Get some Practice Yarn

Importance of Practice Yarn

Before you attempt to make any ‘proper’ garments, you need to practice. This is good for several reasons. Firstly, you need to check that the machine is in working order… are all the needles working etc. Second, you need to learn how to use the machine. Third you need to test different types of yarns in the machine. Fourthly, you need to try out different stitches and patterns to see how they look.

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In order to do this on a budget, you need to find some cheaper yarn to practice with. You can also use left-over yarn for ‘waste’ yarn. Waste yarn is used to protect the main yarn of the garment. It is usually used for casting on and casting off (binding off).

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Find Cheap Practice Yarn

The cheapest type of yarn is usually acrylic. This is a light-weight man-made yarn that can look and feel like wool. Cotton is the next cheapest, and this is natural and can be stiff, heavy. A cotton/acrylic mixture is a very nice yarn to work with. Wool is the natural fibre spun from the coats of various animals, the most common being lambs/sheep and alpaca. Some people, like me, are sensitive to wool and cannot wear or work with it. Wool is more expensive to buy but there are wool/acrylic mixtures that make it more affordable. Cashmere is a yarn made from a special type of goat and is very expensive, but very luxurious to wear.

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The best yarns for practice are acrylic and acrylic mixtures. If you look on Ebay you can find a good range, but the postage costs soon mount up. You may be able to find a job-lot of yarn at a suitable price near enough to collect (Try gumtree, ebay etc). However, it may take time to find it.

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Coned Yarn is best for Machine Knitting

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For most knitting machines, you will be looking for yarn on a cone as this is the most suitable type of yarn for most knitting machines. This also means that you have a lot of yarn that will not run out in the middle of your knitting. These cones can be put on the knitting table behind the machine, but the best place is down on the floor behind the machine. This gives more time for the yarn to smooth out before it gets into the mast.

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I put my yarn on a small plank of wood, raised off the ground. This stops my feet from knocking over the cones.

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Small balls of hand knitting yarns are only suitable for simple types of machines like the Bond knitting machine or the Silver Reed LK150, where you are manually putting the yarn across the needles. