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• Notes from Crystal Palace
• The Magic of Pooling
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I sent the blogs below on my fun-with-pooling and trial of Panda cotton to my contact at Crystal Palace, Susan Druding. I'm posting her comments on the yarns here, with her permission.

First, she told me a little about their dye process, which explains why the Maizy color sequence feels a little more random than I'm used to in machien space dyed yarns:

The method used to dye our colors is more like hand-dyeing than the calculated computer dyed printed yarns from Germany and Italy. (All those self-patterning yarns are done with computer controlled printing sequences to make them fall into fair-isle and such patterns). Ours are fed on trays by hand into spray machines in skein form much the way yarns are "hand painted" by the various hand dyers out there. I choose the colors and tell them what length repeats to do in centimeters and then we test knit to see how they work and sometimes I change the lengths of the repeated colors after test knitting.

She also had a few comments on the Panda Cotton, which I had noted was a bit splitty or unevenly spun:

re. Splitting in Panda Cotton
I had a choice while we were developing this yarn at the mill. They sent me a number of different samples of sizes and plys and twistings to test. I could have gone with a more tightly plyed version that was "snug" in all plys and would have been far less splitty - BUT.... it didn't feel anything like as soft and silky when knit tightly as the style we chose. I decided to go with some splitting and not sacrifice the hand and feel of the yarn after it was knit. I hope I made the right choice.

I do see people saying "it's splitty, but once I got used to it I loved the feel" - so that's the audience of knitters I was aiming at!

I fully agree - one of the BEST things about this yarn was the silky feel of the yarn sliding across fingers and needles. If the choice is between tight, evenly spun yarn that feels tight and stiff, or a soft, flowing silky yarn with drape and sheen, I will defintiely tolerate the splittyness. It was mostly a problem because I was knitting lace, and you had to watch it a bit on the decreases. I just got into a habit of adding some twist to it as I went in the areas it felt undertwisted, and that also helped immensly. By mid way thru the first sock I was doing that without thinking.

Anyway, if others out there reading this are as over-analytic of their yarns as I am, there's the scoop! Enjoy!

or, Why I'm not reading Harry Potter right now...

So I posted yesterday that my only problem with my Maizy socks was that they were pooling. And of course I posted to lists about this and the replies came in. :) I got the usual mix of people stating you should never rip thru insisting I've got too much color in the socks, PERIOD, forget pooling, etc. What surprised me was the sheer number of people that said "OH MY GOD what's the yarn and when can we get the pattern?!?!?" :) Apparently pooling can be quite stunning? :) Anyhow I "knew" I didn't like them, they were NOT what I had envisioned for these socks, but I chose a middle ground, stuck 'em on stitch holders and proceeded to cast on for a second sock with ball #2.

Being me, I made slight changes to the pattern, of course. A few more rows of garter before the pattern to set it up, a few less stitches, JUST on the foot of course, need 70 at leg for stitch pattern, but the first socks were a touch loose so 68 instead of 70. 2 little stitches won't change anything, I can add them back in in the heel, no problem. And I proceeded after the toe to knit odd rows with the center of the ball, even with the outside. VERY quickly I noticed... NO pooling. And I mean NONE. The odd rows wouldn't even have pooled with each other had I just kept going! Just 2 measly stitches more, and the pooling died. Same knitter, same day, presumably same tension, exact same needles, same dyelot, same odd not quite consistent spacing of color repeats. Being pragmatic I ripped back and just knit from the center strand all the rows, and the pooling continued to be very dead.

And about an inch into the sock, I had 2 realizations. First, it was coming out exactly the way I pictured it, in blotchy not-stripes of color, and the purls of the garter were indeed highlighting and further scattering the blotches of color. Second, I realized I was no longer looking with disdain at the sock I couldn't make myself rip, I was looking at it wishing I was knitting it instead. Because...

The colors on the sock I was knitting were dead

There's no other way to describe how it felt. They were dead, dull, lifeless. They didn't dance and swirl. They didn't wander one direction and then jump back a few stitches, fooling me into thinking I'd lost the pool finally. And the diamonds didn't get magically highlighted as the colors all on their own skewed around their edges. And that lovely rib of knits thru the stockinette kinda got lost in the muddy colors. It looked like an ordinary sock, a mere thing of yarn and stitches, and the other one I'd set aside was alive - breathing, dancing, speaking, laughing, singing... Well, see for yourself:

By the way, the yarn really IS doing that zig-zagging all by its self. The colors are usually lined up in pairs, but every now and then, there'll be a section of purple-red-purple, or brown-aqua-brown, and that shifts the pooled stripe back over to the left, when it had been gradually creeping to the right. I've yet to really figure out the repeat pattern of colors - its long and somewhat random. Normally with pools, the colors line up exactly and YOU control the swirl by varying tension. I THOUGHT I was doing that with this sock but I'm now quite certain I'm not, as I almost lost the pool playing with the tension. This yarn really actively resists pooling, because of the jumps and shifts in the color sequence. It really is designed to fall in blotches, and then have the colors jump and break up pools, both flat and round. It is only at JUST the right tension and stitches I would get this effect, and I stumbled right into it by blind luck.

