Soakbox Knit-A-Long: Dying Yarn

Over the next few weeks we are running a knit-a-long for the four patterns in our Soakboxes. We will be posting detailed information on each of the patterns as well as fun things you can do with your Soakboxes for yourself, as a gift and as a group. You can order a kit from us directly, just click on the link on the right, or you can ask for it by name from your local yarn store. May your hands be soft, fibers fresh and nails match your knits!

We love how our Soakboxes have Soak products in them, but we also love how we were able to team up with Beth of Lorna’s Laces for the yarn that goes into each box. Jacqueline had a blast going to the Lorna’s headquarters in Chicago to pick and dye yarn for each of the boxes.

It’s kind of amazing how you can take a plain, bright, white skein of yarn and turn it into something so beautiful.

Jacqueline was the one who picked the four colours for our boxes, but it is Beth who has gone through and made the formulas and is dying the yarn every month (sometimes more often) for us.

Did you know that we hadn’t originally planned for the yarn, polish and bottle labels to match? Jacqueline went and played around with colour and dyed up her favourites. When she got home we took one look at the colours and realized that they all matched! It was perfect without even trying. It is so interesting how we tend to gravitate to the same colours in many aspects of our lives.

Sometimes I look at yarn and it is just the perfect combination of colours, and I can hardly bear to knit them up. It makes yarn a unique canvas for artistic expression. It can be pure colour fun.

Do you have any colours that you gravitate to unconsciously?

Thank-you so much to The Workroom in Toronto for letting us use these photos from the Yarn Dying 101 class that Beth taught over the summer. They are fully stocked with Soakboxes.

Soakbox Knit-A-Long: Double Pointe Pink

Over the next few weeks we are running a knit-a-long for the four patterns in our Soakboxes. We will be posting detailed information on each of the patterns as well as fun things you can do with your Soakboxes for yourself, as a gift and as a group. You can order a kit from us directly, just click on the link on the right, or you can ask for it by name from your local yarn store. May your hands be soft, fibers fresh and nails match your knits!

Needles

Due to the cable along the front half of the mitt, the Double Pointe Pink may require some adjustments to avoid laddering between the needles. If you want to read more about laddering, we have some suggestions about it on out Clark Cable post. The biggest difference between the two patterns is that this design has cabling only on the front of the mitt, so it is much easier to avoid unsightly stitches. The best thing to do is to make sure that all the gaps between needles happen on other part of the mitt. This would work fairly well for the beginning portion of the mitt, but due to the wrist shaping there is a section that only has about 14 stitches on the back half. If you are using double pointed needles that would leave you 36 stitches on one needle and 7 or less on the other two! Now, that’s not a very comfortable knitting situation.

To avoid it you could shift the stitches around a bit just for those few rows where there aren’t as many stitches and watch for any laddering. This is also a perfect example of magic loop or two circulars being a good technique to know, as it would reduce some of the awkwardness.

Errata

Rnd 14 Written Instructions should read: Rnd 14: K4, p11, k6, p11, k4. The charted instructions are correct.

I-cord

I-cord is the technique that is used to make the cords that tie on the back of the hand.

It sounds like a strange and silly technique, but it is really quite easy. Pick up four stitches as instructed in the pattern, then slide them to the other end of your dpn or circular needle. Then knit into the first stitch, pulling the yarn tightly across the back of your work. Once you have knit the four stitches, slide them back to the end of the needle and start again. That’s all there is to it! Because there are so few stitches, it will curl up into a little tube. It is much easier to work i-cord than to try and knit in the round on four needles with so few stitches!

We have already found a few blog posts about knitting up Soakboxes. Check out this one with gorgeous photos of finished Double Pointe Pink gloves!

http://knitty-kat.blogspot.ca/2012/09/fo-double-pointe-pink.html

Soakbox Knit-A-Long: Lace Kelly Tutorial

Over the next few weeks we are running a knit-a-long for the four patterns in our Soakboxes. We will be posting detailed information on each of the patterns as well as fun things you can do with your Soakboxes for yourself, as a gift and as a group. You can order a kit from us directly or you can ask for it by name from your local yarn store. May your hands be soft, fibers fresh and nails match your knits!

Lace Kelly is probably the easiest of the four mitts, and is a great project to practice knitting lace. The cuff detail is only a handful of rows, so nothing to get too overwhelming. We love how organically the thumb grows out of the lace pattern. It is sure to add a touch of old Hollywood glamour to your day, even if it is just running out to the shops!

Needles

As with any small project knit in the round, there are a few options for what kind of needles (double pointed needles, magic loop, 2 circulars) to use. For the most part your choice will come down to personal preference, though there are a few pros and cons to each style. In the case of Lace Kelly I think that it mostly comes down to pros. Due to the relative simplicity of the design, there aren’t any strong cases against a needle type.

The biggest difference between the styles is the stitch counts on each needle. There are a few ways to arrange your stitches. This will change depending on which style you choose.

