Archive of Thread: Wonky stitches with non-coned yarn Back

3 years ago
I’m having a problem with strange stitches where I have added yarn.

 It seems to me that the first row or so of a new ball of yarn looks wonky.  I wonder if the twist of the plies has loosened up and is causing that.  

I have since frogged the sweater and would like to avoid the issue when I use the yarn again.  Or would a pattern make this less obvious?  It’s frustrating and I’ve never had that happen with skeins of yarn before.  I mostly knit from cones - now I know why!
 


 

3 years ago
hmmmm... I've not had this experience .. 

1. yes, a stitch pattern would make it less noticeable
   
   
2. I'm wondering if the line would go away after washing and drying
   
   
3. I once heard a hand knitter lament that her knitting didn't look like the vintage hand knitting she saw in museums or from the collections of more experienced knitters.She realized that the vintage sweaters had been worn and washed multiple times, evening out the stitches.  As you know hand knitting differences in gauge are just accepted.  It's just  machine knitters that expect perfection LOL!
   
   
4. It looks like just 1 row (or a partial row) would you be willing to manually adjust each stitch to make them more uniform???

3 years ago
I may need to knit a swatch to see if washing and drying will even it out.  At the moment I’m inclined to discard the first couple of yards of the yarn to see if I can start beyond the end of the yarn.  I suspect that that part of the skein has loosened the twist somehow.  I’m not sure how I would adjust the stitches to eliminate the issue.

3 years ago
It could be that the yarn is under more tension as you start pulling from the center of a new skein.   You need to pull  several yards out of the skein before you knit the first Few rows

3 years ago
Actually I wound the skeins onto cones before I knit.  It actually seems as if the yarn is looser at the ends rather than tighter. I seem to eliminate the problem by starting a couple of yards into the skein/cone which seems to waste a lot of yarn.

3 years ago
I found this quote in an old magazine article written by Angela Scarola
that applies to this topic

Things that affect gauge:

How the yarn is wound on the cone
The yarn on the beginning of a cone is wound much tighter than the middle and end, as a result of how the machines wind the cones.

Because of the tight beginning on a cone, knitters from Japan routinely don't use the last 20% of the yarn on a cone in their garments because of the effect that this tightening has on the gauge of the knitted fabric.

Yarn that has been wound off a cone with a ball winder appears to be softer and less stretched than to the end, then it is logical to assume that the tension of a wound off ball will be different also.