A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 5

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 5

Now I am going to have to do something I really hate - Picking Up Stitches.

Picking Up Stitches

I am now going to be working in the Opposite Direction. That means having to Pick Up the Black Stitches. This time is particularly difficult as the Super Chunky has a tendency to Split. Not only that it is a real pain trying to get all these Stitches onto the Needle.

Nevertheless I eventually Picked them Up. I had originally Cast On181 Stitches. I normally lose some when trying to Pick Up. However in this case I managed to end up with more. 184 Stitches in total.

Yet Another Yarn

I am using yet another type of Yarn. This was kindly given to me during a Craft Swap. I am changing the Colour Pallet.

First Row

I am adding the New Colour. I have marked where I am beginning from as I will need to know it for the next part.

Hole lot of Stitches

After one complete row. I start adding more Stitches. Now there are several ways of adding Stitches. You can pick up a Loop, Knit through the Front and Back of the Loop or Wind the Yarn over.

I am sure one of these doesn’t leave a hole. Unfortunately I picked the wrong one. Picking Up a Loop does leave a Hole. Since I made a Stitch roughly after every 5th Stitch there are a lot of them. I now have 210 Stitches on the Needle and I will need to increase again.

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 4

 A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 4

I am continuing to add Yarn.

New Yarn

With the Super Chunky finished I am having to use other Yarns to continue. I had another Black in stock. This is an Ordinary Chunky.

Grey Wool

I am trying to keep to the same Colour Pallet. I have run out of Light Grey Yarn but I have this Grey Wool. It is heaven for my fingers after all that Acrylic.

Cast off Grey

I have completed 9 Stripes or 3 sets of 3 blocks. I have decided that it is time to Cast off the Grey.

Sew Up Grey

I have Cast Off and am now Sewing up the Bottom.

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 3

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 3

I hate this part of a project (after knitting) but it is a necessary evil.

Third Colour

I am continuing with the Striped effect. This time I am adding a Light Blue.

End of Blue

I have reached the End of the Blue Yarn. This completes all the Super Chunky of this type that I had. This Yarn and the Grey was from another previous project see below.

Tail Ends

This seemed a good time to start Tidying Tails. So I flipped it over so I could see them. 

Getting Stuck

This was a complete and utter swine to do. The Needle kept getting Stuck. With Black on Black it was almost impossible to tell which was Tail Yarn and which was Stitches. I daren’t cut it in case I got the Stitches.

Needle Change

Something had to be done. I swapped the Needle I was using to a different one. I believe this is actually a Carpet or Rug Needle. It has a bigger Eye and the Curve made it much easier to manoeuvre the Yarn.

Nice and Neat

Finally I was finished. You cannot see it in the photograph but I have left the Tail from Casting on alone. I may need to use this later.

Previous Blog

Vhere there is a Vill

08/08/19

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2019/08/vhere-there-is-vill-there-is-vay-2019.html

15/08/19

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2019/08/vhere-there-is-vill-there-is-vay-2019_15.html

22/08/19

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2019/08/vhere-there-is-vill-there-is-vay-2019_22.html

29/08/19

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2019/08/vhere-there-is-vill-there-is-vay-2019_29.html

05/09/19

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2019/09/vhere-there-is-vill-there-is-vay-2019.html

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 2

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 2

I have to confess that I have had a loss of temper. The Yarn was pretty difficult to Unravel. It got caught on itself and tangled to the point I actually threw it across the room.

Eventually I managed to get it Undone but not without having to sacrifice some of it because it was so Frayed it was unusable.

Rethink

I decided to have a complete Rethink of how to handle this. I still wanted to work in the round. Therefore I thought I would do a Row of Stocking Stitch before trying to join. I also had dropped the number of Stitches down from 201 to 181. I hoped this would make it easier to spot any Twists.

Black Yarn

My plan worked. It was much easier to join and handle. I made quicker progress.

Join New Yarn

I got to the point where I had finished all the Black and Grey Yarn and could move on to the Blue. At this point I think I should mention that originally I hadn’t been planning to do Bands of Colour or Stripes. 

I have Knitted it this way because when on the previous attempt I came to change colour and realised because I was doing it in the Round the Ends would be at the wrong end.

Mistake

I am not sure what happened here. I had to remove the newly added blue and go back to the Grey. I am not sure if I had dropped or Knitted half a Stitch but it definitely wasn’t right. 

I fixed it the best I could but there still seemed to be excess Yarn at the front. I trimmed this and hoped it wouldn’t affect the strength. I then Readded the Blue Yarn and continued.

A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 1

 A Twist In The Tail 2025 Part 1

Apologies if this blog might be a bit wordy in places. I had such a struggle that I didn’t take as many pictures as normal.

Lots of Balls

Right. After doing so many projects for myself and others I have ended up with Lots of Balls of Yarn. I say Yarn in this case as although I use Wool for myself I do use Acrylic or Blended for other people.

First of all I sorted all the Yarn into there respective materials. Since I might want the Wool for a project for myself I put that aside.

Adding Grey

I am afraid that I have jumped a great deal here. The Yarn was so tight that I was really struggling to Knit at all. So to Back Peddle naturally the first stop after sorting the Yarn was getting a suitable Knitting Needle.

This was my first problem. I decided that I would Knit in the Round so needed Circular Needles. I had several large Needles but unfortunately these were all accompanied by extremely short Circular Cords. Therefore I had to go down to a Smaller Size. 

I believe the Size I was using was 5 or 5mm. This was better but the Cord was still shorter than what I would like. This was because I was Casting on 201 Stitches. It is an uneven number so I would not lose any Stitches when I joined together.

Six and a Half Cm

I started off with Black Super Chunky Yarn which was left overs from projects where I had made my boyfriend things. See below for details. I Cast On 201 Stitches.

I immediately found that apart from the amount of Stitches on the Needle I was also was having problems with the Yarn itself. It liked to Split and even when Knitted it had lots of Fuzz all over the place.

This made extremely slow progress and the Needles were digging into my Fingers. To my mind it wasn’t so much Knitting as Alligator Wrestling. However I got to the End of the Row and Knitted 2 together to make the Join. After a long while  I finally got to the End of the Black Yarn and started with the Grey. This was the same type and just as difficult.

I decided to measure how far I had got. It was only 6.5 Cm but I decided I was going to start Decreasing anyway. I Decreased roughly every 4th Stitch until I reached 180 left on the Needle.

Argh a Twist in the Tail

I carried on Knitting a few more Rows then held it up to see it properly. To my Horror it was Twisted. One Twist I could cope with but with this I had no chance. The only thing I could do is Undo it all and start again!

Previous blogs

Nott’s County Hat

24/03/2022

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2022/03/notts-county-hat-2022.html

31/03/2022

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2022/03/notts-county-hat-2022-problem-with-pom.html

08/04/2022

https://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-problem-with-pom-poms-2022-solution.html