Friday, October 27, 2006

Unraveling Those Curly-Qs

Well the toe, foot and heel of the Dakota socks are no more...and the yarn resembles curly soup (what B grew up calling raman :-). I am in the process of re-knitting the heel with fewer short row decreases and in the 'solid' black STR to extend the life of the main hank of yarn. I will be at the foot by lunch easily, so my question is this:

How many of you REALLY uncurl your yarn before you re-knit it?

I remember when I first started knitting reading about how to uncurl yarn in Stitch 'n Bitch and after the Kyoto disaster of 2005, I even put this practice into effect. But what I want to know is this REALLY necessary? Is it one of those things that in a perfect world one would always uncurl the yarn or do you REALLY need to uncurl it because your re-knitting will be thoroughtly jacked?

This is coming from someone who would rather just start re-knitting the sock foot so that I can just get on with things, but will take the time to fix the yarn if I really need to. Any suggestions, advise, or admonishments are accepted.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't do it in this instance because it's for socks. Plus it's wool yarn so it has more elasticity to start with than the cotton for the kyoto. Once you wash them post knitting I bet you'll never know that it was un-knit at some point.

Julia (MindofWinter) said...

I would "uncurl" if the yarn sat around in a knitted state for a very long time (months+) and you are knitting with a combination of curled and uncurled yarn. If the yarn isn't mixed, it really doesn't matter too much. This is something you'd worry about much more for a sweater than a sock. My two cents!

Anonymous said...

I'm knitting my Dad's wool Christmas socks right now and using the left over green from his last pair for the heel and the toe. I'm unraveling as I go. Just to lazy to unwind it, wind it up into a hank and wash. I can honestly say I don't notice a difference in the way the green yarn knits up and the way the red yarn is knitting up. Hope this helped!

Miriam said...

I don't find that it's necessary for socks. I knit socks at a tighter tension than I knit other things, so it all gets even in the washing... but for something else, where gauge would actually matter (i.e. a sweater, but not a scarf or a shawl) then I wouldn't.

Theresa said...

I never uncurl it at all. And it's fine.

BTW, is there knitting at Rebecca's this afternoon?

Jennifer said...

I never uncurl and have never had a problem.

mle said...

hmmmm, if it was a sweater I would say uncurl but since it's a sock and they will end up being washed anyway I think it would be fine to just knit the yarn as-is. But then, this is coming from someone who has never uncurled yarn before, heheh!

The Stitchin' Sheep said...

I just did what you're talking about for the sleeve of a sweater. Rolled it right back into a ball of yarn with my ball winder. While knitting, I've decided that's fine with me. It seems like rewinding it into a ball took out some of the kinks. I'd have to say it's best to decide on an indivual basis. If the stuff knits up looking like it was boucle yarn, you may want to take the kinks out, know what I mean?

And, by the way, I have scoured my bloglines subscriptions looking for that natural yarn dyeing book I told you someone had mentioned recently. Can't find it! Bugs me, too, because I was interested in that one, myself. I'll keep looking.