Recently in Silk Lace Series Category
A project knit or crocheted with the Silk Lace yarn will almost always benefit from blocking.
Blocking will minimize the uneven stitches and alleviate curling, as well as open up a lace project. Even basic stockinette will benefit from from blocking, as the light, airy nature of the yarn will be better revealed.
Silk is damaged when exposed to high heat. Steam is hot enough to damage the fiber and one cannot control the temperature accurately enough. The damaged fiber is more prone to wear and it looses some of its sheen. Due to this, I would not recommend steam blocking.
My preferred choice is wet blocking. After carting around a project and exposing it to dirt and grime, along with the normal grease and dirt that will be transferred from one's hands while working it, I feel a project needs a good wash, so I prefer wet blocking over pinning out the project and spraying it with water.
When blocking, I use hot tap water with a clarifying shampoo, which removes dirt and grease without leaving any residue. While there are many products sold specifically for knit or crocheted projects, many of these are designed to not be rinsed out. This will leave a residue on your project that will attract dirt and oil, which will require more cleaning later on.
I soak the project for at least one hour. If one plans to hard block the project, one could soak the project over night. Silk does not easily absorb water, so to fully wet the project, an overnight soaking will fully wet the fibers and allow the silk to stretch more. This is another reason why wetting the project with a spray bottle to block is not as effective. The spray is generally not enough to adequately wet the silk.
After soaking, rinse the project in tepid water and roll it in a dry towel to absorb excess water, squeezing the water out gently. At this point, one, again, has several options for how to block the project, all of which will work equally well. A method should be chosen based on what one is most comfortable with while taking into consideration where and how much space one has to block the project, as well as what sort of equipment one has to work with, i.e. blocking boards and wires versus towels and T-pins. My preference is to use a blocking board and wires to pin out the project.
The project and the desired look should determine if the project is blocked lightly or stretched more tautly to "hard" block or some where in between. The nature of silk should be taken into consideration when blocking. Silk does not have the elasticity of wool, so a project that needs some give, such as a sweater, might be blocked more lightly than a lace project in which stretch and give is relatively unimportant for the use of the project. Again, these decisions are largely personal preference and project-determined.
Aside from blocking, one of the most challenging aspects of the Silk Lace yarn is joining in a new strand of yarn and the subsequent weaving in of ends that ensues. If one's project is under 1000 yards and one does not have cats that enjoy chewing through the working strand of yarn while a knitter is sleeping peacefully, one will only have 2 strands to weave in at the beginning and the end of the project knit with a single skein of Silk Lace yarn. But nobody ever operates under ideal circumstances at all times, so the issue of joining in a new strand continues to vex knitters.
Side note: this most likely vexes crocheters as well, but the attributes of crochet give a crocheter other options for dealing with ends of yarn, so we will focus on knitting.
One could use the "Russian Join" to deal with the ends, but this technique is difficult with a yarn as thin and slippery as the Silk Lace.
There is a fairly easy and relatively painless process for joining in a new yarn and knitting in these ends so weaving in of the ends at the finish of a project is unnecessary. The process is quite intuitive and easy when knitting with the yarn in front of you, but not quite as easy to explain. If these directions prove confusing, please leave a comment and I will do my best to clarify and answer your question.
Let's start with a small swatch in stockinette, where half way through the swatch, a strand of red yarn is joined in to replace the blue yarn that started the swatch.
Instead of immediately discarding the strand of blue yarn, the swatch is knit with both the red and blue strands held together for approximately 10-12 of stitches. The blue yarn is then dropped and the row is finished with only the red yarn. In the photo below, these doubled stitches are demarcated between the "A" and "B".
On the next purl row, the row is started with just the red strand, but at the stitch directly above where the original blue strand was dropped, just above the "B", the blue strand is picked up again and several more stitches are knit with both the red and the blue strands held together. The blue strand is then dropped at the stitch next to "C" and only the red yarn is continued with in the knitting.
On the next knit row, this method is again employed at the stitch next to the "C". The blue strand is picked up and several stitches are knit with the red and blue strand held together. At the point "D" the blue is dropped and the red strand finishes the row.
