Unraveling May Harm Yarn

We’ve all been there. Either you made a big mistake while knitting and need to rip out a bunch of your work (I have a project on timeout right now for this very reason) or you’ve abandoned a project and decide you don’t want to knit it after all so you need to tear it out.

Most yarns can handle a little ripping back with ease, but after repeated rippings your yarn can show signs of wear. Emily at Berroco explains that the structure of the yarn and how or whether its plied plays a major role in whether yarn can take multiple unravelings.

Singles yarns are more fragile than yarns that are plied firmly, so if you’re working a new stitch pattern in a more delicate yarn you may want to practice your moves with something more stable first and move on to your real yarn once you get the hang of it to limit damage to the fibers. Smart advice.

Have you ever ripped a yarn back so many times that it got messy? I will admit to having thrown away mohair because it’s so hard to rip back!

[Photo via Berroco.]

Next Pattern:

I don’t know if it’s possible to look at the Snug Wrap from Sylvia Watts-Cherry and not smile. There’s so much fun stuff going on in it that if I had a bunch of sport weight yarn in my house I definitely would have cast this one on immediately after seeing it.

There’s stripes and circles of different sizes and colors, worked with intarsia. The wrap is worked sideways in both garter stitch and stockinette, so different sections also have different textures. Color blocking means you’ll use a lot of two main colors, and there are two more colors used for contrast throughout the piece.

As I mentioned, the project calls for sport weight yarn, and it’s already pretty big — 23.25 by 82 inches or 59 by 208 cm — so you probably wouldn’t want to use heavier yarn unless you just want to make it a super scarf. You could use even lighter yarn to make it more of a scarf than a shawl if you wanted.

The yarn used is a combination of Merino wool and recycled threads from La Bien Aimée’s yarn making process, so it’s a fun way to reduce waste while making something awesome.

The color motifs are depicted in charts in the pattern, but none of these are difficult so even if you’re new to chart reading you should be able to handle this pattern. The colors in the sample are so pretty but you can of course change it up with your favorites that will make you smile as you knit and wear this super fun pattern.

As usual, checking out the projects tab on Ravelry will show you some more fun color options. I love the idea of using jewel tones to give it a more wintry look, but the sky is the limit when it comes to color options.

You can find this pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Sylvia Watts-Cherry]

Next Pattern:

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