Unusual 100% Linen Yarn, Explored

Update: photo of red swatch shows the same yarn worked as tightly as possible. Feels like a soft basket and I think it would hold up very well.

I've finally gotten around to doing a few serious swatches of elann.com's Linus . It's 100% linen, made in Italy, hand wash and dry flat. All linen yarns are distinctive and this one is particularly so.

I've come to expect a papery feeling from linen yarns, like crocheting softened slivers of corn husks (in a good way). But Linus doesn't have this papery feeling at all. It's hardly twisted and feels to me like I'm crocheting a hank of supple glossy hair! Very intriguing. Reminds me of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale in which flax (i.e. linen) is spun into gold. I can see how someone could be described as "flaxen-haired".

When people pick up these swatches they're intrigued and keep touching them, examining them in different kinds of light, etc. Out of the corner of my eye the stitches look kind of like raffia or rayon straw but it feels soft and drapes stylishly. It's an uncommon mix of qualities.

I love this yarn in Tunisian crochet and these photos just don't show how beautiful it is! Now I know why people complain about photographing black. The yarn and stitch took an instant liking to each other. I didn't like it as much in regular crochet until I went down to a tight gauge with a 4mm hook [red swatch photo to go here].

It sheds a tiny bit as you work it--like a bit of field dust or something. I didn't even notice it until one night I crocheted the black yarn over a white pillow. The label says to hand wash and dry flat so I machine washed and dried the black swatch just to see why I shouldn't (after all, linen is famous for improving with some machine washing and drying). This yarn shed quite a bit and did release some color. Machine drying made the surface fuzzy, so I'm thinking this yarn is made from the "tow" instead of the "line" fibers of the plant. (I'll blog about that.) Definitely do what the label says! This is not a yarn for kitchen accessories.

Like almost all linen yarns I own, Linus gives an authentic organic or earthy look and feel, even though there are no natural-colored fibery nubbies like linen content brings to a yarn sometimes. This is what I love about linen--it's an extremely ancient fiber and it shows in a 21st century yarn, even when it's boldly color-saturated or has a polished finish. The colors of Linus seem particularly saturated and the black looks lacquered! I would use it for a strikingly stylish wrap that won't need washing often, such as a ruana or cape. You can see the excellent drape in the last photo.

This post is part of a blogging mini-series I'm doing about my linen yarn stash. To see related posts, click on "Fiber Talk" in the right-hand column.

'Quest for Bling' Purse: Visual Aids

This bag is one of my personal favorites and appears in 100 Purses to Knit and Crochet ed. by Jean Leinhauser and Rita Weiss. It's been one big trip of fun from the swatching to the finishing to the wearing! I even lined it with silk. I've always wanted to use the "Brush Strokes" stitch pattern, the lucite handles, the flat-backed rhinestones, and the small piece of silk I had stored away and it's all in this one design. In the second photo you can see the piece before seaming and adding handles.
There's a discussion going on right now on the CGOA members' yahoo group about this very stitch pattern (a.k.a. "Woven Shells" in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet p.170; also in the Harmony Guides vol.6). The "brush strokes" come out shiny and padded in this yarn and the rhinestones nestle nicely among them.
Over on Crochet Partners they're talking about yarns that we miss; I miss this yarn, Berroco Quest. Yeah, it's a weird one and yeah, I have a thing for weird yarns, but especially this one because it shows off crochet stitches so beautifully. I think of this as more of a crocheter's yarn than knitter's yarn. You just never know 'til you swatch. It also has incredible drape. I wrote a thorough rave of this yarn back when CGOA members' started doing yarn reviews for the guild newsletters.
For the Helping Hands Silent Auction I had a hard time deciding whether to offer this bag or this one. I ended up wearing this one to the auction instead. If the model in the 3rd photo looks familiar, it's because I blogged about this special crocheter earlier.

A few months back the International Freeform Crochet group discussed how to recharge or get past a crochet slump and I described going through my swatch pile to find a swatch that I could quickly turn into a small usable gift to myself. I chose the original swatch I did for this bag and it was the right size to cover a smallish notebook; I just glued it to the notebook and crocheted a shoulder strap right onto it and now I wear it to every conference for keeping notes. It makes me insanely happy.

Yarn Clubs

Yarn clubs are great, especially if you have Yarn ADD. I belong to three: Elann.com's Sample Club, Sara Lucas' Yarn of the Month Club, and Laurie Wheeler's Freeform Crochet Club. Would you believe there's no overlap among them?

Elann gives 4 or 5 good-sized, color-coordinated samples of in-house and discontinued higher-end yarns that will be going on sale for that month. I don't know what it is, they're like candy to me! I've been a member for about 3 years. Color snips are also included, and I rely on them more than I expected to. I appreciate the color-coordinated samples for scrumbling and combining swatches. For designing, I can't use the discontinued yarns but Elann's own yarn line is growing. I plan to point out the merits of 3 of their yarns in the near future.