So I'm keeping this magic sock. I decided I'm not a sock designer just to sell patterns, but to make beautiful things I love. I do NOT think I can help ANYONE replicate this result. I took out 2 measly stitches and the pooling COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED. This yarn really was designed to avoid pooling, and it will only pool with incredible luck. And I like the pooly sock! So I'm going to finish it, photo it, and of course include the photo of the dead toe (plus a plain yarn toe sample) and a strongly worded disclaimer about the magic of pooling and wish my knitters luck but make no promises.

These are my socks!

And I'm doing them my way. They're perfect as they are. They are mine and you can't borrow them! The new heel I was planning to try? Totally rejected. Afterthought for these babies. The yarn, as usual has totally derailed my plans. Also, as usual, its right, I'm wrong. :) I so need to remember to listen to my yarn! Pooling is a magical, rare, uncontrollable process and this experience is teaching me to treasure it and nurture it while it lasts.

And boy I hope I can get sock #2 to play nice...

And yes, I'm knitting this sock INSTEAD of reading Harry Potter. Much better to DO magic that read about it. The book won't go bad and I just have to avoid all my friends til the sock is done! All other knitting projects are 100% on hold. I simply can't put this sock down.

THANK YOU, CRYSTAL PALACE! The yarn really is lovely... :-P

I recently cast on some socks with Crystal Palace's new sock yarn, Maizy. This is a rather unique fiber yarn, and I'm very interested to see how it will feel and behave when being worn. It is made from 82% corn fiber (and please don't ask me how they turn corn into yarn) and 18% elastic nylon. 188 meters to 50 grams. It knits up beautiful at 9 SPI, with some flow yet also dense enough to feel good to me as socks.

I have so far been very pleased with this yarn. Like the panda cotton I tried, it has plenty of stretch, but not so much as Cascade Fixation. Its more like Lana Grossa's Mega Boots Stretch in its stretchiness - its got more spring and memory, but it doesn't affect your gauge much when knitting. It does not feel silky like the panda cotton while knitting (that bamboo really is glossy and wonderful to touch!) nor does it have any noticeable sheen. It feels soft more in a way like cotton or even merino. I'm also not having any of the issues I had with the panda cotton - the twist is evenly distributed along the yarn, and it isn't splitty at all. I'm truly hoping my twist issues with the panda cotton were an anomaly, but all 3 balls I used had that problem.

Once again, I found that my initial reaction to the yarn was NOT what I ended up feeling. When I started casting on, the yarn felt slightly rough and plastic to me, mostly because the texture of the yarn is not smooth - it is slightly bumpy because of how the elastic and the corn interact. And I must admit the strand or yarn in my working hand does not feel all that soft. Honestly, I'm very glad Crystal Palace offered to let me sample these yarns, because again, I would not have risked trying this yarn had I met it in that tiny ball in my LYS. I'm kind of conservative in my yarn tastes! Where this yarn REALLY comes to life is a few inches into your knitting. The fabric is cushiony and soft. It has quite a bit of bounce and stretch (you could get away with quite a bit of negative ease with this yarn) and even at a decent sock gauge it has some drape and flow to the fabric. It feels incredibly smooth in the finished fabric, and it flows around your foot when you put it on, stretching neatly around all your little bumps and curves. I'm knitting it in a relatively rough texture to bring out the colors, and although texture usually bugs my feet, the yarn is soft enough that the texture doesn't itch or rub in the slightest.

So far I am having only *1* problem with this yarn. At 9 SPI and 70 stitches around, IT IS POOLING LIKE MAD!! Here's a photo of my sock so far:

In my humble opinion (I like color!) the sock still looks quite nice. The stitch pattern to my eyes isn't being totally eaten by the colors, and I do like the colors... its just, I had pictured this sock coming out more like the toe, with random splotches of color everywhere that would be highlighted and broken up further by the garter stitch portions of the sock. And while the stitch pattern is crystal clear up close, I know at a distance of even a few feet, all you will see is those wavy lines of color. I really like my current gauge and I can't change the stitch count without messing up the pattern. So I have to just let it pool or give up. Opinions are welcome, and for once I wish my blog had a reply feature! At any rate be aware of a pooling risk at anything close to this gauge and stitch count!

