Poinsettia Yos

I decided to make a yo-yo poinsettia. (Does every crafter wake up in the middle of August thinking "OMG, only four-and-a-half months 'til Christmas!"?) Although I love the little flowers created by the swirl yo-yos, I wanted my poinsettia to be more precise. You'll notice that this pattern is based on six repeats per round rather than the eight of the original. Also, in order to reduce bulk, I cast on fewer stitches and decreased every other round until I got to the top of the flower. Then I began decreasing every round. These are a bit more fiddly than the basic ones, but you'll be able to turn out plenty before December 25.


This still uses the provisional cast-on here, using a matching perle cotton and leaving it in to gather the cast-on.


Yarn: Sock- or sport-weight in both flower color and center color.

Needles: Set of 5 US #1 (2.25 mm) dpns or size you can work comfortably with. (Gauge is not an important consideration here.) I started with a set of 7.75" (19.7 cm) long needles and switched to 5" (12.7 cm) needles when the number of stitches got small.

Notions: Coordinating #5 perle cotton, 6 stitch markers, yarn needle, point protectors.

Provisionally CO 84 sts with matching No. 5 perle cotton. Turn and knit one row adding markers every 14 sts. Distribute onto dpns.


Rounds 1 - 9 (odd): (K until 2 sts before marker, k2tog) 6x. 60 sts rem after Round 7.

Rounds 2 - 8 (even): Work even.

Rounds 9 – 17: (K until 2 sts before marker, k2tog) 6x. 6 sts rem after Round 17.

Diagram 1

Cut yarn with an 8″ tail. Thread tail through rem sts twice. Draw circle closed, secure, and darn in end.

Do the embroidery before you gather the yo-yo. (I figured that one out the hard way.) Leaving the beginning tail of the embroidery yarn on the front side of the knitting, duplicate stitch on the 6 sts of the second to last round (Diagram 1). The stitches in the very center look like single strands but they really are full stitches. Do try to get the needle all the way to the back. Follow with a round of straight stitches from the round just worked into the center hole (Diagram 2). Fill up the area with 2-wrap French knots. (There is a nice tutorial for French knots here; just ignore the part about using an embroidery hoop.) Bring the beginning of the embroidery yarn to the back, tie those ends together, and darn them in.

Diagram 2

Untie the beginning knot. Darn in beginning yarn end. Make a single knot with the perle cotton and gather the knitting, distributing it evenly. When it is as tight as it will go, double knot the perle cotton. Place a dab of fabric glue on the knot. Once dry, cut the ends short (or leave them for sewing onto a background).



Wet the piece thoroughly and pin the corners out to the corners of a hexagon.  Pinch the points and the centers of the sides to shape them. Allow to dry.



You can block by eye, use hexagon templates from the Internet, trace quilter's templates, or make your own in graphics software. I put a printout into a clear page protector and pin right through it into my blocking board. Before you do this, check that your ink doesn't run; although the paper is mostly protected, some water can seep through.

That's it for now! Until next time . . .

A Really Neat Yo-Yo Variation

After I saw how nice the decrease lines showed up on the basic yo-yo, I decided to get a little
fancy. While the double decrease I used creates straight lines to the center, I knew that single decreases in the round make swirls. I wanted to see how that looked. As I suspected, it made swirls. When I gathered them, though, out popped the cutest little flower shapes! The SSK version is to the right.

I blocked another couple of samples flat enough to photograph them and, lo and behold, they didn't gather into the flowers. So don't block them! Since I'm using superwash yarn, I wet them down and rolled them around in my hands to undo the blocking. Then the gathering worked.

Since the decreases in these versions are single decreases, they must be worked on every round. Otherwise, the procedure is pretty much the same as the original version.

So, About Those Knit Yo-Yos

After I had pondered the idea of knit yo-yos, I grabbed some sock yarn and US#1 (2.25 mm) double-pointed needles, guessed a stitch gauge, calculated a row gauge, must've multiplied by pi (because how else do you get a circle), cast on, and knit. AND IT WORKED! I made a few samples including the silk-blend, sport-weight cutie to the right.

 




The basic procedure is to cast on enough stitches for the circumference, then work evenly-spaced double decreases towards the center. I used sl2-k1-p2sso on every other round which makes a single straight line at each decrease point. You can see this in the photo to the left.

My original plan had some kinks, though, mostly trying to gather the teeny, tiny cast-on stitches on the beginning yarn tail. Then one of the tails snapped (I'm proud to say I didn't) so I needed to come up with another idea.

My preferred provisional cast-on is to crochet a chain in waste yarn and pick up stitches in the backs of the chains. It is very stable and allows you to put on stitch markers as you go along. But it was a disaster (see paragraph above). Years and years and years ago, I learned a provisional cast-on that uses a straight length of waste yarn. In theory, you're supposed to use a contrasting yarn so that it's easy to free the loops to knit in the opposite direction. But, what if you used a matching perle cotton and left it in? This would be strong enough to accomplish the gathering. Ta da!

I found a good tutorial with very clear pictures of the cast-on here. Again, for this application use coordinating perle cotton and don't remove it when the knitting is finished. 

Basic Yo-Yo

Yarn: Sock- or sport-weight.

Needles: Set of 5 US #1 (2.25 mm) dpns or size you can work comfortably with. (Gauge is not an important consideration here.) I started with a set of 7.75" (19.7 cm) long needles and switched to 5" (12.7 cm) needles when the number of stitches got small.

