Week 11: DRK March to May KAL Q&A

happy friday welcome back this is the last of the knit along q a's and next week it'll be something new i have not picked a name it turns out it's really hard to pick a name you know drea renee knits just happened to be my instagram name when i started this little business so i didn't really choose it it just was there and that's what happened so it turns out i have a really hard time picking names so in the meantime because i haven't picked a name and therefore don't have a winner for the giveaway i thought i would do a little secret sale for y'all so if you are participating in the knit long maybe you've already seen this in the forum but you can head over there if you want to be able to see this actually written out um there's links below in the notes but basically you can get 25 off of all of my self-published patterns which is pretty much all of them except for ronan because i published that through brooklyn tweed um so on my website or in my ravelry shop just use the discount code cheer like i'm going to cheer you on throwing it along and so that's all caps c-h-e-e-r and i hope you find some patterns you like happy knitting all right let's go ahead and jump into these questions and cross your fingers for me that by next week i will have figured out a name for this thing i actually with drea renee knits that just happened to be my instagram name when i started designing so it just turned into my business name i never really like picked it so it's hard um and yeah if you've ever wondered where drea renault comes from my name is andrea and i used to live in austin texas many years ago and my friends there called me drea and my middle name's renee so that's it drea renee knits all right question time so question number one what method do you prefer for a jogless join in the round are there different methods when using a certain yarn i was knitting a linen cotton blend and my preferred method did not work so i don't have a ton of experience with linen cotton blends generally linen and cotton yarns can be pretty rough on my hands i think it's their lack of elasticity can be a little hard for me to knit with so usually if i do use uh one of those i it's typically blended with wool if i'm knitting with it so i don't see why this wouldn't my preferred method wouldn't work with a linen cotton blend i would think it would but just that caveat that i haven't necessarily tried it so my preferred way to do a douglas join is actually really simple i have this linked in pretty much any of my patterns that use stripes in the round i always throw the link to my video tutorial in there and i'll go ahead and pop that down below too but all i do is i join my new color just like you always would or carry it up if you're doing stripes over a small amount of rows or rounds i guess it's rounds we're talking about in the round um and so i go ahead and i knit one round and then when i get back to my beginning of round i take the leg of the stitch below and i just pop that up on my needle so now you have the original first stitch that you knit into with your new color um so it's going to be your old color hugging up on your new color and then you just knit them together and that helps bring it up so when we knit in the round we're actually knitting on a spiral it's not just a circle it's spiraling up and so that's why we get that jog that looks like boop so by bringing up that bottom leg it helps even it out and i find it works really well um so anyways if it's confusing to just hear me talk about it i will go ahead and link that tutorial below so you can actually go see a visual but it's my favorite way to do it it's pretty much the only way i'm just putting myself a little note here so i don't forget to link it um that's what i always do for stripes so i hope you find it helpful too and i'm trying to think of like that linen cotton blend why if you did try this method like any reason why it wouldn't work as well and sometimes a linen cotton blend can be a little like stiffer it's it's not typically as like fluffy and bloomy as like a wool but one thing to remember across the board with all of our knitting is generally when we're trying to do something really specific like this we kind of are like right up in our knitting like really looking at it close looking for the imperfections so a good rule of thumb is to like maybe try it and you could even do it on a small swatch or something if you don't want to put in all the effort of your bigger project just in case you don't like it but i would try it on a few stripes and then i would set it like hang it up on a hook across the wall from you and give yourself some distance to look at it because what you might find is that when you're not like real close to it that it actually looks fine it's just when it's really up close and you're looking for imperfections that it doesn't look like perfect enough so maybe just kind of keep that in mind all right next question what do you do with all the yarn you have left over from projects i recently reorganized my stash and realized i have so many little balls of yarn in various weights and colors how do you measure the yardage of these leftovers are there specific projects you recommend for using up your stash i have no idea what to do with all of it and i would hate to waste all the beautiful yarn so i think this is a great question it's something that pretty much all of us have to deal with generally we're always going to have at least some yarn left over from our project um so there's a few things i do with mine um really simple thing is if you roll it up into cute little balls it can actually look nice like some people buy like a big glass jar and they put them in there and it becomes like a decoration or like in a bowl um it's a great way to use up those little balls what i generally do with them this is kind of design specific but a lot of times i use my little leftover yarn balls to knit up swatches for new design ideas so this is when i'm just practicing stitches i'm seeing if i have fun doing that stitch if i like how it looks and so i can just kind of grab and use any yarn just to get a feel for it um another really fun way there are so many great scrappy patterns out there that use up odds and ends so any fading project is awesome for using up little odds and ends that was one of my main ideas behind find your fade was i wanted that project where i could use up some partial skeins or a lot of times we go to maybe a special yarn shop or a yarn festival someday in the future and we pick up like that one really beautiful hand-dyed skein and then we're like what do i do with this so that's where like find your fade and free your fade the sofa sweatshirt sweater all those really come in handy to use up little bits and pieces because a lot of times the more different colors you can involve and blend together you can hold more than one strand together tomorrow them you actually get really nice blending effects from that it can create really beautiful fades um mixing those yarns together creating different yarn weights by holding a couple strands together again it's really nice to do it with shawls because with shawls gauge is so much more forgiving because you're going to wrap it around you you're not it doesn't have to fit certain like circumferences of your body um now if they're odds and ends we all you know for me i knit so much that i do have yarn that i just will never be able to use it all up like use up all those little odds and ends so actually real quick before i forget another great use is color work so all those little tiny balls are perfect if they're colorful to throw like do a yoked sweater and use up all those little strands um with that but back to non-knitting ideas so there's a couple different things you can do i've donated to women's shelters um i once had a learn how to knit party and i just this was man seven years ago i just put kind of a local like i think i even announced it on my instagram but it was obviously for only people who were semi-close to where i lived that they could come over i would teach them how to knit and i actually that's how i repurposed all of my old knitting needles that i didn't use anymore um all the yarn and so i basically like made them their own little learn how to knit bundles and you know it's enough for them to do like a headband or like swatch or a hat or whatever um but that was really fun you can also a lot i've mentioned this in a previous episode but a lot of hospitals will the a lot of the staff like nursing staff and the hospital volunteers a lot of them are knitters and they will knit up like little hats for preemies when my daughter was in the nicu she got this little lovey that they actually had me wear so that when there was times when i could not physically be next to her they would keep the levy in with her so she could still smell me so that's some really nice ideas for being able to pass along that yarn and then one last idea is hedgehog fibers their tweety yarn is actually made of um they use they started by just using all of their yarn ties that they tie around the skein for dyeing so it doesn't turn into crazy yarn spaghetti and the yarn ended up being so popular that they it wasn't enough and so now they need more yarn to create this tweety yarn so it has speckles like um flecks of recycled yarn in it and they'll take anything and everything doesn't matter what the yarn was made of um and i think they even give you a discount on their yarn if you send them the yarn you're trying to get rid of so i will look i used to have a link for that as well i'm sure i can find it i will forget if i don't put myself a note right now so i'll link to that below as well if you're interested in doing something like that all right next question when i cast off i am never pleased with how it goes my ends never really line up well i can make it work and hide it cause i can sew and weave it in but i always feel i miss something and learning how to do a proper bind off any suggestions so what it sounds like to me i'm guessing is this is when you're binding off in the round um because that's when you would want like the two ends to line up but again when we're knitting in the round you're knitting in a spiral so they're not gonna line up perfectly there is that little bit of just like up so i should do it over here um so that really is why it's so great that you have a tail at the end because you're you're doing it exactly right and you can just use that little tail to kind of like snug it up pull it up so that it looks really great again i'm gonna go right back to the like look at that knit from across the room we just don't tend to notice um nearly as much when something's not really up close we're not analyzing it um but i do also have some bind off tips so one of the things that i fall back on with almost every project is a lot of times you will see written in patterns to bind off loosely and it's like what does that mean really because if we just try to bind off loosely at least for me is i have a couple of really loose stitches so that i actually have a couple that are a little tighter and it's just wonky like it's not going to work out for me and generally we never want a tight bind off so we're always trying to bind off loosely so what i do is i go up a substantial amount of needle sizes to do my bind off because then i can kind of tug to my heart's content to keep it really even and nice and not have to worry about it being tight loose tight loose loose loose tight loose so anyways for instance if i let's say i did my ribbing in like a us three needle i would use even up to like a us7 for my bind off it kind of depends on how you are naturally i'm a bit of a type a personality uh so i have a tendency to tug that bind off that yarn kind of tight um so for me bigger is better but you might only need to go up one or two needle sizes to get a really nice even bind off that is not so tight that you can't say get your foot in a sock i do a lot of toe up socks and so this is where it would really get me as i would bind off too tight and i like couldn't get the cuff over my heel and i've literally had to undo the bind off to make it looser so that's my favorite trick i think it keeps it looking really nice and even also don't forget about blocking you know after we block a project you might be amazed by how much that fixes like it'll make your fabric look smoother your tension more even and also wearing your projects when we wear what we have knit just the movement of wearing it and washing it and all that it shifts those stitches where they need to be and over time things just look really beautiful and maybe it's just the love that goes into it and and that goes into it just wearing it when we appreciate what we've made and we put it to use everything kind of chills out where it needs to be all right also finding your favorite bind offs you know maybe finding a bind off you really love you might want to try jenny's surprisingly stretchy bind off is a fabulous one my favorite tends to be a tubular bind off it's a more finicky but it's a beautiful finish um and of course there's the great old traditional