exceedingly careful to substitute cotton for anything. In fact, I don’t use cotton above sport weight anyhow. Worsted weight cotton stretches horribly–I made one sweater Cotton Fleece, which is I think 80% cotton, 20% wool, and I was not happy with it.
I have decided I should do my cable shawl knitting homework during the week, and the swatching on the weekend (otherwise the homework would never get done!). [Swatching allows you the freedom to use the yarn you have on the shelf…once you know you can pick up yarn and needles and adjust the size of the needles and adjust the size of the yarn until you have a fabric-feel-look YOU are happy with…once you have experienced that freedom…there is no going back to blindly following commercial patterns and THEIR choice of yarns, designed to sell you THEIR yarn.]