From the top

I love set-in sleeve sweaters. In my opinion, they are the most universally flattering garment style. But in order for them to flatter, they really need to fit properly.

With a classic, bottom-up, pieced sweater, where the sleeves are knit separately then sewn into the armholes, adjusting the fit of the upper bodice, armholes and sleeve caps is no trivial matter. Because of this, knitters are often advised to leave these areas alone and focus on fitting bust and hips. But if your shoulders are wider or narrower than the industry standard, or if you have very slender arms, (or massive guns like I do), you need to be able to make adjustments.

It turns out that if you work a set-in sleeve from the top, starting with stitches picked up around the armhole, it’s much, much easier to fine-tune the fit of the upper bodice, armhole and sleeve cap. Giving knitters a better understanding of how set-in sleeves work, and providing them with the tools to make them fit perfectly is what Top Down: Reimagining Set-in Sleeve Design—the new book I've just published with Quince and Co—is all about. Here’s a peek at what you’ll find between the covers:

• An overview of set-in sleeve architecture
• An improved method for knitting sleeves from the top, designed to mirror the clever shaping found in a conventionally set-in sleeve
• Tips on measuring and fitting
• Extensive section on making pattern adjustments, both to accommodate gauge differences, and to tailor the fit of the sweater to fit you beautifully
• Detailed patterns for six classic set-in sleeve sweaters

For more photos of the sweater designs view the online lookbook.

A print book/e-book bundle is available for pre-order from the Quince and Co website. Print books will begin shipping August 6th, but the ebook can be downloaded immediately. The e-book is also sold separately.

If you’d like to join others who are knitting the designs in the book, a knit-along will be happening in the Quince Ravelry group. The KAL starts Thursday August 6th and runs through October 1st.

And if you’d like some help with swatching, measuring gauge, evaluating fabric, as well as making adjustments for gauge differences, come join in the swatch-along just getting started in the Blue Bee Knits group. Quince will be giving away a $25 gift certificate to one lucky winner, chosen at random from the finished swatch thread. Pretty great for just knitting a gauge swatch!

New pattern: Colina

With a flattering draped neckline, Colina is the uptown cousin of the recently released Lina tank. Designed in Sparrow, Quince and Co's fingering weight organic linen yarn, both Lina and Colina are worked from the top—without a single purl stitch between them. Garter stitch worked flat makes up the bodice, and stockinette in the round the skirt.

Colina begins with the neckline drape, a long garter stitch rectangle. Stitches are picked up along the short ends of the rectangle for the back shoulders, and more stitches are cast on between them to form the back neck. The back continues in garter, with shaping at the underarms, and is worked to the underbust.

With the upper back complete, the drape stitches are returned to the needles and the shaping of the front begins. Decreases are made at the sides of the piece, gradually reducing the stitch count until the desired cross-front width is reached. Underarms are shaped as for the back, and the front is worked to the same depth as the back. Front and back are joined, and worked in the round to the hem.

Lina is a similar construction. There's no drape, so the upper back is worked first, to the underbust, then stitches for the front are picked up at the shoulders, and the front worked to the underbust, too.

Lina, Colina and that magic line

So where exactly is this 'underbust'? When I knit the prototype for Lina, I assumed that the best place for the garter bodice to end was at the Empire line—the narrowest part of the upper ribcage, just below the bust. I found, however, that unless you have a very small bust, like the model in the photo above, it's actually better end the garter a bit higher up. Somewhere about halfway between the fullest part of the bust and the Empire line seems to be about right. Here's why:

Lina and Colina have an A-line shape that skims the body. This means there's no underbust shaping, so the dividing line between bodice and skirt does not have to correspond to actual anatomy. The lower you place this line, the larger (and visually heavier) the upper torso will appear. If you raise the line a little, it gives a sort of visual 'lift' to the bust line.

Both patterns have instructions to work the upper bodice to a certain number of rows below the underarms, but obviously the ideal depth for the garter section will differ from person to person. When I knit my Colina prototype, as I approached the point of transitioning to the skirt, I tried it on frequently, pulling down on the fabric to simulate what happens after washing and blocking the linen fabric. When I reached a depth that looked good, I began the stockinette skirt.

More visual aids

On each side of the skirt is a faux seam, created with slipped stitches. These 'seams' divide the front from the back, and end at the split point of the hem. As you work the skirt, increases are made to the back panel only, shifting the line of the 'seams' slightly towards the front on the garment. This makes for a more flattering line, visually narrowing the front panel.

