This week’s weaving tip comes from Barbara Elkins via Daryl Lancaster who will be teaching at WEBS in April, Garment Construction & Finshing Techniques and Exercises & Inspiration for the Color Challenged.

Daryl Lancaster in her studio

Many weavers don’t want to put a separate warp on the loom to check sett and finishing and lots of times we trip up. Here’s a way around it.

On a wide warp, wind a half-yard more than you expect to need and weave 12”. Cut the piece off, stay stitch around the edges and divide the fabric in thirds. For a scarf warp, add a yard and a quarter to the length of the warp and weave off a yard and divide it into three pieces.

Don’t do anything with one piece. Hand wash and air dry one piece. Put the third piece in a mesh laundry bag and throw it in the washer and dryer with the rest of your laundry. Compare the pieces and you’ll be able to tweak the sett and/or finishing of the final fabric.

Do you ever take the time to weave a sample before starting your project?

Recently my co-worker Sara told me about using fishing line for your selvages to produce straight edges. I’ve always struggled with trying to keep the edges of my weaving even. So I couldn’t wait to try this in my next project.

The green towel I wove without fishing line, producing my usual uneven edge.

For the purple towel, I added fishing line (20 lb) to the selvages and weighted each to keep the tension taut. Not only was I able to easily weave an even edge, I was able to weave a lot faster. I could throw my shuttle across the shed without worrying about my edges pulling in unevenly. Weaving suddenly became a lot less fiddly.

Valley Yarns 4-Shaft Twill Towels

Once you take the weaving off of the loom, the fishing line can easily be slipped out of the finished fabric.

Edit: I’ve had some requests for additional information regarding this tip.

• Tie the fishing line to the front apron rod.
• Thred the fishing line along side the first and last warp ends in the reed.
• Since the fishing line is a floating selvage, it does not go through any heddles.
• If your pattern is a twill or other weave structure that would result in floats along the selvages, use the fishing line along next to your yarn floating selvage. (Thanks for pointing this out Sandra.)
• The fishing line hangs over the back beam, weighted to keep the tension tight.
• If you want to, you can reuse the fishing line for your next project after pulling it out.

I will definitely be using fishing line again for my next weaving project.

Happy Weaving!

-Dena

Have you ever dropped a stitch when knitting lace?

Do you get lost in your lace patterns? Today’s tip is one you don’t want to miss.

When knitting lace, it can be a big pain trying to fix mistakes when yarn overs are involved. Sometimes you might even find that you get so lost or confused in your lace pattern that it seems easier to just frog the whole project and start over.

But if you use a lifeline, or safety line in your knitting, it can take away a lot of the stress and frustration of mistakes. A lifeline is a way of marking a particular point in your knitting where you can easily rip back to in case you make a mistake. Think of it as knitting insurance.

This video shows you how to insert a lifeline in your knitting and how to rip back to a lifeline if needed.

Use thin, smooth yarn in a contrasting color for lifelines. I like to use crochet thread or cotton weaving yarns. But in a pinch, dental floss also works really well. I mostly use a lifeline in lace knitting, placing it in the last repeat of my pattern. But you can use a lifeline in any knitting project such as cable work or other complicated stitch patterns.

Some knitting needles (Addi Lace Click Long Tips and Knitter’s Pride Interchangeable Needles) even include a hole or slot where you can thread a lifeline through. You’re able to then insert a lifeline into a row as you knit, saving you the step of threading a lifeline through your stitches with a tapestry needle.

If you knit with interchangeable knitting needles, you could use a spare cable as your lifeline. After knitting the row where you want a lifeline placed, replace the needle tips with end caps or stoppers. Connect the needle tips onto a new cable and continue knitting, leaving the old cable in your project as a lifeline.

Lifelines make lace knitting much more fun and relaxing for me. How have lifelines saved your knitting? Share your lifeline tips and stories in the comments.

Happy Knitting!

-Dena

I tend to throw my projects into my bag with much less care than I should. Luckily, with knitting, I am often working on circulars, which can be tied into a knot, keeping the project safely on the needles.

With crochet, I don’t have that option. So before tossing my crochet project into my bag, I add something to the working loop to keep it from unraveling. The easiest item to use is a locking stitch marker. But, in a pinch, I have also used paper clips, twist ties and bobby pins.

della Q Eden Cotton Pouch and Cascade Yarns Eco+ pictured above

What are your favorite uses for locking stitch markers in your knitting or crochet?

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You’ve heard the phrase “gauge swatches don’t lie”. But what happens when you forget what needle size you used for a swatch? You take the time to knit a swatch, trying multiple needle sizes; wash and dry it. Then as you unpin it from your blocking board and admire it, you look down and see a big pile of knitting needles of various sizes piled together. Wait, which size needles did I use again? All that work swatching and now you have to guess at the needle size used.

This has happened to me more than a few times. Sometimes the amount of time from when I swatch to when I’m ready to start knitting a project is too long, and I just can’t remember which needles I used. To deal with this issue, I’ve started knitting a row of eyelets into each section of my knitted swatch. Each set of eyelets represents the needle size I used.

swatch knit with US 6, 5, and 7 knitting needles

If you’ve never knit eyelets before, it’s an easy thing to incorporate into a stockinette swatch.

• On the knit side, knit across a row until you’re ready to add some eyelets.
• [YO, K2tog] repeat until you’ve created the same number of eyelets as your needle size.
• Continue knitting to the end of your row.
• On the purl side of your swatch, purl across as your normally would. You should have the same number of stitches as the previous rows.

Do you swatch before every project? Or are there only certain types of projects you will swatch for? Tell us about your swatching habits in the comments.

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Using a kitchen food scale is the easiest way to split a ball of yarn exactly in half.

1. Weigh the full ball and write that number down so you don’t forget!
2. Wind off your yarn until the scale reads half the original weight.
3. Cut the yarn and you’ll have two equal balls to work from.

Royal Ball Winder available at yarn.com

This is perfect for using a double-strand for a bulky project or for making sure you have enough yarn for two equally-sized socks.

What if you don’t have a kitchen scale? How have you been able to divide a ball of yarn in half?

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