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August 21, 2014:

Please read my blog for recommendations on how to treat Truesilk. It’s an absolutely lovely yarn, but it is an expensive luxury yarn, too, and needs care.

I wasn’t a fan of the wide-ish sleeves, so I did my top-down, picked-up, short row technique to make them nice and slim. (on blog)

I also stopped the sleeve above the elbow to avoid wrinkling!

According to Rowan, Cotton Glacé and Truesilk have the same gauge! This is good news because I don’t really enjoy knitting with cotton so much, and the silk is a fascinating yarn.

It is silky smooth in the ball as a chainette… but when knit, the chainette acts like a tape yarn and curls around itself. The miraculous result is incredible elasticity… for silk!!

PLEASE REMEMBER TO TIE A KNOT IN A CUT END AS SOON AS YOU SNIP IT. It will unravel in one millisecond if you don’t.

To weave in ends, snip the knot you made, weave in the end, AND THEN KNOT IT AGAIN, right up close to the fabric.

Now, for gauge. Nope, I did not reach gauge with the recommended US 3. Nor US 4: I have 26 sts/40 rows instead of 23 sts/32 rows. BIG DIFFERENCE. Very curious now to use US 4 with some of my Cotton Glacé stash and see if it compares at all.

The row count was significantly different and I didn’t want it shorter. A calculation revealed I would be 5cm off or 18 rows. The last repeat of the stripe sequence is 14 rows, so I figured I would just do another one. Also, I multiplied the number of rows between increases by 1.125X to make sure the waist shaping occurred at the right place.

I initially tried to carry up the yarn instead of snipping between colors, but the silk was too slippery AND it was showing in the holes. I did, however, carry up the yarn over the 2 row stripes, as there was no risk of that. Snipping is nice actually, because you can use the ends to tighten up any weird joins in the intarsia.

intswemodo2014#7