bind off there's so many there's an entire book i have um that's just bind offs so find one you love and you can pretty much trade it into most patterns you can use the bind off you want a lot of the time okay next question i have heard mixed reviews should you pull your yarn from the outside of the cake or from the center which one twists more i can't answer the twists more question i actually have no idea but i am an outside puller and here's why i cannot stand yarn vomit so if you don't know what i'm talking about um i'm looking i have some cakes right here but i don't oh here's one okay so when first of all i like to when i wind up my cake what i do is on my little all winder before i pull it off i roll up the skein band and i hold it onto the end of my ball winder and then i push my cake off so that that's in the middle and the reason i do that kind of goes back to the what do you do with all your leftover yarn i like to have the ball band in there so that in three years from now when i pull out this little leftover cake i can be like what yarn is this because you're not probably going to remember maybe you will maybe i don't have a great memory so um for me that's really really helpful oh sorry i'm going to jump around really quickly because i wanted to go back i forgot to answer part of that question about what do you do with all those leftover bits part of that question she also asked was i have um how do you measure the yardage of these leftovers i loved that question so i really recommend getting a cheap kitchen scale you can get them online they can be under twenty dollars um even under ten dollars and i always weigh my yarn before and after a project and the reason this is a really great habit to get into is exactly so that you do know how much you have left because if you weigh it beforehand let's say it's 100 grams and then you weigh it at the end let's say you have 30 grams left you can do some really simple math you can just divide your yardage into the weight and then you can on the other side multiply by the weight you have left i'll put a little equation in here so you this makes sense but that way you actually know how much air did you have and so that way you know is this enough for me to knit up this hat pattern i was looking at or this mitt pattern you know like a smaller pattern or is it enough for the color work for this color in this pattern so i really really recommend um putting in the weight and writing it down i actually if i can what i do is i take off my ball um band and i weigh that because because i stick it in there i don't want to have to remove it to weigh the end so if i know how much it weighs then you can deduct that from how much weight is on the scale with that in the middle if that makes sense i hope that makes sense anyways weigh your yarn that's how you will be able to figure out how much yardage you have left all right back down to the pulling from the center of the outside so the pro to pulling from the middle is that your yarn cake doesn't look blue all over the place um but i generally just keep it in my knitting bag and almost use my knitting bag like a giant yarn bowl am actually going to pull out this to show you what i mean by yarn vomit so yarn valve is what happens when you pull from the inside a lot of times what happens let me find my is that all of a sudden it'll this is yarn vomit and it can just pull out a whole chunk and then that's the other reason why i don't like pulling from the inside and hey all of you out there will pull from the inside i'm not hating on how you do it you do what works for you it just doesn't work for me because i also don't like when i get like a little flaccid cake at the end so as this gets thinner and thinner it starts to collapse on itself and then it starts to tangle like at the end i always would have to end up winding it back into a little regular yarn ball so the only time i pull from a center ball is when i'm doing a project that i need to hold two strands together so i will do one strand from the outside and one from the inside so that would be my exception to the rule um but that would be really interesting maybe somebody watching can let us know which one twists more i think for me it's more about winding the yarn into a cake that like affects the twist of the ply um but it's so minimal i don't really worry about it okay next question um you know what's funny i think i think i lost one of my questions okay i've knit two top-down color work sweaters and while i'm hitting gauge on the body the cast on necklines of both have been about twice as big as they should be on the crop i just finished i started by going down an extra needle size for the ribbing i noticed it was looking huge and switched for the last several rows to an even smaller needle this didn't work and while the rest of the sweater matches the schematic the collar is twice as big as it should be i'd love your thoughts on how to prevent this in the future also is there anything post sticking post blocking that can be done to make the neckline smaller okay so um this is not uncommon i actually in my striped sweater um gave a like gave a couple options for necklines because what i found because you did say yeah so it is a top down starting with the collar issue a lot of the times for one thing is you do there is a ribbon gauge not all patterns include ribbing gauge um there's an assumption that as long as you go down about two needle sizes your ribbon gauge should be fine if you got gauge for the main fabric but it sounds like you know you might just be a loose ribber and so you might want to go down it sounds like even more like three needle sizes and um but basically what happens is when we are knitting from the top down and we start with the collar cast on there's just no structure there and they tend to stretch out especially if you're using a super wash yarn so my recommendation would be to skip the collar instructions completely and just start cast on and jump right into the yoke directions and then when you're all finished you'll actually go back pick up stitches for the collar and then knit up from there until it's you know the depth of the collar you need and then bind off the really nice thing about this is it's going to offer you a lot more structure you also can pick up less stitches to make the collar smaller or and if you try it collar is too big and you need to re-knit it all you do is pull that yarn back out re-pick up stitches and start over and you're completely fine um because at the point you are with your other sweater where you mentioned can you do