PSA: This also gets into a bit of a “needle review”, which is to say I
might say some unpopular things about knitting needle brands and people
who feel like if I’m not knitting with $400 needles I’m not doing it
right. You have been warned.
Start Post
SO has been really into cardigans lately and since it is allegedly
going to be summer soon, I thought that making wool cardigans for
someone seemed a bit silly. Thanks to my binge listening to the
KnitPicks podcast, I’d been seriously itching to knit with their
cotton/linen yarn blend “CotLin”.
I don’t really know why, but the podcast made it sound like such an
amazing and exciting yarn and since I was thinking about summer knitting
(who are we kidding here, I made a worsted weight, all wool, 4th Doctor
scarf during the duration of last July/August…summer knitting isn’t a
thing I think about) and I was thinking I should make some things out of
cotton yarn (which I’ve never used before) and CotLin seemed fun.
I had to wait for the backordered black Palette to come in (Night’s
Watch hat!), but as soon as it was ready I pulled SO in and we sat down
and picked out colours for the cardigan. There was no question that a
navy blue was going to be involved, but we spent a fair bit of time
going over the various greys and brown colours and finally settled on
“Cashew” and “Planetarium” (the cardigan is done with wide stripes—12
rows high with a gauge of 6 rows per inch). I waited for the yarn to
come and then I got swatching.
The first thing I noticed while knitting the swatch was that although
this yarn claims to be a DK weight, it’s very thin. I think it’s just
spun very tightly, but when I put it up next to a strand of Palette, the
CotLin strand is just about bigger than the Palette strand. That said,
the pattern (which is written for DK weight yarn, although not cotton DK
weight yarn…more on that when I talk about the cardigan) called for
4.5sts = 1” and 6 rows = 1” over stockinette stitch using US 7 needle
and after washing and blocking the swatch, that’s what I got, so I’m
rolling with it.
The second thing I noticed is that cotton yarn is strange. Or,
rather, it’s strange compared to anything else I’ve ever knit with
(which is basically acrylic and various wools). It feels like knitting
with macrame thread (for all I know it basically *is* like knitting with
macrame thread) as it slides through my hands. I’ve gotten used to it
after knitting about a quarter of a cardigan, but for a while,
especially since I’ve been switching between that, Malabrigo Rios (which
is ridiculously soft superwash merino), KnitPicks Brava acrylic, and
Knit Picks Palette, the CotLin just felt bizarre in my hands. Once it’s
knitted, it’s actually rather soft, but it feels very stiff as I knit it
and the fact that it has next to no memory (it doesn’t spring
around or squish or anything) is still odd for me.
The third thing I noticed is that this yarn is terrible when knitted on aluminum
needles. I was dropping stitches all over the place. The cotton yarn is
slicker than wool and because it doesn’t have the fibre memory, it
doesn’t grip the needles the way I’m used to. I have a Boye
interchangeable needle set (this is where my potentially unpopular
opinions on needles start…you have been warned) that I use almost
exclusively to knit things. If I don’t use those, it’s because the
cables disconnect from the needle tips and on certain projects (Palette
on size 3) that means the yarn gets stuck in the connectors, so I’ve
purchased a stand-alone Boye circular needle for that. In many cases, I
also own the straight needles. Problem is, I somehow managed to lose ONE
US7 straight needle (which was the reason I was gifted the Boye set in
the first place because I was knitting a lot of things on US7 and I had
ONE NEEDLE and no circulars). I do own wood DPNs (mainly Clovers) and I
own them in a US7, but this cardigan called for me to cast on 150+
stitches and it’s not knit in the round (because it’s a cardigan), so I
wasn’t going to use DPNs.
Here are my needle thoughts. Yes. I just admitted to you that I
literally knit everything on US$8 aluminum needles from the craft store.
Everything. Unless it needs to be on a DPN and then I knit it on US$10
bamboo DPNs unless I have caved to pressures of ergodynamics and bought
myself square Knitter’s Pride Cubics rosewood US3 DPNs (which, lbr, were
also $10 DPNs) because all the hats I make are finished on US3 DPNs and
I own NO US3 DPNs at all (been finishing them on US5s. I’m lazy and
cheap, what?). I’ve been using those to knit my Evenstar Gloves, and I
like them, but really can’t tell much of a difference between them and
the Clovers I usually use. So, okay, let’s discuss this.
Whenever I hear someone saying that one needs to buy only Hiya Hiya
or only ChiaoGoo or ABSOLUTELY ONLY Signature needles, I sort of stop
listening to them. I admit that the cables on my Boye circular set are
pretty stiff, and if I use anything other than the two biggest sizes I
basically can’t use them because the cables are too stiff to bend
properly. I admit that the junctions routinely come unspun and I have to
respin the tips on at the end of rows. But you know what, I’m actually
okay with that. A friend gifted me the set for free and it has all the
things I need and I’ve knitted some truly amazing things with so-called
“worthless needles”. I once heard someone say that if you paid so little
for a needle that you feel no remorse giving it away, it wasn’t worth
knitting on in the first place. I’m calling bullshit on that. I knit on
“worthless” Boye aluminum needles and I knit with a bunch of “horrible”
acrylic yarn and I do some really fucking fantastic work. So there.
Anyway, the point of this is that I was dropping stitches all over
the place and quickly realized I needed bamboo circulars. I’d been at
JoAnn to buy fabric (I needed the Marvel licensed fabric and they
routinely carry it), but I didn’t have the swatch done for the CotLin,
so I didn’t yet know what size needles I would need, so I didn’t
purchase any. Thankfully, the same friend who gifted me the Boye set
also has bamboo circs in just about every size. So, I started the
ribbing on my US6 Boye aluminums and then moved to the size 7 for the
rows and just dealt with it until she came by on Sunday and saved me
with the bamboo. You can definitely tell that the first stripe had a lot
more fixes done to it if you look at it closely, but SO is okay with it
and I’m hoping after a wash/block you won’t even be able to tell.
In summary: It’s too soon for me to tell what exactly I think about
the CotLin, but now that I have the proper needles I’m finding it much
easier to knit. I’m worried about proper drape on the cardigan once it’s
finished, and I’m not convinced it’s going to hold shaping well through
the sleeves, but I’ll be certain to keep you all posted through the
process.
Sorry this got long. I will leave you with a quick photo of the CotLin cardigan as it currently stands.
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