Tuesday 5 November 2013

Back to Blogging - but with a moan

I know it's been ages since I last made a blog post, but truth be told, not much has been happening on the knitting/crochet/spinning front.

Progress has been slow over the summer months.

The weather here is grey, damp and dismal and so I'm hoping for a brighter day tomorrow so I can take photos of progress on my grey cardigan (no, I still haven't finished it) and my finished purple/green socks (once I've sewn in the yarn ends).

Now for the moan.

Last Monday I cast on for a new pair of socks.  When I popped into Franklins a few weeks ago to say hello to Lucy, I came out (inevitably) with some yarn and some needle tips.  The yarn I bought was a 100g ball of Regia Mix-it! Color sock yarn.

It knits up very nicely and has bands of different patterns and stripes.  Very jolly and I finished the first sock yesterday morning.

Yesterday evening, I cast on the second sock, knit the toe and started on the foot.  14 rounds later, I came across a knot.

Can you see the knot?

I'm not sure if it's obvious from the photo, but after the knot is a yellow/white patterned stretch of yarn.  The same patterned stretch that I'd just finished knitting before the round of plain green.

Fortunately, I won't have to pull the sock off the needles and start again as I've pulled out a few metres and have found where the yarn should be next so I can join it on, carry on without interrupting the stripe/pattern sequence and  neatly darn the ends in when I've finished.  But that's not the point.  A knot in a ball of yarn isn't the end of the world if the yarn's plain-dyed, or is of a heathery hue, but in self-patterning yarn?


As you can see, it's only a very small amount of yarn that I've had to waste.

However......

What if I was a sock-knitter who likes her patterned hand-knitted socks to be identical and the amount of yarn needed to be wasted was nearly a whole sequence repeat?  What if the yarn after the knot had been wound in the other direction?  I'm not happy with having to waste any of the yarn so I would have been infuriated if I'd had to put in more effort to work out which was the next 'right' bit of yarn to use.

I'm now considering if an e.mail to Regia/Coats would be worth sending.  I'll think about it a bit more I think.