You can find Lina and Colina here on Ravelry.

Warming up to linen

Made from the long, straight fibers of the flax plant's stem, linen is cool and drapey, the perfect thing for knitting warm-weather garments. If you have never worked with an inelastic fiber though, linen can feel pretty different the first time you try it. So here are a few tips for getting comfortable with this most glorious fiber:

Relax. Linen yarn doesn’t conform to the needles the way that wool does, so it creates a slightly larger stitch. In response, many knitters tension the yarn tightly, trying to achieve the same size stitches they’d get with wool. Don’t. Ease up, and go down a needle size or two. You’ll probably need to use a much smaller needle than you would for wool, but it will ultimately be a more pleasant experience.

And try bamboo or wooden needles. The grippier texture will help even out your stitches, and is often more comfortable than metal at small sizes.

Swatch. And wash. The ‘hand’ of linen yarn changes dramatically when it is washed and blocked. Linen fiber is ‘toothy’, so when stitches are formed, they tend to stay put. If you pull the needles out, the stitches will just stand there. Because of this, the working gauge and fabric can be quite different from the finished gauge and fabric—depending on the stitch pattern used. Once it has been washed and dried a few times linen becomes incredibly supple and drapey. And the drapeiness increases with wearing.

Stockinette fabric usually doesn’t change gauge too radically between the unblocked and blocked fabric. Garter stitch is another story, as the following photos of the gauge swatch for Lina and Colina—my two new designs in Quince and Co’s Sparrow—make clear.

The top photo is of the unblocked swatch, the bottom photo is the same swatch after washing and drying in the dryer twice, and then steaming. Washing and drying has completely changed the aspect ratio of the fabric, allowing the stitches to condense horizontally and relax vertically.


Unblocked gauge: 24 sts x 60 rows = 4" [10 cm]


Blocked gauge: 27 sts x 44 rows = 4" [10 cm]

Note that running the swatch through the washer and dryer is an excellent way of finding out what the fabric will look like a few washings and wearings down the road. But depending upon what kind of machines you have, it can cause some color loss. Use caution with the actual garment.

Pull from the outside. Linen fibers can cling to each other when they are wound together, so a center-pull cake is not ideal. Working from the outside of the ball or cake will minimize the possibility of tangles.

Rein-in your stitches. When working flat, use a longer needle than you ordinarily would. Stitches in linen yarn don’t compress as well as wool (before washing, anyway), so a longer cable will keep them from jumping off the end.

Count on drape. While it is not best suited to garments that need a lot of elasticity, (no socks!), linen is magical for projects where a fluid, supple fabric is desired. And your linen fabric will become softer and drapier over the life of the garment, the more it is washed and worn. Expect to love it.

Lina

I'm happy to announce the release of Lina, a simple tank with a flattering A-line shape, knit in Sparrow, Quince and Co's fingering-weight linen yarn.

I adore Sparrow. It knits up into a fabric with incredible drape and sheen. But if you are new to working with linen yarn, it can feel a bit, um, different. So, in addition to being the perfect simple warm-weather tank, Lina is designed to be an introduction to knitting with linen. It is worked entirely with knit stitches—using garter stitch for the bodice and stockinette in the round for the skirt.

I love the look of garter stitch worked at a fine gauge—like tiny elegant pintucks. Garter stitch helps to overcome any unevenness of tension when working flat, and makes for a more opaque fabric that can be worn without another garment underneath, preserving Sparrow's airiness.

Lina's skirt has faux slip-stitch 'side seams' that end in a sweet split hem. Apart from being a nice detail, the slipped stitches provide landmarks that somehow make the knitting go a little faster.

You can find the Lina on Ravelry, or purchase directly from Quince here.

I'll be back soon with tips on knitting with linen...

Metalwork collection

Metalwork is new a subscription-based pattern collection featuring five accessory designs, each full of rich, textured stitches and knitterly details.

The idea for the collection began with a hat I designed for The Woolen Rabbit's 2014 Yarn Club. The interplay of textures that came together for Into Gold reminded me of details found in metalsmithing or fine jewelry. What's more, Kim's Emma yarn, a blend of Polwarth wool and silk, gave the piece a fantastic burnished-metal look. By the time the hat was finished, I knew that some coordinating accessories were in the offing.

First to be released is Copperline, a fingerless mitt pattern that uses the same Coin Cables and Woven Stitch pattern found in Into Gold.

