To confirm my theory, I reversed (knitting the rows I had purled and vice versa) and sure enough, the swatch went the other way. Can anyone tell me WHY? And how I can STOP this from happening again? It would be great for a scarf pattern, but I just don't think it would work for a sweater ...
A bit dismayed by the resulting chevron, I decided to play a bit with that alpaca I spun right after I got the wheel. Cast on 20 stitches and did 20 rows in stockinette. There's a very slight tilt to the swatch, but nothing that a little blocking won't fix. If I had enough of this, it would definitely be a sweater. I wish you could touch it.
3 comments:
And when will we see a picture of you at the wheel.............
Surfed on over from Knit and Tonic:
From what I read - too much twist will cause a bias when you knit. Apparently plying cancels the over-twisted singles. I'm a very new spinner so my advice is rather hypothetical.
I was having a discussion about knitting sweaters with singles vs plied yarn the other day at my LYS. One of the store owners was commenting that she finds that even commerical singles will tilt sometimes...
I think Eunny and Moe are right -- the bias is due to energized spin in the yarn. My understanding is that you can counterbalance the singles' spin by plying and/or "setting the twist". I'm still figuring out the best way to set twist in yarn, so this is just from my reading, not personal experience yet. Some folks wash the yarn and then hang the skein with a weight on the bottom. Others think that weighting the skein takes the bounce out of the yarn. PGR in "Spinning in the old Way" has a recipe for "cooking" yarn to set the twist. This is next on my list of things to try.
Of course, you could always design something that takes advantage of the twist. I think in the Green Mountain Spinnery book there's a pattern which calls for energized S and Z singles and uses the resulting (and opposing) bias as a design feature!
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