anything now you've already sticked it in everything can you do anything this is you're getting into sweater surgery and it can be definitely a little scary to see if you can pull out far enough um without then messing things up like i'm it sounds like it was a cardigan so it because you sticked it so you've probably picked up a button band it's a little that one's a little tricky what you could try doing is picking up stitches around where the collar begins and knitting a new collar and if that works you could even try taking the old collar and then folding it in depending on what yarn weight you used and just kind of um like you did with your stick you know how once you cut your stick you have you have the flap that you then fold in and you stabilize you sew that down you could kind of try doing the same thing with your collar as long as it's not a bulky longer collar might be an option um i have gone back before and undone a collar that i knit from the top down that i decided i didn't like the fit of and i like picked it out and reading it but it was a bit of a headache it was a little challenging but if it's between fixing it or never wearing it i would definitely try to fix it um but yeah in the future i would recommend just start with the go back pick up and knit that collar i also have found for myself personally you know a lot of collars are only maybe half inch to an inch but if you do prefer something that's a little like closer to your neck um knit a two inch two inch collared up is actually my current favorite right now i have a couple the throw over if you want to see a picture my pattern the throw over has a two inch collar uh but i have a couple more designs coming out with two inch collars because i really like that depth i find that they they're very flattering they fit really nicely um so that would be my suggestion so i don't know how imagine we're gonna get a bonus question i thought i had brought it over and i guess i don't know what i did um but there was a question asking me about my favorite designs my favorite nets and this is always a really hard one because it's kind of like picking a favorite child usually whatever i've just knit is my favorite um but i definitely have some that are very special so i am wearing one of them today this is the ginny cardigan and this one's super special because a if you have seen some of my designs i really love a shawl collar cardigan it's just like cozy town um but this one's named for my grandma who taught me how to knit and i designed this the year after she passed away and i had met her while she was living when i was like really getting into knitting in my late teens i wore a sweater and she really loved it and so i knit her one in navy blue um so this just reminds me of her her name's jenny and yeah i love being able to wear it and just feeling closer to her when i do um and then i thought i would just share two of my other favorites so again it's so hard to decide um but these ones are special this is wool and honey and this is the design that i most am like i can't believe i did that i'm just really proud of it it was really challenging grading this situation for a lot of sizes was i i don't know if i could do it again today i'm like how did i do it um so yeah this is definitely one that i am most proud of and then my range shawl this was actually my first playing around with fading so with color melting so i did that with two color brioche to move from one color to the next and then i did it with um this ombre tweed slipped stitch pattern um but i still i designed this geez i think i think i was pregnant with my son so like 2015 is when i designed this i'm pretty sure and i just still wear it so much i could still in heavy rotation six years later and to me that is a sign of a of a good net it wraps around really well like it has this very cozy structure um that i really really love so this is hinterland yarns by the way those are all natural undyed colors and then woolen honey is brooklyn tweed loft and the ginny cardigan is harrisfield nightshades which is just a really fun yarn to work with um so all of those are pretty woolly cozy yarns but okay this is a long one so i hope you had your coffee or your tea and your knitting today sorry i was so chatty it's twice as long as the usual ones so just a quick to close it up um wednesday was the last day of the drk march to may knit along i picked giveaway winners yesterday and set them out their prizers and prizes prizes this morning i do have a newsletter this week's newsletter hasn't gone out yet i am hoping to include the winners photos of their beautiful finished dolls and sweaters in the newsletter so i'm just waiting on one person to make sure i have permission to do that so that will be coming out if not today the monday um the flicker and flame weekend and along challenge starts in less than a week it starts on thursday we are knitting these hats they come in two different styles this one's slouchy this one fits like a beanie worsted weight sport weight and it comes sized for the whole family baby to adult large you can knit any size during the knit along um so please come join us it's really fun we try to knit the hat in four days and even if you don't like the challenge aspect of it you are completely welcome to join and just hang out make friends it's really fun so i will include links to the newsletter the knit along those patterns all below again use the code cheer all capitals c-h-e-e-r through this sunday may 23rd at midnight eastern standard time in my ravelry shop or on my website drea renee knits.com and you'll save 25 off of my knitting patterns and i just want to say a huge huge thank you to every single one of you who participated in the knit along even if you just showed up and lurked and read all the posts and didn't post yourself it still just means the world for everyone who just came and joined and it was so positive watching everyone cheer each other on and offer help and suggestions and tips and giving all the hearts and love for everyone's nets it just really has made the last few months for me peeking in every day and seeing how everyone was doing so thank you so much we there is going to be an accessories knit along so that's going to be coming up soon i'll announce it after we finish this next weekend challenge so i'll see you back here next week hopefully with a name all right happy knitting have a great weekend

Channel: Andrea Mowry

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Id: j8OefJHlAzY

Length: 30min 43sec (1843 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021