The Knitting Fiend

Doree and I were discussing our reactions to mismatched tstripes at our regular Thursday knitting meeting.¹ Lo and behold, I soon found some!²

We’ve all seen this. It happens nearly every time a knitter buys her first skein of self-striping sock yarn and knits two socks. The knitter thinks, “What fun! I can just cast on and have neat striped socks!”

She knits her first sock and thinks, “Lovely!”

As she begins to knit her second sock she notices her socks are going to be fraternal twins.

She may consult with a more experienced sock knitter who tells her that to create identical twins, she must cast on both socks at the same spot in the yarn color sequence. But that may not be enough. Sometimes, even if the knitter takes special pains, variations in the dyeing process or the knitter’s own gauge can add up and the socks stripes match near the cast on but end up fraternal as the knitter approaches the bind off.

Now, as it happens, Dorre and I both agree fraternal socks can be fun. But there are plenty of knitters who think otherwise. Let’s rea what Carole of Carole Knits thinks about mismatched socks she knit:

The crossed foot pose has nothing to do with me trying to distract you from the mismatched stripes. It’s just the way she was sitting. Yup, she always sits on the deck with her feet balanced over a pot of petunias. Really. I swear. And, while those mismatched stripes bug me, they don’t bug me nearly as much as they would if these were my socks. Just saying.

In all honesty, I think Carole’s socks are very cute. I would wear them. I rarely align my feet perfectly, and anyway, the feather and fan pattern also distracts the eye. So the slight mismatch is ok by me.

Still, even though I like Carole’s sock, I totally understand her feelings. Why, because when I see mismatched stripes across a neckline I knit, I just groan. That just bugs the heck out of me! The fact that they match below the split only makes this worse.

I shared this opinion with Doree; she said, “Doesn’t bug me one bit. Nope. Not one bit!”

Obviously, my sentiment is not universal.

Still, it bugs me enough that if I discovered this mismatch after knitting the placket, I’d rip it back and try to figure out if I could cast on at the same spot in the color sequence. Unfortunately, rumor has it the color pattern never actually repeats with some yarns. If it doesn’t repeat, then solving “the problem” would mean steeking. (Eeeek!) Which, involves cutting. (Eeeek!) Which, as many constantly tell me “is really not that hard.”

True enough. Still, to solve “this problem”, I might need to resort to technique that requires me to cut the neck slit after knitting! I’m not particularly enchanted with cutting my knititng, and I don’t like the fact that I can’t really try on the sweater to see if I really liked the neck until after I cut. Once cut, the option of unraveling is pretty well shot.

So why would work steeks when knitting variegated yarns whose advantage is– supposedly– that they make knitting beautiful self-patterning multicolored sweaters “easy and foolproof?”

I have an easier solution to this problem. I don’t use any self striping yarn to knit sweaters with this type of neck!³

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1. We meet Thursday evenings at the Barnes and Nobles in downtown Naperville.
2. The sweater shown is knit using Noro Kureyon. By the way, I found this because I’m on a quest to find variegated yarns with long color runs. I want this type of yarn to knit a very simple circular yoke sweater.
3. I also don’t knit V necks or any neck style where you split more than 1″ below the final bind off. That leaves boat necks and some circular yoke sweaters knit in the round.