Knitting tips: Knitting with Linen

In an endeavour to have more knitwear to wear during the summer I knit two linen pieces this season. I went stash diving and found the sweater lot of Quince & Co. Sparrow that I had bought at least a year ago and I made Pam Allen's Perkin's Cove jumper. Then just last week I finished knitting a lovely cocoon of a shrug by Bristol Ivy called Bridie in Quince & Co's aran weight linen, Kestrel. Both of these garments are lovely to wear and they will definitely feature prominently in my summer wardrobe in the years to come.

I hear many people wonder what it is like to knit with linen yarn and I am by no means an expert, but here are some of my observations.

Linen is a plant fibre so it is smooth like cotton and it will not felt. However, because of the smoothness of the fibre it does also share the cotton's characteristic of having no bounce in the yarn. Unlike wool and many other animal fibres that have crimpy strands that will give the yarn bounce and memory, the plant fibres' smoothness will pretty much feel flat and "dead" in the hand. For some knitters, working with such fibres tend to cause their hands to hurt. After working two garments in linen I am ready to give my hands a rest from plant fibres and get back into some incredible woolly wools. 

In preparation for knitting with the linen yarn I was advised to hand wind the skeins. The lack of crimp in the yarn is just more suited to hand wound balls but that is not to say if you are short on time that you cannot knit from a cake that had been wound on a ball winder.

To try to avoid the stiffness in my hands I read Elizabeth Doherty's guest blog post on the Quince & Co. site. She suggests to ease up the tension and to go down a needle size or two so that you don't have to pull as tightly to achieve gauge. I did this with the Bridie project and tried hard consistently maintained a relaxed tension but I find the muscle memory in my hands often just take over when I get into a knitting rhythm and when I finished the pieces I had a little freak out moment when my knitting was much smaller than the suggested size pictured in Bristol's schematic. 

But here is how linen can shine. It is an incredibly strong fibre and can withstand some vigorous blocking. So I blocked the heck out of the Bridie and left it to dry over a weekend; I was not going to take it off the mats until it was bone dry. Because there is no crimp in the fibre once it is dry that shape is pretty much set until the next time it gets wet unlike wool which can I have noticed will gradually bounce back to it's preblocked state in some for or another. After blocking the Bridie cocoon, the size was much closer to the intended size and now it fits perfectly. I believe by blocking it the pattern has opened up a bit and it has resulted in a lovely drape to the garment.

When I was knitting the Perkin's Cove pattern with the Quince & Co. Sparrow yarn I found that my finished object was a bit wide and the stitches were looking a bit uneven and sloppy. So when I blocked that jumper I pulled it down to elongate the stitches and bring in the width. Stretching out the stitches lengthwise also helped to tidy up the elongated stitch pattern by evening it all out. Again I let it dry until it was bone dry and the linen has pretty much stayed in place.

Much of what I have read about linen knits emphasises how machine washing and tumble drying the yarn will soften it and give it more drape. I am yet to test this because I do not own a tumble dryer. I did however throw the Bridie shrug into the washing machine and that withstood the process. Linen, like cotton will not felt and is strong enough to take some rough treatment.

Both pieces have been such lovely layering garments for me to wear over the past month. I am so pleased with them both and next summer I will definitely have another linen knit on my needles. Maybe I'll play around with some Isager Bomulin next time.

Further Reading:

As mentioned above, Elizabeth Doherty's tips on the Quince & Co. blog are very help so do take a look. Another worthy read for knitting with linen is Hannah Fettig's post about finishing linen knits. Check it out here.

Links to my Ravelry project pages for my Bridie and Perkin's Cove.

Finished object file: Puntilla Sweater | Skein Merino Cashmere Fingering

This is the kind of pose you end up with when your 6YO gives the directions. He thought that I could best show off the lace by holding my hands this way.

Here's another finished object for a couple of months ago but I have been wearing it so much since I finished it and it is certainly one of my current wardrobe favs. I'm talking about the Puntilla sweater designed by Joji Locatelli that I knit for the recent Skein Sweater KAL that Kristen hosted through her Ravelry group.

When Kristen first announced that she was going to offer a preorder sale for sweater lots of her yarn I was immediately hooked. I started obsessing over her colour ways and bases and dreaming of the different sweaters I could make. Then Kristen announced that she was also going to host a sweater KAL starting in May just around the time the preorders were due to be sent out. This totally sent me down the Ravelry rabbit hole. I ummed and ahhed over two patterns initially but every time I logged onto Ravelry I started adding more patterns to my short (long) list.

'Milk Glass' is a beautiful colour way but it was not quite what I expected.

