Waiting
Published On: November 6, 2020

How about a little PSA about waiting (while we all wait to see how the election came out).

If you’ve knit with a yarn, left it sit around for a while, then ripped it, your yarn will be kinked.  This is especially the case if you blocked the yarn (blocking helps yarn hold its shape…and yarn that’s knit into fabric is in a very twisty turny shape).  It is occasionally true for yarn that was dyed on a blank and then wound up in a cake (a lot of gradient yarns are made this way).

Do not knit with your yarn when it’s like this.  Your knitting won’t be even and your gauge will be wildly off and you will just generally have a terrible time.  Seriously, it’s awful, don’t do it.  There is enough awful in the world, you don’t need extra.

Instead, wind it off into a big loop (on a swift if you have one, or you can wrap it around something like a book or a file folder or whatever else you have handy).  Tie the loop off in several places (like at least three, four is better).  Toss it in cool water and let it soak.  It has to get really really really soaked.  All the way through.  You will think it’s wet after like ten minutes, it’s not, and if it doesn’t get properly soaked it may not release all of it’s kink.

Pick it up (gently so you don’t tangle it), roll it in a towel and press out most of the water, and hang it to dry (somewhere that won’t get hurt if it drips a bit, I usually do it where I hang clothes to dry). Once it’s all the way dry, you can wind it up and knit with it like normal.

If all the kinks don’t come out, you probably didn’t actually let it get all the way soaked.  Soak it again. Some people like to put a slight weight on the bottom of it while it dries (think ‘a couple of empty clothes hangers’ not ‘a five pound dumbbell’), but I try to avoid that if I can because it can stretch the yarn out a bit and mess up your gauge.

But really, good things are worth waiting for.  Knitters know this.  Wait for your yarn to dry. Wait for the votes to be counted. We have the skills, we’ve got this!

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