When the club exclusivity period is up in February, Into Gold will become part of this collection. At least one other piece will coordinate with that design, but there are some surprises in store, too.

The collection is available for subscription here. When you subscribe, Copperline is available for immediate download. The remaining 4 patterns will be delivered to your inbox over the next six months, each approximately six weeks apart, ending in May 2015.

Hope you'll join in the fun!

Hand-wound

Can I tell you a secret? I don't own a ball-winder. Nope. I wind my yarn by hand. I know what you’re thinking—really, I do. But I consider it pure pleasure. Want to know why?

To begin with, there’s the tactile experience. Whether I’m knitting with it or just holding it, touching yarn makes me happy. When you wind a ball by hand, the strand is continually running through your fingers. If it’s a yarn you’ve never used before, it’s sort of like a first date. You can begin to get a feel for how it will behave on the needles, how it will drape, and how it will feel next to the skin. If there are knots, you can deal with them. And because the yarn is moving more slowly through your fingers, if there are any small slubs or bits of vegetal matter, you can easily tease them out as they go by.

Then there’s the movement. Some people like to place the loose hank of yarn around their knees to wind from. Others use the back of a chair. There’s even the time-honored method of getting a family member to hold the yarn on outstretched arms—but I like to take my yarn for a walk. Here’s what I do: I put the yarn on my swift. If it’s a nice day, I’ll set it up out on the back deck. Holding the end of a strand, I walk away from the swift as far as I can go without the yarn dragging on the deck. Then I walk back toward the swift, gently winding the yarn around two fingers, making sure to keep it very loose. The idea is to create a fluffy, open pocket at the center of the ball. When I get back to the swift, I pull my fingers out of the center, and repeat the process, winding the next length of yarn crosswise to the previous bit, still keeping it loose. Winding on the return trip allows any tension created by pulling out the strand to be released, creating a soft, squishy ball.

There’s a lot of sitting in knitting, and winding yarn this way allows me to get up and move around a bit. I’m not sure I’d say it was exercise exactly, but if I wind enough fingering-weight yarn for a cardigan all in one go, I’ve walked the better part of a mile on my out-and-back trips.

There’s also the aesthetic consideration. I love the look of a tidy round ball, whether sitting in the palm of my hand or dancing around my yarn bowl as I work. When I have a travel project, I place a small plastic bowl in the bottom of a project bag, and let it spin happily away in there.

Then there are the yarns that prefer to be wound by hand. Airy woolen-spun yarns don’t always appreciate the rough treatment that a mechanical ball-winder can dish out. Toothy yarns like linen, and fibers that are haloed like mohair and qiviut can be challenging to work with from a center-pull cake because the fibers latch onto each other, creating tangles. Working from the outside of a ball that is free to spin eliminates these problems, and gravity helps to separate the fibers that want to grab.

Yes, winding by hand is a little bit slower, but on the whole, knitting is not a very fast business. I can spare a few minutes.

I know I’m not alone in my love of the hand-wound ball. How about you?

Welcome Summer!

What better way to celebrate the long holiday weekend and the return of warm weather than with a pattern sale?

From now through Tuesday May 27th, all independently published Blue Bee Studio designs are 20% off. Just click the 'use a coupon code' link in the Ravelry shopping cart, and enter welcome_summer.

Happy, happy Summer!

Wrong side tracks, part two

In my previous post I discussed how needle angles can affect the size of knit and purl stitches and lead to rowing-out. Here's a video that shows what I'm talking about, as well the changes I've made to correct my own rowing-out issues. Hope you find it helpful!

Wrong-side tracks

Next to garter stitch, stockinette is the simplest sort of knitting you can do. At the same time, it can be the most difficult to do really well. Just work back and forth for a while in a smooth, solid-colored yarn, and you'll get a lesson in which aspects of your technique are wanting.

Personally, I've always rowed out. Pretty badly. If you aren't familiar with the expression, 'rowing out' describes the tendency that a lot of knitters have to create different sized stitches on the knit and purl sides of the fabric when working back and forth in stockinette stitch. You can often see it most easily on the purl side of the knitting: there'll be little horizontal furrows where the stitches are looser on one row, and tighter on the next.

I've tried a lot of things to fix the problem, from using a smaller needle on the purl side – to adopting the Norwegian purling technique where the yarn stays at the back of the work all the time – to pure avoidance, disguising the problem with semi-solid yarns and lace or texture stitches. I'd been able to improve the issue somewhat, but it continued to be a problem.

