We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Knitting Balls
This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch) Français (French)
So I wanted to knit balls. Christmas balls, that is, using my own Mergelland yarn. The famous Arne and Carlos wrote a book about it. I’ve bought it and tried the pattern using 4 mm circulars. Quite obviously they’ve used different yarn, so the ball I ended up making would require an XXL Christmas tree.
Sizing down the pattern isn’t difficult, but I was not too happy with the esthetic aspect of increases and decreases. I tried a few things without really thinking it through, so now I have a series of different balls. Every single ball has some kind of issue: holes that make the filling peep through, unbalanced increases and decreases which make both sides of the ball look different, almost invisible or over-large increases and decreases.
That’s where I started thinking that I should approach this more systematically. How many different ways can one imagine to knit a ball? Which one is most suitable in which situation? Which type of increases and decreases do I prefer? How do I pair them?
That’s only considering balls in stockinette stitch! See that little garter ridge on the grey ball? How do I avoid those circles becoming squares because of the increases and decreases? Not showing on the picture: I tried cables … What a disaster! I’ve frogged them instantly!
All the thinking and trying out has taken a bit more time than I thought. Let’s be clear, we’re no longer talking Christmas 2017. Before we’ve sorted it all out, it’s going to be high time to knit the 2018 Christmas balls!
Want to know more? Keep an eye out for new posts on this blog …
Related Posts
Sequence Knitting
This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch) Français (French)When we were in Berlin last month we dropped by at Wollen Berlin. My eye fell on a particularly beautiful book: Sequence Knitting by Cecelia Campochiaro. I didn’t dare buying it by fear of having overweight luggage on the return flight, so I added it to my …
Double Knitting
This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch) Français (French)This week I’ve taken up double knitting again. I almost forgot how much fun that is. Quite a while ago I wanted to knit multi-coloured mittens. I looked for a pattern and I decided on working with this one from Drops: Never having done stranded colourwork …
Knitting with double yarn
This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch) Français (French)There’s only a limited choice of GOTS-certified yarns on the market. Taking the yarn double increases the number of choices, but the label never mentions a needle size or a gauge for double yarn. I didn’t even start calculating, and I’m already feeling a headache coming …
10 different ways to knit a ball
This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch) Français (French)Do you also feel that clickbait titles are nothing but a source of disappointment? I read a catchy title, I’m eager to learn something, I click, and I get to read the most simplistic series of commonplaces. So I won’t list the 10 ways to knit …