Cooling Lei

It just barely, sorta, kinda looks like one. At least to me.

I have some of those Chilly Pad cooling towels that can be soaked, wrapped around the neck, and left to evaporate and draw out heat. There's no good way to wear them, since they don't have fasteners. I wanted to knit something from this material to wear when I have to be out in the heat.

I looked up what Chilly Pads are made of. It's a spongy material called polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA. It's also the material used in automotive drying towels. I could not find a yarn made from the stuff, so I made my own.

I got a 31" x 17" car towel. They are packaged wet, because when they dry, they are stiff and brittle.

I took scissors and made one long spiral strip about 1/4" wide by cutting up the right side, turning 90 degrees before reaching the end, cutting across the top, down the left, etc. I rounded the corners on each turn to keep the strip strong. In the end, I had 34 yards of what amounted to a super bulky ribbon yarn. Here is a picture showing a couple of remnants to illustrate the idea of making the spiral cut.

I looked for knitting patterns using Ravelry's excellent search tools and found a couple of interesting ones. I picked one and started knitting on my US 35 needles. I soon learned that this stuff sticks to the plastic needles something fierce. Since the material needed to be washed eventually, I just took hand soap and applied it to both the yarn and the needles whenever they started grabbing again.

In order to keep things slick, I was knitting over a bowl of water, dunking the work as needed. During the bind-off row, I broke the yarn by accident. Soaking in the water for a long time made the yarn pliable, but also weakened it. I ripped back a couple of rows and bound it off again. The end result really wasn't much different from the cooling towels sold in sporting goods and other stores. So I frogged it.

Next, I tried to arm knit it. The stitches were huge and loose, because, A: My arms are really big needles; and B: I couldn't tighten them much because the yarn loves to stick to itself even more than it loves sticking to needles.

So, I broke down and finger crocheted one long chain about 8 feet in length and tied the ends together. It feels pretty cool. I am losing some cooling ability by not having every inch of my skin in contact with the scarf, but it will stay on by itself. I don't know if having air circulating around and through the piece will hurt or enhance the cooling action.

The actual cooling towels and car drying towels are machine washable. I didn't want to put a slightly frail piece into the washer, so I just rinsed it by soaking and squishing it in the bathtub. There was already plenty of soap. I'll probably test it out in the heat this weekend.

I'm tired of mis-estimating the tail length for a long-tail cast on!

I started a project in the workshop conducted yesterday at Yarn Shop and More in Overland Park, Kansas. The instructor was Steven Berg, owner of the store and brand called StevenBe. Here is his website. http://www.stevenbe.com.  If you want to see hilarious videos of his adventures on tours with another designer named Stephen West, see http://www.stevenbe.tv. Stephen West has his own website at http://www.westknits.com.

For the class, we were to pick a StevenBe design from a list and bring or buy yarn to use. Steven helped us learn his techniques of combining colors and textures to make more of what we have. The pattern I chose is the Eyelet Ponchini, by StevenBe. This is where you can see the pattern and pictures on Ravelry. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/stevenbe-eyelet-ponchini. I'm pasting a picture here from the pattern book I purchased (signed by the man himself!).

I have some nice fingering weight Shibui Linen that I bought at Stitch Space in Webb City on sale. I thought that would be a good summer yarn. I didn't have any yarns in my stash that I'd like to combine with it, so I searched the store and came up with a couple of possibilities. Naturally, Steven advised the Blue Heron Rayon Metallic, since he is the Glitter Knitter. That's pretty expensive stuff.

The pattern begins with a cast-on of 88 stitches for the large size. Steven also taught us how to do what he calls Mama Christa's Cast-on. Christa is his mama, so there you go. Here is a Youtube video of him demonstrating it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLBjK2oWMKI

It gives a stretchier cast-on than the simple long-tail. Every other stitch is essentially a yarn over.

So, I held my two yarns together, learned the cast-on, and estimated the tail length with the usual methods, such as wrapping around the needle once as a stand-in for each stitch, or simply guessing and starting. I ended up with a too-long tail the first time and sacrificed a couple of yards of yarn. Next it was too short, or I messed it up or something. Anyway, I ended up casting on about three times at the workshop, and finally commenced to knittin'.

Last night I decided I wasn't happy with my selvage edges, so I frogged it and started over. Same troubles. I vowed I would not waste another inch of my expensive yarn and decided to go about this in a scientific manner.

When you do a long-tail cast-on, you use yarn from the tail and from the working yarn on the ball. I estimated it was about half from each. I got out my trusty scrap yarn and got going.

Picture 1: I tied a piece of gray onto my red to show where the beginning of the tail is. I gave it about 6". Then I knitted on 20 stitches, all from the working yarn.

Picture 2: Here is the completed cast-on. I tied another piece of gray onto the red to mark the end of the yarn it used.

Picture 3: I laid out the length of yarn to show how much is contained in those 20 stitches.

Picture 4: I tied another piece of gray onto the red to mark the middle.

Picture 5: I laid out a piece of gray yarn and tied red bits on to mark the desired beginning spot for my tail and a distance equal to the center of the red yarn that I had used. The red marker on the right will be the beginning of the cast-on.

Picture 6: Casting on the gray using the long-tail method.You can see the little red marker at the desired end of the tail and another close to the needle on the right where I sarted, and the working yarn trailing off to the right.

Picture 7: You can see the completed cast-on of 20 stitches showing the red marker bits I tied on when I measured out the tail. Hypothesis proved.

The Mama Christa actually uses a little less yarn than the normal long-tail, due to not all of the stitches actually being "knit" on.

Here is my plan for the next try:
1. Knit on 22 stitches of the expensive stuff. This is one fourth of the 88 I want, and a number that takes very little time to knit on.
2. Add marker ties to the end of the cast-on yarn and the beginning of the tail.
3. Take it off the needles and stretch it out.
4. There is no need to mark the middle. Following the 50/50 theory, a tail of this length should provide enough yarn to do a long-tail cast-on of 44 stitches.
5. I need double that amount, then, to cast on 88. I'll just lay out another length of the working yarn alongside what I have stretched out.
6. There is no need to mark it, but just beginning the long-tail at the point closest to my working yarn should be just about right.

I'll let you know how it worked out when I blog about actually making the ponchini.

Holly Nan

Purple and Ivory Lace-edged Chemo Hat

Another one! I used up some remnants of cotton for this one. It's the scallop option, whereas the previous two were the Madeira lace. I think I like the Madiera better with its little points, but this lace pattern can be memorized, since it just repeats two rows, one of which is just a round of knit stitches.

There will be more.