Handily, knitting gives you a lot of time to think about, well, your knitting. It's right there in front of you, all the time. Lately I've been trying to carefully observe the way that I form stitches. In doing so I think I've discovered not just a solution to rowing out in my own knitting, but the reason why it happens in the first place.

Epiphany

Are you ready? Here it is: The angle of the working yarn – relative to the right hand needle as the new stitch is being transferred over – has to be the same, when knitting and purling, for the stitches to be of equal size.

I'm a continental knitter. When I make knit stitches, at the point where the new stitch is being taken up by the right hand needle, the working yarn is at pretty much 90 degrees to the needle, ensuring that the stitch will be snugged up as fully as my tension dictates, and gauged to the size of the needle.

When I purl in my usual way, because my needle is entering the stitch purlwise it's most natural for me to hold my needles at a wider angle, and as a consequence, the angle of the yarn relative to the right hand needle is always greater than 90 degrees. This provides slightly more resistance to the small force that I'm applying with my tension, et voila! a looser stitch is born.

For me, the answer is simple: Make sure that at the point of transfer, the angle of the working yarn is consistent. In my case, this means perpendicular to the right hand needle. That's it. All I have to do is to close the angle between my needles, and the purl stitch is able to snug up just like a knit stitch. So simple.

Here's what the wrong side of a recent swatch looks like:

Is my knitting perfect now? No, and I don't need it to be – but it's so much more even than it was. And if there's a looser row now, it's just as often a knit row.

Will this work for anyone else? I really don't know. There may be other differences in your knitting style that introduce changes in tension when knitting and purling. But I'd love to know if it does!

Gift-A-Long

Starting today, a group of indie designers is throwing a huge party on Ravelry that we’re calling Gift-A-Long.

What’s it all about? Well to begin with, it’s a sale. Participating designers are offering 25% off selected patterns through November 15th. Just enter the coupon code ’giftalong’ at checkout to receive the discount.

And there's more! Through December 31st, CAL/KALs will be running in the Indie Design Gift-A-Long group, with hundreds of prizes being given for finished objects made from Gift-A-Long patterns.

All of my self-published patterns on sale. You’ll find them in the Blue Bee Studio store.

Grass River

Near our house there's a wide wet meadow that we call the grass river. It's a shallow swale that runs with snow-melt in early spring, then drys out as the summer comes on. A place of subtle, quiet beauty – you might think it rather plain – unless you see it in early spring when the violet-blue Camassia are blooming, or better yet, in the golden glory of early fall.

The Grass River Tunic is kind of like that. A bit plain, no lace, no cables, just clean simple lines. But once you slip it on, its charms become more apparent.

Knit in the Woolen Rabbit's delicious single-ply fingering-weight Airy, Grass River is light, soft, and so easy to wear. A flattering empire line and a bit of waist shaping make for a figure-skimming fit. The deep surplice neckline layers beautifully over a tank or tee. And decorative welts at the bust, neckband and cuffs add a little polish.

You can find the Grass River Tunic pattern in the Blue Bee Studio Ravelry store.

Summer joy sale

Celebrate long days and lush colors with 20% off all patterns in the Blue Bee Studio Ravelry store! From July 1st through July 5th, use the code 'summer_joy' in the Ravelry shopping cart to get your discount. Happy Summer!

Another Alewife

Here's the latest in my ongoing love affair with herringbone patterns, the Alewives Hat.

A companion design to the Alewives Cowl, the slightly slouchy hat features a wide swath of herringbone texture amid panels of garter ridges. The pattern is easy enough for advanced beginners, but the texture stitches keep it fun for knitters of all skill levels.

The Alewives Hat pattern is available individually, or as part of an ebook collection containing both the Alewives Hat and Cowl. You can find the patterns in the Blue Bee Studio Ravelry store.

A bit about the yarn

Friends who have seen the Alewives cowl and hat in person always remark on the incredibly deep and rich color. The sample is worked in Swans Island Natural Colors Merino Worsted, in Bittersweet.