This is deployed again in the next purl row, as seen in the stitches between the "D" and the "E". At this point, the blue strand is dropped for good and the remaining strand is cut to 8-10 inches to be left until after blocking, at which point, the strand can be cut quite close to the finished garment.
While this process is carried out with the red and blue strand, the exact same method was used for the other end of the red strand and, in the photo above, the doubled stitches can be seen to the right and just below the "F".
Both strands have effectively been "weaved in" by the knitting rather than with a blunt-tipped needle after the garment is finished. This technique can also be used immediately after the cast-on row with the initial strand of yarn. The knitter does not have to deal with these ends after the garment is finished, rather just using a blunt-tipped needle for the final strand of yarn at the end of the project.
In these photos, the swatch was not blocked heavily and the gauge of the knitting was kept quite tight relative to the Slk Lace yarn so the doubled stitches could be readily seen. In actual lace garments, the combination of blocking and the thinness of the Silk Lace render these doubled stitches nearly invisible unless one has excellent eyesight and knows what one is looking for. Additionally, the more Yarn Overs the project has, the more invisible these doubled stitches tend to be.
Next up: Blocking.
The most common question about the Silk Lace yarn I get asked is "What size needle should I use?" I am sure few find it helpful when I tell them it is a matter of personal preference and suggest swatching until they are happy with the result. But, I realize nobody wants to spend a lot of time swatching YOs and K2togs with a slippery yarn, so hopefully this will help guide your choices.
I swatched the Travelling Vine pattern, found in Barbara Walker's "A Treasury of Knitting Patterns" on page 219, using the Silk Lace in "Royal" on US 0-3 needles. All swatches are 36 stitches across and 4 pattern repeats in length. They were all wet-blocked lightly.
The US 0 needle creates a denser fabric that allows one to see the lace pattern easily. The swatch measures 4" by 4" and if I were knitting a wrap that was more for warmth than for show, this is probably the needle size I would choose.
The swatch on the US 1s measures 5" by 5" and is a bit lighter than the swatch on US 0s. The jump in size from US 0 to US 1 is big, so if you wanted to knit less and have a larger sized garment while still maintaining the integrity of the knitted fabric, US 1s make sense.
The US 2 swatch measures 6" wide and 5.75" long. It obviously is a lot lighter in feel and the knitted stitches show their openness. The lace pattern is still obvious, but it becomes less about knitted fabric versus the YO holes and more about the overall openwork of the lace.
The US 3 swatch measures 6.5" long and 6" wide, so virtually no difference in width from the US 2 swatch, yet the fabric is much more gossamer.
Looking at them next to each other makes the size difference easily obvious, not just of the knitted stitches, but in the YOs. One important thing to consider when choosing a needle size, but also when actually choosing a color of yarn, is the difference in density of the fabric and how that changes the appearance of the color of the lace in the finished garment. If you are knitting with a brightly or darkly colored yarn, the lace might show up quite easily on US 3s but not as much on US 0s; the brightness will be diffused on a larger needle size while a bright color on a smaller needle size might overwhelm the person who wears the garment.
To get a better visual idea of how the needle size affects the dimmensions, here are the swatches stacked up, from smallest to largest.
And then again, but with the orange lines delineating the edges of each swatch.
Next up: Joining yarn with as little effort as possible.
For me, the choice of silk is always an easy one. I adore the crisp, cool smoothness; the inherent delicateness of silk, despite its strength as a fiber and the warmth it provides as a garment. It is a natural choice for lace. Delicate openness paired with shiny softness. What could be better?But silk has its drawbacks as a knitting or crochet fiber. As a yarn, it lacks the resiliency of wool, creating potential problems for blocking. It is the slipperiest of fibers, which can drive a knitter insane struggling to keep the loops on the needle. The fineness of the silk lace, combined with this slip, makes joining in new strands and weaving in ends, never a pleasant task, even trickier.
This series of posts on the silk lace yarn will address needle choice, joining in a new strand of yarn, and finally, blocking. I hope you enjoy the series and find the information valuable and helpful.
(Sundara Yarn Silk Lace in Graphite, Black over Violet, Ruby Port, Toasted Orange over Pistachio and Basil over Buttercup)