Finally, I decided to make Joji Locatelli's Puntilla sweater from her recently released Authentic Collection. From the Skein update I ordered 4 skeins of MCN Sock in the 'Milk Glass' colour way on a whim because the photo of the colour looked like a soft neutral with subtle splashes of pastel purple and bluey grey. When the skeins actually arrived and I started swatching with the yarn I realised that the colour way was much deeper and variegated then I had expected. I kept looking at my swatch and I kept thinking, "I love these colours, it looks amazing." However, something still nagged at me in the back of my mind about the colour and only after I had cast on and started knitting the shoulders did I finally admit to myself that I just didn't love the colour way when I was knitting it in st st. I was troubled by just how variegated it was and I didn't feel comfortable wearing that blend of colours in a sweater that was predominately knit in st st. Luckily, I had some Skein Merino Cashmere (MC) Fingering in 'Graphite' in my stash and so I frogged what I had knit with the 'Milk Glass' and started all over again. 

The knit went fairly quickly after I got past the shoulders and the short row shaping for the neckline. I had never knit a Joji pattern before and her shoulder construction method was a style that I had never tried before either. But all credit to Joji for writing such clear instructions, because it was not tricky at all and I was surprised that in a relatively short amount of time I had a neck hole and a pair of shoulders.

It's hard taking photos in the yard without the dogs getting in the way.

Those dogs are still there in the background.

Once I had the arms holes done and had joined the work in the round I buzzed through the st st body. I knit the sleeves on short circulars, which has become my favourite method of small circumference knitting (BTW, I use 20cm Addi turbos for that) and then I finished the neck ribbing with an invisible ribbed bind off to give it a bit more stretch. Bang, the main body of the sweater was done and I was onto the lace trims. 

Here is where the 'Milk Glass' came back into play. I decided that though I didn't like the colour way in st st I was going to love it knit in lace. So I picked up the the stitches around the ribbed ends of the sweater and knit the easy to memorise lace in the beautiful 'Milk Glass' colour. I adore the little touches of mauve and bluey grey that peak through in the lace trim. I love how the lace sits at the end of my sleeves and at the bottom of the sweater giving it a touch of femininity to an otherwise boxy and androgynous garment.

I like this pattern over Joji's very popular Boxy sweaters because it is not as wide in the body and the added lace trims just gives it something a little special for the everyday. Hence this top has been my favourite one to wear as our weather has turned colder and colder in Melbourne. The MC Fingering is just so soft and cuddly, so when the weather wasn't so cold I would wear a singlet underneath and the yarn was so divine against the skin. Now that it is colder the generous boxy style of the jumper means that I can still wear it comfortably over my layers.

Thanks to Kristen from Skein for hosting such a fantastic KAL and for the awesome prize.

And, as an added bonus I won a prize from the KAL. Kristen announced me as one of the winners at the end of the KAL and she awarded me a Kimi Silks project bag. I am extra chuffed that on top of having a gorgeous new sweater to wear I won something in the KAL. Who would have thought I'd be so lucky?

Finished object file: Sawmill River Hat | Brooklyn Tweed Loft

I finished this hat about a week ago but with the busyness of kids at home on summer holidays I haven't had much time to think about blogging.

This Sawmill River Hat by Bonnie Sennott was a spot of selfish knitting that gave me the opportunity to have a play with Brooklyn Tweed's Loft (fingering weight) yarn. Just before Christmas, Yarn + Co., a LYS in Melbourne got in a shipment of BT and to my knowledge they are the only Australian stockists of this much sought after yarn. I was quite beside myself with excitement and didn't hesitate to pick up a few skeins as a Christmas present for myself.

When it came to picking a pattern for this gorgeous yarn I wanted a single skein project and something with cables. Bonnie Sennott's hat pattern fit the bill exactly I even went with the sample colour, Hayloft.

When swatching with the loft the yarn broken as I was casting on with the long tail method. I had read that this yarn due to it's woollen spun nature was very delicate and this break just confirmed that. So my first few rows were knit quite gingerly for fear of breaking the yarn again. Once I got going I was more confident and familiar with the feel of the yarn in my hand so that nervousness disappated.

In my hand the yarn felt rustic but not itchy. It is a lovely tweedy yarn spun from  American grown Targhee-Columbia wool. I don't know much about this breed but I must say the wool is a delight to wear against the skin. At first touch it may not feel very appealing especially to knitters who are mostly merino users. It does not have that same squishiness of merino wool but when you look closely at the strand it is clear that it is undoubtedly soft, lofty and delicate. 

Shortly after I cast on this project I was browsing around Bonnie's Ravelry group page and noticed that she was hosting a 'Selfish knitting KAL'. My project met the requirements of the KAL; being a new project cast on in the new year, it was one of Bonnie's patterns and I was knitting it for myself. I joined in the chatter and was quite excited that I was ticking off my goal of attempting more KALs this year. I finished well ahead of the cut off date and I just enjoy watching and commenting on my fellow knitters' progress now. There is also a pretty good prize on offer but I don't think my chances of winning it are pretty high.

Such well defined cables from the BT Loft.

I did make a few modifications to the pattern and you can read my project notes from my Ravelry page here.

I liked knitting with the BT Loft and I really enjoyed the cables of the pattern. I am happy that I have another soft and snuggly hat ready for me in the winter and now that I've experienced this highly talked about yarn, I'm dreaming of more projects that I can make with it.