When I asked how they produce these glorious colors, Swans Island's head dyer Jackie Ottino Graf sent me a lot of great information. To read her full description of the dye process, check out this thread in the Swans Island Ravelry group, but here it is, in brief:

All Swans Island yarns are dyed in the skein, using traditional natural dying methods. After scouring with a mild unscented detergent, the yarn is soaked in a mordant bath overnight. The mordant, a mixture of alum and cream of tarter, creates a bond between the dye and the fiber. The fiber is then placed in the dyebath and can remain there for anywhere from a few hours, to overnight – depending on the color and shade that's desired. Swans Island uses a variety of natural dyestuffs including indigo, cochineal, madder, logwood, and weld. Some colors are dyed one shade and then overdyed with another.

The result is luminous layered color that is full of life. Pretty sure I'll be working with this beautiful stuff again sometime soon...

Alewives

I love herringbone patterns. So simple to work – just knits and purls – but such a rich and fascinating result. Perfect for adding textural spice to an easy knit like the Alewives cowl.

The idea behind Alewives was to create a simple cowl using easily memorized stitch patterns, but to make it interesting enough to be fun and engaging. The design features panels of herringbone and panels of garter ridges moving together around the cowl in a rhythmic sequence that keeps the knitting galloping along.

Worked in the round, Alewives is written for two sizes: a 24" / 62 cm diameter single loop, and a 49" / 124 cm loop that can be worn as a long infinity scarf, or doubled around the neck for more warmth. The smaller cowl uses approximately 250 yards of a light worsted yarn. About 500 yards is needed for the longer version. Stitch patterns are provided in both charted and written form.

The sample is worked in Swans Island Natural Colors Merino Worsted, in the Bittersweet color. This glorious organic Merino yarn is spun and hand dyed in Maine using natural dyestuffs and traditional dyeing methods. Their processes create deep, layered, tonal colors that glow with life and subtly enhance stitch patterns. It was a great fit for Alewives.

Okay, so what's an alewife? It's a fat little fish that looks a lot like a herring…. You can find the Alewives cowl pattern in the Blue Bee Studio Ravelry store.

Greenwillow

A new year calls for a new pattern, and with all the snow we've gotten over the past few weeks, nothing fits the bill like a cozy cowl.

Greenwillow features a dimensional lattice texture accentuated by crisp linear edge details. The pattern is written for two lengths, a simple 21.5" loop, and a 43" loop that can be worn as a long infinity scarf or doubled around the neck for extra warmth.

Knit in String Theory's Blue Faced Sport in Jade, the yarn's subtle tonal variations and incredible luster perfectly complement the latticework pattern.

Greenwillow can be found in the Blue Bee Studio Ravelry store.

Norden revisited

For a while now I've been itching to cast on for a longer version of the Norden Cowl. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I was looking for a good travel project, and thought of Norden. It's a simple lace motif that fit the bill perfectly for not-fully-mindful knitting.

For this longer, lacier version I used fingering-weight Spirit Trail Fiberworks Sunna in Kismet. I doubled the number of repeats around the circumference, and worked one vertical repeat less. The finished cowl is about 46" around, and 5" tall. It used less than 200 yards of the lovely Sunna.

Brickletown

The small mountain town I live in came to life during the building of the transcontinental railroad. As the work crews advanced, the 'Hell on wheels' that supplied entertainment to the workers advanced too.

Blasting train tunnels through hard Sierra granite took time, and some of the denizens of 'Hell' put down roots. When the railroad work eventually moved on, it left behind a rough-and-tumble community with more than its fair share of saloons, gambling dens, and brothels. When I imagine those folks, I somehow always picture them wearing fingerless mitts – so much easier for counting out those ill-gotten gains.

The town has changed a lot in the intervening years, and only a few ramshackle old buildings still remain as a testament to those days – but a pair of fingerless mitts can still come in pretty handy.

In celebration of brisk temperatures and shorter days, the Brickletown Mitts pattern is available for 20% off through the end of November.

Green delirium

I've been able to indulge in a little knitting for myself lately, in between other projects. Here's one sweater recently finished: Meris, knit in Quince and Co.'s Finch in the Snap Pea color.

This green just fills me with joy. When I saw it on the shade card, I worried that it might be too intense. As a check, I ordered two skeins of Snap Pea, plus two skeins each of two ‘safer’ colors. (With that yardage I can always make a scarf or shawlette with the extra yarn.) Then I wore them around my neck and solicited opinions. Snap Pea was the clear winner.

In a yarn shop I often find myself drawn to semi-solid and tonally dyed yarns. In the skein, solid colors often don't look quite as enticing. But when knit up into a garment there is something so pleasing about a pure swath of solid, gorgeous color – and there's nothing like it for showing off your stitches.