The Yarn of the Month Club is fantastic for designing because all yarns are current. I've referred to these samples often when swatching up design proposals. Often I'll see a new yarn announced and wonder when it's ever going to show up at my local yarn shop, and then a sample of it shows up in the YOTM mailing. Every month 4 samples and a free pattern arrive (they're almost all for knitters though) plus every other month a truly informative newsletter, Knit Dish, is included. I've been a member for about 2 years. You can hear a short interview with Sara Lucas at Craftsanity.

The Freeform Crochet Club is new to me: I've only received the first month's installment and have not yet been able to log in successfully to read the newsletter. Laurie Wheeler is not only a hand spinner, she creates yarns with crocheters specially in mind. So how can I not join? When I opened the package, I smelled the lanolin before I even saw the yarns! A handy dandy laminated info sheet was included. I'm looking forward to finally meeting Laurie at the Oakland CGOA conference this month. I hope to get her talking about yarn twist.

Dating Linen

Yes, "dating" as in "I've been going on a lot of dates with linen."

For years I've bought a ball or ten of every linen yarn I find, especially if it's 100% linen. I've always planned to blog about crocheting with each of them. The first two photos show the tip o' the iceberg of my stash of 100% linen yarns (1) and threads (2). The 3rd photo shows some blends containing a high amount of linen.
I had a crush on linen long before we started dating because....how about a list?

Linen, How Do I Love Thee?

Thou art 1) an amazing fiber resulting from

2) putting a special plant (flax) through a

3) remarkable process.
4) Crocheting thee is a unique experience and

5) creates an heirloom-quality piece. Truly heirloom! Linen is so durable that it beautifies with age and handling. Machine washing and drying improves its softness and sheen.

6) How wondrously ancient thou art, bringing to my crochet an authentic, timeless, organic, and sometimes earthy look and feel. Even in this 21st century I feel a connection with the earliest fiberfolk thanks to linen. Its personality is detectable even when boldly color-saturated, blended, or has fancy finishes.

7) Linen and crochet are soulmates. The stunning virtuosic heights to which crochet stitches can climb are augmented by linen, and linen's exceptional qualities are showcased by crochet. They see eye to eye and they're capable of the same scale of exquisiteness. These two are distinguished peers and best friends.

It's the ultimate love story: two lovers are separated by a powerful upstart competitor (cotton) through a twist of fate (the cotton gin). Linen languishes for over a century, awaiting the return of its true love Crochet to its strong yet lithe, warm yet breathably cool embrace.

Rose-tinted glasses off: not all linen yarns show the above listed traits. Also, even top quality linen is not easy to get to know! Cottons and acrylics have come to dominate a crocheter's experience, and now that linen is marketed as a luxury fiber in competition with silk and cashmere, linen is often the odd man out. So I plan to blog about my experiences with different linen yarns.

If cotton hadn't come to dominate the plant fiber scene, I'm sure linen wouldn't seem like such a tall, dark, mysterious stranger. (Well, it will always be very tall--try comparing the staple lengths of linen vs. cotton!) After a long cotton detour, getting reacquainted with linen takes time and commitment. Or blogging?

Color Fun for Designing & Stashbusting

I own more than one book about color and this one is my favorite. It's an inspiration recharge for me because the subjective effects of the color schemes are included. As I flip through it, some schemes grab me and put me in a mood, which then unlocks a cascade of designs.
The book seems to be geared toward interior decorating, so of course it would be wonderful for those who design home decor, but it works for me for fashion too. The newish home decor magazine, Domino, tends to tie in fashion and accessory trends.

Flipping through this book is a fun way to use up your yarn stash with updated color combinations. If you have 2 colors in your stash and you find an inspiring color scheme using them, then just bring the yarn and book with you to shop for a few balls of these colors, an you've got yourself a very stylish project (afghan or whatever).

Keeping a folder of multicolor stitch patterns near this book would result in some fresh, exciting swatches!

Designing Lingerie

I fantasize about designing crocheted lingerie so I've started reading about that fashion sector. Three trends I've noticed so far (though I'm still learning about the territory) are:

-standards for how bras are supposed to fit are being overhauled to the point that a consumer education campaign is necessary

-more attention is going to the designers and design possibilities of lingerie

-In the larger fashion world, lingerie colors, styles, construction, and detailing are being applied to outerwear as the latest development in a longterm trend of reconceiving traditional lingerie as part of outerwear layering.

As a kid I wondered what the meaningful difference was between a bikini and a bra & panties set. Probably every girl wonders that at some point. Often, Madonna's Gaultier corsets are cited as the send-off for this last trend, but to me, once bikinis became accepted beachwear, the writing was on the wall.

My favorite lingerie blogger: Danae Shell of Knickers. Knickers has some great articles; see for example, "How to Become a Lingerie Designer" and "Top 5 Bra-Sizing Myths".

