Knitting with Linen

My favorite fiber to knit with is wool – good old fashioned Merino sheep wool. Fibers from other animals such as Alpaca or combinations of wool and other animal fibers are also fine.  From the plant world, hands down my favorite is linen.  The oldest of plant fibers known in the Western Hemisphere.  Sure cotton was being used in the Americas, but didn’t arrive in the west until the Europeans brought it back. I love to sew with cotton, but not to knit with it, unless it is combined with wool or a very good acrylic. Cotton is heavy! It weighs a lot. When woven into fabric, the weight is negligible, not so when knitting.  After the garment is finished – the weight just drags it down and out of shape.Linen, unlike wool has no memory, no bounce back at all. So I have to be careful how I use it. It too will stretch out and not bounce back.  Unlike cotton, it is very very light and cool.  Although the fibers are rougher I find knitting with linen, even when stiff – to be very southing in my hands. I discovered how wonderful it is for shawls and the most simple of sweaters.  Unfortunately – linen is expensive and the colors tend to be on the washed out side.  Enter Etsy. A while ago I ordered some lace weight linen – it’s literally thread, it’s still sitting in my stash.  This marvelous blue arrived from Russia. No, not cheaper than Louet linen yarn but the color!This is the second shawl I am knitting out of  New Vintage Lace, (Third actually, I started and frogged another shawl, but that is a different story).This is also the time to recommend Knit Companion.  At the moment this wonderful this wonderful program for advanced pattern management is only available in Apple formats – they are working to bring it to Android as well.  The best thing is the charts – being able to combine charts and also zoom in and mark it up as much as you want!  I had a slight problem when I was setting up, the Knit Companion group on Ravelry came to the rescue. It was a silly mistake on my part but having someone to correct me within minutes is invaluable.

This project is growing quickly, of course as each row gets longer, it will slow down. I am enjoying this so much, I will have more progress to share with you soon.