Tenaya: It's the details

Photo: ©2012 Carrie Bostick Hoge

I admit it: I'm a geek. While most knitters look upon swatching as a dreaded ordeal, I can't wait to dive in. I love swatching up a new stitch I've found in a stitch dictionary, imagining how it can be made to work in some garment or other I'm thinking of. Even better is working out my own unique lace or cable pattern. But best of all is when I have to engineer or re-engineer some detail, figuring out how to get the fabric to do what I want it to do.

With Tenaya, the top-down set-in sleeve cardigan I designed for Twist Collective's Fall 2012 issue, I had an awfully good time. The cable pattern is one that I'd been fooling around with for a while. It's an asymmetrical three-stranded open braid that is mirrored on the fronts and back of the cardigan. Nothing complicated, but the asymmetry keeps it entertaining.

The seed stitch that adds such a rich texture to the button bands and neckband provided me with some fun engineering opportunities as well. I find that the edges of most buttonholes, especially the one-row type, can look rather sloppy. They look even worse when worked on a seed stitch ground. For Tenaya, I tinkered with the two-row style of buttonhole, finessing the methods of binding off and casting on stitches until I found a way to produce crisp, clean, square edges.

The main challenge with the neckband was how to decrease the circumference without interrupting the seed stitch pattern. The faux I-cord that begins the band and the real I-cord that binds it off gave me some places to stash decreases invisibly. And I love the way that those edges echo the slipped-stitch ribs that separate the cable and eyelet panels on the fronts and back.

Knit, knit, rip

All photos ©2012 Blue Bee Studio

There's nothing wrong with a little fudging. If you're knitting a garment for yourself, less-than-perfect can be perfectly okay. But when you're designing a garment for others to knit, the details have to be right. Swatching is a great help, but sometimes you simply have to see the whole thing knit up to know that it's not quite working yet. Ripping back is just an inevitable part of the design process, and I guess I'm pretty efficient at it.

I've come to realize though that not everyone does as much ripping as I do, and even experienced knitters can be unsure of the best way to pull back their work. Here are some tips to make the job easier.

Don't use a scalpel when a chain saw will do

Unknitting stitch by stitch (aka 'tinking') is laborious. To rip efficiently, you need to do as little tinking as possible. To drop back several rows (or several inches), I put the work on a flat surface and pull the needles completely out. If the knitting is simple and the yarn fairly cohesive, I just rip back as far as I need to and pick up the loose stitches. If the knitting is more complicated – say a lace shawl – or the yarn a little less inclined to stay put, I rip back to the row before the one with the error.

Next comes the tinking. There are different ways of doing this, but here's my method: I hold the knitting in my left hand, with the opposite side of the work facing me (wrong side if it’s a right side row I’m going to take out, and right side if a wrong side row). With my right hand, I insert the tip of the needle purlwise into the first stitch that the working yarn is going through, and gently pull the working yarn out. Holding the work in my left hand allows me to control the working yarn very precisely, and I tension it gently over my left index finger. It’s kind of like backwards continental knitting. I can work very quickly this way.

To minimize tugging on the stitches as I recapture them, I use a much smaller needle than the one I'm actually working with. If there are complicated decreases that require untwisting stitches, a tiny dpn can be useful, too.

If the yarn is something slippery like silk or linen and I'm afraid that I’ll lose control of the stitches once they're free, I steam the work while it's still on the needles to set the stitches. I use a handheld steamer for this, but a steam iron held above the fabric will work, too. Once the stitches are set, I rip back as needed, but leave the work on the flat surface while tinking that final row. This helps to keep from tugging the yarn out of the stitches before I'm ready to pick them up.

Unkinking the ramen

Once all the stitches have been picked up, the next step is to get the recovered yarn back into usable condition. Working with kinked and curly yarn is a recipe for wonky stitches. It's nearly impossible to have an even tension with seriously wavy yarn. To quickly get it back in shape, I wind the yarn into a small hank, then pin it out on a blocking board. I steam the yarn until the kinks relax, let it cool, then wind it back into a ball and get back to work.

My favorite knitting tool

If you haven't already guessed, I love my handheld steamer. It's possibly the best $15 I've ever spent. In addition to the above-mentioned uses, it's brilliant for finishing knits. And unlike a steam iron, there's no heated sole plate, so you can touch it directly to the fabric. One caveat though – keep it well away from acrylic yarns, as high heat can damage them.