A few months ago when I decided to pick up knitting again, I headed out to the local craft store with my boyfriend in search of a yarn to make his hat. His request: a knitted/crocheted Batman mask equipped with eye holes. Despite being a knitter for almost ten years, I was still at the Beginner's level. Well, I guess I can't really call it ten years then because I only really spent a year or two knitting. Simply put, I was a total newb and had no idea what types of yarn were good besides the fact that they had to feel nice to the skin. Isn't that the purpose of all yarn anyways? Yea right. We picked up Microspun, a polyester blend sport weight yarn manufactured by Lion Brand (which at the time, was my idea of luxury yarn...I only ventured into knitting with the yarn I scored from thrift stores prior to that).
As I mentioned before, I was a newb. I haven't yet developed the skills to make that mask, but I did put the yarn to use in making Brimster, (http://vickiehowell.blogspot.com/2006/05/brimster-free-pattern-of-month_01.html), a ribbed brimmed hat. It required skills I never tried before, picking up stitches, knitting on double-pointed needles, and gauge. I labored so hard on that friggin hat and when it came time to try the hat on, I realized that the hat was so loose that it pracitcally draped the head.
While the hat hat sat in my rejected finished projects pile, I came to realize that it wasn't my inability to follow the directions that led to the poor misshapen hat. I had used a yarn that had very little memory. (To make matters worse, I kept stretching the poor unfinished pieces to see how long they were) I had used a yarn with very little memory, at least that's what I think it is. At this point, I presume that memory refers to the ability of the yarn to hold its original shape after being stretched. I haven't been able to find out what memory means exactly when it comes to knitting. (must wait to leech off the local bookstore) However, I do know that wool has very good memory and alpaca little, hence why alpaca wool blends are very common.
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As mentioned, I hit the bookstores and devoured the Book on Yarn, whatever that title is. Strangely, it doesn't seem to have a formal definition of what yarn memory as. According to the book (and as I suspected), yarn memory refers to the ability of the yarn to return to its normal state after being twisted and stretched (uh-duh!). The book doesn't really go into detail about which types of yarn have good memory and what doesn't. Hopefully, I'll be able to compile a comprehensive list of this in a future post.
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