Notions: Coordinating #5 perle cotton, 8 stitch markers, yarn needle, point protectors, embellishment (optional), sewing needle and thread (optional).


On a longer dpn, provisionally CO 104 sts with matching #5 perle cotton. Turn and knit one row adding markers every 13 sts. Distribute onto dpns and proceed to work in the round.

Round 1: (K5, sl2-k1-p2sso, k5) 8X. 88 sts.
Rounds 2-10 even: K all sts.
Round 3: (K4, sl2-k1-p2sso, k4) 8X. 72 sts.
Round 5: (K3, sl2-k1-p2sso, k3) 8X. 56 sts.
Round 7: (K2, sl2-k1-p2sso, k2) 8X. 40 sts.
Round 9: (K1, sl2-k1-p2sso, k1) 8X. 24 sts.
Round 11: Sl2-k1-p2sso 8X. 8 sts.



Cut yarn with about an 8" (20 cm) tail. Use the yarn needle to run the tail through the remaining stitches twice, tighten, and secure. Darn in the end.


Untie the beginning knot. If necessary, untwist the other end of the perle cotton so that it slides freely. Darn in the remaining yarn end. Make a single knot with the two ends of the perle cotton and gather the knitting, distributing it evenly. When it is as tight as it will go, double knot the cotton. Add a button, if desired. (I added an information page on how to secure sewing yarn to knitting. You can access it from the header.) 







Now, on fabric yo-yos the gathered side is considered the right side. On these, I preferred to use the center (left in the photo) as the top side. The gathered side has its charms, though, so use it if you prefer. A button here is not optional; you will need one large enough to cover the perle cotton.

I will leave you with that for now. I do have a really neat variation for next time. Until then . . .

This Post Is NOT About Knitting

We have two family weddings coming up this summer and I just finished sewing a little silk purse for the first bride-to-be to carry at the reception. It's a gorgeous fabric that I really wanted to let speak for itself, but the purse did need a bit extra. Enter yo-yos.

These are just circles of fabric where a narrow hem is folded and secured with a running stitch; the thread is then pulled to gather the outside of the circle. Most yo-yo projects have a down-home look which I knew would be a jarring contrast to the fabric. Nevertheless, I tried making a few in the silk and added vintage buttons to the centers. The result absolutely blew me away!

There is no shortage of tutorials and project ideas floating around the Internet, so I'll just mention a few things I found helpful. If you have a good eye, you don't really need to mark the fold line, but I knew I would be happier if I did. I found that keeping the running stitch very close to the fold gave me better looking gathers. I knotted my thread ends together to gather up the fabric, then trimmed them not-too-close and added a drop of fabric glue. After it was dry, I trimmed them shorter. This doesn't seem to be the typical method, though, and the knot might show if there were no embellishment in the center.

Now, of course, I have to wonder about knit yo-yos. I have no doubt they can be made, but I don't know how practical they will be. Well, I'm going to find out!

Until then . . .

Out-of-Sync Cable - Mirror Image

To the right is a picture of how the Out-of-Sync cable would look with its mirror image. It's really easy to flip a photo on a computer, and with many cables it's very easy to flip them in real life.

Out-of-Sync Cable

One of the reasons I started a blog was to revisit some of my early work. I've been knitting for almost 36 years, so some of it is very old. Some of it is in an obsolete medium called "pencil and paper." Some of it, text and graphics, was on - - I kid you not - -  a Commodore 64. Fortunately, I've been able to convert the text, but all those pictures need to be redrawn from scratch. This is going to take a while.

Inlay Knitting

In my last post, I mentioned "inlay knitting", the technique I will probably use with the art yarn I purchased at the Garden State Sheep Breeders annual festival. I thought I'd write a little more about it.


If you are familiar with stranded knitting (of which Fair Isle is a subset), you know that you carry two or more yarns and pick which one you want according to a charted design. Each yarn gets used for stitches. In inlay knitting, only the background yarn is knit; the other yarn(s) are held in front of or behind the background stitches as they are being made. In effect, it is a type of embellishment that you do at the same time as the actual knitting. The accent yarn is not used up at the same rate as the background yarn and it does not have to be pulled through other stitches. This makes it an ideal technique for getting the most out of expensive, eccentric, or delicate yarn. Also, even in plain yarns you get a pretty neat textural effect.

I always carry my knitting yarn in my right hand so I held the inlay yarn in my left. Then it was just a matter of bringing it forward and bringing it back. I did find it a bit easier to use the right needle to help push the inlay yarn into position rather than depending on my left hand alone.

For the pink and purple swatch, I just grabbed whatever was in the bottom of my knitting basket and worked a typical under and over pattern. I later read (in The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt) that the inlay yarn should be locked into the selvedge stitches. Since I hadn't done that on the first swatch, I didn't do it on the white and pink one either. You can see how the knitting pulls where the inlay yarn is carried up from row to row. It's not particularly bad and I do suspect that picking up stitches along the edges would hide the problem nicely.

But there is another reason to keep the inlay yarn out of the selvedge stitches: unlike plain stockinette, the side edges of inlay knitting come out perfectly flat. A narrow edging would be adequate in this situation and that should have some decorative potential. Unfortunately, the top and bottom edges do curl as in normal stockinette so they will need a more standard treatment.