Final analysis: I would definitely use this yarn again. I'm saving my full and total review until I have a pair to wear about for a bit and see how it breathes and wears, but I have high expectations. On the whole, the fiber feels nice and is enjoyable to work with. But... I'll get a more subtle colorway next time and plan for pooling!

*Sigh* So I'm well known to preach gauge, and I usually listen to my own sermons. :) And of course I ignore everyone else's sermons because I'm convinced I'm immune. I used to have no problem with my gauge swatches. A little 2X1 strip of sock fabric was all I needed to cast on, and away we go. Then I got this shoulder pain and my doctor tried to make me stop knitting. We compromised and I switched to continental to have less repetitive movement of the right shoulder. (It's helped immensely, BTW). Well... Suffice to say my gauge has been off for a while, but its been settling down nicely. But ONE problem remains. All of the sudden, my gauge is drastically DIFFERENT in the round than flat. Much looser in flat, BTW, guess my continental purls have yet to settle.

So, enter a lovely sampling yarn from my new best friends at Crystal Palace. They sent me for FREE, some balls of sock yarn to play with, knowing that I'd love them. And I do! I started in on the panda cotton, and loved the silky feel of it. My swatch said 8 SPI was perfect - tiniest bit of drape, not so loose that it'll bug my oversensitive feet. So I cast on. I notice first that my sock is a touch tighter than I thought it should be, which is odd because the yarn is quite stretchy, but of course I'm knitting away in lace so the gauge is IMPOSSIBLE to check. I also realize that is it probably against the Geneva convention to publish the pattern as I'm knitting it, with YO's at both ends of many needles... and decide that to kill 2 birds with one stone I'll just add 4 stitches and start over.

Fast forward a bit, and I'm thru my first ever heel flap and gusset, and start to realize I am going to run out of yarn. No avoiding it. I'm deeply confused, as the Panda cotton is the same length as another yarn I've used, Steinbach Wolle Strapaz, and I knit it up at the same gauge with more or less the same # of stitches and had scads of leftovers (well, not SCADS, but more than plenty.)

UH OH...

This is where we get to the gauge lies bit. So I'm planning my toe with my 3rd ball yarn here. I need to know row gauge so I can figure out when to start it, so I count. 14 rows to the inch. This is NOT RIGHT for 8 SPI. I count again. I measure the whole leg and divide stitches by length. Its still 14 rows to the inch. Something is not right here... Either this is mutant yarn, or something is up (I shoulda known better than to knit frog themed socks... :) So I grudgingly measure my stitch gauge. Somehow it crept up to 9 SPI when I wasn't looking. Socks still fit lovely, and while the gauge is tighter than what I'd planned... it feels good on my feet and I'm 2 inches from the end and am NOT going to rip a sock that fits just because a gauge swatch lied to me! Its finished, the second is cast on, and I'm pissed at it and not working very fast.

So of course I'm starting new socks, *sigh* (The muse attacked me and forced me to, really, she has this evil plot to keep me from finishing PAIRS of socks.) This time I'm using the CP Maizy, which I want to gush over in detail later, not here in my gauge whine. Whines and gushes don't mix. I pet the Maizy and decide its about the same thickness as the panda cotton, and just cast on the same size needles for a short row toe, sans gauge swatch because of course I'm mad at those. 3 rows in I have to quit. I'm knitting cheesecloth! I could drive a mac truck thru these holes! I realize 2 things. 1) The Maizy really is significantly thinner than the panda cotton and 2) once again, lookit dat, I'm knitting FLAT. My gauge is larger than expected - its the same gauge that nasty lying gauge swatch was, not the 9 SPI I wanted for the slightly thinner yarn. Go figure. *Sigh* So I rip out, switch down a needle size, and things are fine but...

I am NOT happy about what this means.

Socks are gonna get confusing/annoying if I have to go down a needle size for every single stockinette portion of them! Stockinette, as you realize, goes EVERYWHERE where socks wear out most - heels and toes. I can't let my gauge get looser there. *Sigh* 2 sets of needles for every sock I ever knit until my purl settles down, if it ever does. And I really can't bear the thought of swatching in the round - WAY too much like work. So I think I'll instead join Grumperina and all the great bloggers - GAUGE SWATCHES LIE! :-P I'm goin back to bed!

Last week I had the opportunity to go along with my husband on a business trip to Ottawa. He was attending the Ottawa Linux Symposium and I was tagging along, playing tourist and trying to avoid overexposure to geeks. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy spending time with highly intelligent technical people, but after a week... especially a week of highly technical discussions of the intricate details of the Linux source code, your brain starts to hurt. So one of my goals as usual in Ottawa this year was to get as far away from the geeks as possible. The best way I have yet found to recover from geek overexposure is... :) you guessed it, indulging in fiber splurges. My husband pretends to understand. Really he does.

