Halfway

[atherleisure]

I'm halfway through the plain part of the foot of my stocking. 80 rows to go to finish. I'm ready to be done with them. No more cotton stockings. I'm sticking to wool (or possibly silk) from now on!

Comments

[marianme]

Is cotton more difficult to knit?

[which_chick]

I'm not OP, but cotton yarn is less springy/bouncy than wool. It is not very forgiving of any inconsistency in tension. The non-springy nature of the cotton fiber also means that inconsistencies don't block out as easily as they do in wool. (Most wool yarns will block fairly well -- a good soak in warm water and they'll bend to your will when pinned out on a blocking board and left to dry. If you're not a knitter, "blocking" for knitted items is kind of like putting curlers in wet hair... it's the same idea. Make the hair/wool wet, put it into the shape you want, then hold it there while it dries. If you do this, the hair/wool will stay the shape that it was while it was drying, at least until it gets wet again.) Finally, the lack of stretch in the cotton fibers makes cotton a bit harder to knit, at least for me.

[atherleisure]

Well put.

[which_chick]

You're making good progress! I am not a fan of knitting cotton. I'll do it, sometimes, but it's hard on my hands and I don't love it. Stockings on (I am assuming) eensy little needles would be murder. I bet they'll look great, though.

[atherleisure]

I very rarely knit with cotton. I made one other pair of cotton stockings, but they were patterned and I made them at the same time as a pair of plain wool stockings. The pattern kept me from knitting them too much at a time so I didn't really realize how stiff they were to knit. I did long stints of knitting while reading with the plain wool stockings. These make my hands hurt if I knit more than about 20 rows in a day. And yes, they're size 4/0 needles, which I've used for several pair of wool stockings. These will be very stiff stockings.