Of the bikini retrospectives I've scanned so far, I like Slate's; I saw another good one last year at a fashion site but can't find the link now.

A "Salon international de la lingerie" is held yearly in Paris. There's also an American lingerie show held in NYC and Las Vegas but I'd love to attend the Paris expo!

Today's story at Fashion Wire Daily rounds out this blog-worthy list of cool links to share with you:
"It's What's on the Inside that Counts Lingerie Awards"

Pesky Irregularities in Handknits?

Check out the knitting machine that expects to usher in a paradigm shift in the way knitwear is mass produced: it's called "Complete Garment Knitting". Shima Seiki calls it Wholegarment:

A whole 3D sweater can be made at once by the machine--no seams, no waste from from cutting pieces, and no inconvenient irregularities hand-worked into the garment. A sweater could also be made only on an on-demand basis.

As a crocheter I read this and think, "Huh--so the marketing edge for this company is: all the benefits of a handknit with none of the perceived drawbacks." (Handknitters can already create on-demand 3D garments with no seams and no cutting.)

You might wonder why this topic is on a crochet designer's blog. Crocheted fashions can be mass-produced at times, but never machine-made like mass-produced knits are. Well, at bare minimum, I've always been fascinated by how two manufacturing markets within the fashion industry compete: the Knits vs. the Wovens. ("Knits" here meaning the mass-produced, machine-made kind.)

We yarnies, even those of us who don't knit, are impacted anyway. For example, I've seen hand knitters evaluate their knitting using a machine-knitted standard of regularity, especially when it comes to stockinette and maybe garter, I guess where "irregularities" are easiest to spot; even the term "irregularities" seems imported from a machine-knitting aesthetic.

You know what? Crocheters just don't do that. This is a luxury that I think many of us crocheters take for granted. Good crocheters do aim for a consistent gauge, but are far less likely to have a perfectionistic goal for their stitching. After all, crocheters don't have machine-made stitches with which to compare their handmade stitches.

But what if they did? I look to knitters for clues to how machine automation affects the handmade experience. This is a significant, experiential difference between handknitting and crocheting.

It's good to keep an eye on the Knitwear industry's innovations, sometimes for design ideas, sometimes for a view of the future of knitwear, sometimes just for a fashion industry perspective on knits (and by extension, crochet at times).

What about "Gaugeless Knitting"? The benefit of having a machine with this capability is that it "helps the knitting industry to not only free itself from the standard notion of knitwear being mainly for the Autumn and Winter seasons, but to shed seasonal perceptions toward knitwear period, so that more collections can be made throughout the year and consequently attain a larger share of the textile market."
(Please note: italicizing throughout this blog post is mine)

As a crocheter, I easily forget to what degree knitwear is tied to certain seasons because crochet isn't, except when uneducated people conflate it with knitting. In fact, if you had to tie crochet to any season, a case for summer could easily be made.

Here's another way for knits to compete against the wovens:
"Thanks to WHOLEGARMENT^® technology, the term "knitwear" is no longer reserved for thick and bulky, clumsy sweaters reserved for casual occasions. New materials, especially fancy yarns combined with fine gauge capability and new knitting techniques result in a variety of fresh new items which at first glance seem like wovens."

In the fashion world the knitwear industry apparently labors under the same stereotype that crochet does in the yarn industry: does the criticism of "thick and bulky, clumsy sweaters" sound familiar?! Too funny!

Here's one more, special to designers: "Unlike conventionally knitted sweaters whose seams tend to break up the continuity of the garment design, the seamless process allows patterns and designs to remain uninterrupted across the entire garment-- front-to-back, over-the-shoulder and down-the-sleeves. And it looks much nicer, too. Also without seams there is the opportunity to create single-knit garments which feature truly functional reversibility without the added weight and bulk of double-knits."

Maybe this is a breakthrough in knitting, I don't know; for machine knitting anyway. In crochet, many stitch patterns are already reversible, as well as seam-free. Maybe that's why so many crochet designs in magazines are photographed inside out!

Crochet Content Alert!

Check out the summer issue of Spin-Off magazine for an article about using a tie-dye technique to solar-dye a spiderweb stitch scarf! It's space-dyed crochet that gives the optical illusion of joined motifs worked in rounds with color changes, granny square style (whereas this stitch pattern is worked horizontally in rows). Starts on p. 58. See Jeannine Bakriges' blog for the story behind the article. The undyed image is from Interweave's site showing the classic stitch pattern pre-dyed. The other image is from Jeannine's blog. Very cool!

Fiberarts magazine, summer issue, also has some crochet-specific content: see the article on science and art where Daina Taimina's hyperbolic geometry models are featured.

With their fiber focus, both magazines always have something to offer crocheters in general, but when they get crochet-specific I want every crocheter to know about it!