If you are using 4 double pointed needles you will want to divide the stitches evenly by 3 to fit around your needles. This is all well and good for the small size, as 48 divides quite nicely by 3 so that you have 16 stitches on each needle. Things are a little tricky for the larger size, which has 56 stitches and does not divide evenly by 3. It seems that it is a bit tricky to get 18.666666667 stitches on one needle! The stitches must be divided up as evenly as possible though, and there are two ways to do this. The best thing to do when deciding how to divide the stitches is to look at the pattern repeats in the design and go from there. Luckily Lace Kelly is quite simple and lends itself to dividing by pattern repeats very well. The main pattern has an 8 stitch pattern repeat, which means that we can divide the stitches around as 16-16-24. It does mean that margin of stitches between the needles is quite large, but has the added bonus of keeping the repeats together. Some people may find this annoying, which leads us to the second option of just getting the stitches as close to the same number of stitches as possible. This would give you 18-18-20 stitches on each needle. The downside of this is that there will be a few pattern repeats that span over two needles, which could be confusing to a newer lace knitter.

Special Stitches

Speaking of lace knitting, I am sure that you will find most of the stitches in this pattern familiar to you, even if you are new to lace knitting. K2tog and ssk are very common decreases, often found in the top of hat, mittens and all sorts of other projects. The other two stitches are very common in lace knitting, but are less common outside of lace knitting. These are a yarn over (yo), which adds a stitch, and a Centered double decrease (Cdd), which decreases two stitches. Looking at the pattern you may ask, why a Cdd? Why not just knit 3 together (k3tog) or slip 2 stitches, knit 1, passed slipped stitches over (skpsso)? Aside from the confusing acronyms, they each look slightly different. Here, the Cdd is used to create an elegant line between the holes of the yarnovers. If you are interested in learning more about decreases Knitty has a great article with photographs that illustrates the decreases mentioned here. The Cdd in Lace Kelly is the second example under Double Decreases.

Another thing to watch out for is the Cdd on rows 13 and 19. In order to have the Cdd that is at the end of the row work out, it will need to steal the first stitch of the next row. One way for this to work easily is at the beginning of rows 13 and 19, knit the first stitch. Then slip this stitch from its needle to the needle before it. Then you can start the row as written.

Happy Knitting! Don’t forget to pop over to our Ravelry group if you have any more questions and to update us on your progress!

Rhinebeck Specials

Here at Soak Wash HQ we are madly getting ready for our roundup of fall festivals. Jacqueline and Chris are going to be at New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY this weekend. They will be in booth #25 in building 31.

In the middle of all this we thought we would take a moment to let you know that we will have some specials just for those who visit our booth at Rhinebeck. We will have a limited number of large sized bottles of our Peppermint and Cucumber Heel foot cream for sale. These are 4 times the size of our regular sizes for just $25!  These will be an in-person Rhinebeck only special and will not be available off our website or in retail locations. Get them while they last!

Rhinebeck will also see the debut of our brand new temporary tattoo sheets. We listened to your feedback and have added a few new images and improved on some old ones.

We will have a number of Soakboxes on hand as well. This is a perfect time to pick them up if your local yarn store isn’t carrying them, or if you were waiting to see the colours in person. Then you will be all set to join our knit along as well! We have been selling out of Soakboxes at other events that we have done, make sure to stop by while we have them!

It’s Soakbox Knit-A-Long Time!

Ready needles, Set your patterns, and GO! It’s Soakbox knit-a-long time!

We gave you a bit of a teaser last week, but we are happy to announce the official beginning of our Soakbox knit along! For the next three months (to work upto your holiday knitting!) we will be posting lots of information about Soakboxes. We will have a feature on each box over the next two weeks with lots of tips and tricks to help you knit a great pair of mitts. After that we will be posting regularly about what you can do with your Soakboxes, fun activities and events and more information about how they came to be.

Don’t have a Soakbox yet? You can get it right from us, or ask for it at your LYS by name.

In addition to posting regular information here, we will also be posting and talking over in our Ravelry group. We would love for you to hop on over and post any questions, comments and photos that you have about knitting up your Soakboxes!

On twitter (@soakwash) and instagram (@jacqueline_soak) we would love for you to use the #soakbox so that we can all find eachother.

If you have a blog and you write a post about knitting up your Soakbox we would love to hear about it. You can post about it in the Ravelry group, tweet it at us, post in the comments, or even send us an email (natalieATsoakwashDOTcom) about it. We would love to hear from you.

I (Natalie) have my ball all wound and ready to knit Double Pointe Pink. I was the hands for the photos, so it only feels right to have my own pair!

We pinned down Fiona Ellis, the woman behind the designs of our mitts, and recorded a video for each of the patterns. Fiona has graciously offered to drop in via Skype to yarn shops and groups that are doing their own knit-a-longs and Soakbox events. You can send her an email at  fiona.ellisATsympaticoDOTca to set something up.  

As a grand kick off for the knit along we are going to run a contest. That means that you could win a Soakbox to knit up or gift, or both! We will be doing a random draw here on the soakworthy blog for two kits (Double Pointe Pink and Clark Cable), as well as a draw for one the other two kits on the Lorna’s Laces blog. Each of the kits will be personally signed by Fiona! You can enter the contest all this week. We will close the comments and draw a name Monday at midnight.  All you have to do to enter here is to answer the following question in a comment on this post. What is your preference: french manicure, or solid colour for your nails?

For a chance to win one of the other two sets, visit http://lornaslaces.blogspot.com/ and follow the instructions there.

May your hands be soft, fibers fresh and nails match your knits.