By Twisted Cord
Look at these two raw swatches—same yarn, same needles. Same knitter? You wouldn’t think so. Even in an unblocked state, swatch A is superior to B. A’s stitches are more or less regular. By contrast, B’s stitches look like the hind end of a dog, with many more distorted and split stitches.
The yarn—a mystery picked up at Steeped Skeins—is a very low-twist, slippery, 100% viscose yarn that snags and splits with ease. Blocking remedies some of the issues, but not all.
How to manage such yarn? Not by changing needles: four different makes and models made no difference, whether the tips were pointed or blunt. But knitters who have taken Suzanne Bryan’s knitting bootcamp will remember her injunction and will know—knit on the tips. That’s what this yarn called for. When the knitter deliberately knit with the tips of the needles (in the case of these swatches (a Lykke Indigo 4 mm circular), the number of split and distorted stitches was reduced – swatch A was knit on the tips!