This year I had the good fortune to make the online acquaintance of Sarah, a member of the Laughing Lace Knitters list who took me on a whirlwind tour of the yarn stores of Ottawa with her darling ball of energy, otherwise known as her nearly 4-year-old son. We both arrived in our finest handknittery. Sarah was sporting a lovely hand-knit skirt, I was of course wearing hand knit socks (Japanese Feather) and my new tank top which sadly soon wilted in the heat and humidity but still looks darned good if I do say so myself. Sarah's goal for the day was to pick up a few things she had set aside for her in various shops, and to find supplies for the Mystery Stole 3 knit along , mine was basically to hang out and have a good time and try really hard not to spend above the customs limit!

After preening, we set off for the outskirts of Ottawa and Wool 'n Things. The shop was tucked into a small shopping center, and full of yarn bursting out of every available space. :) I was surprised by a few things. First of all, I recognized more yarn than I'd thought. Second, thanks to the failing American peso, yarn wasn't so cheap as I remembered from past trips. But some caught my eye and I came home with a ball of sock yarn in a brand I'd read of but not fondled in person, and a hank of handpainted luxury yarn in wool and silk blend:

And a shot of Sarah, her lovely skirt, and the overflowing shelves of Wool N' Things:

We then headed back towards the city for yarn shops I could only make it to if I REALLLLLLY wanted the exercise. Our first stop was a place I have already come to love as a hand spinner, Knit Knackers which had sadly moved further from the convention center since I found them 2 years ago. Happily, the new location was WELL within driving distance, and larger and more entertaining. They still have both a massage and natural healing center sharing space with a yarn and spinning store to drool for, but now they occupy all of a cute little brick row house, with the massage space upstairs, the yarn in its own room in the back, and the wool in its own room near the front. You could get lost in this store and not want a search and rescue team to find you! Now, I am spoiled to death with yarn shops in San Jose, but the one thing I lack is a truly good spinning store without trekking 50 miles to SF. Spinning is not like yarn buying for me. Yarn I can say no to, even if it is pretty and soft, because I think of yarn for projects. Spinning is total sensory indulgence, and I simply HAVE to buy it if its soft enough. :) I really don't care if it ever becomes anything other than yarn, provided it is soft and flows through my fingers like butter. So I am proud to say that I made it out of there with ONLY 5 lots of wool, and tried to hold myself to the bargain ones at that. I got me some angora, from a bunny I got to pet:

It doesn't look like much but trust me this is soft! I also got some lower grade alpaca whose color I liked from the mystery bin, some white wool with colored cotton threads I remembered from last time (it got written up as cotton/linen on my receipt so it may well be that), some surprisingly soft mottled gray stuff again from the mystery bin, and a green and russet brown blend of alpaca and corriedale wool.

And of course a photo of me hugging the wool and holding my spoils!

Then after a not so brief stop for lunch and a lovely chat, broken by occasional futile attempts to keep a 3 year old boy out of trouble (but he's so cute you have to love him)

we set out to our 3rd and final yarn shop of the day, Yarn Forward which happened to be a block from lunch. We were mostly in there to hang out, as Sarah loves to chat with the owners and they have toys to entertain the munchkins, but of course I found some colors of a favorite yarn I did not yet have, and a marled yarn that was too well priced to leave in Canada:

This WOULD have ended my yarn crawl, but of course there is ONE more yarn store I knew of in Ottawa, that I'd managed to miss last time, and was well within walking distance. So the next day when I was already fully geeked out, I set off for The Knitting Center on Bank street, not too far from the capital. I had to brave construction zones and all sorts of dust to find it, but locate it I did, only to hear that the owner had had a stroke, and after 50 years the place was closing. It was more than half empty, and everything was ON SALE. Yes folks, my wallet was in trouble. I swore up and down that I was NOT to buy new top yarn as I had about 4 tops worth waiting, but who can resist Elspeth Lavold cotton Patine for $2 a ball?!?!? I also got some cotton linen at $2 a ball, and, much to my chagrin, was seduces by some lovely dark wine DK yarn that was unfortunately an acrylic-rayon blend but somehow I still had to have at $3 a ball.

All in all, I got 3 tops worth for less than what I paid for the Fan Lace top I had worn the day before. At this point I was realizing I had pretty much used up more than the available space in my luggage and it was time to stop. So thus ends my yarn crawl of Ottawa! Looking forward to doing it another year! Stay tuned for a more touristy report of everything else I did...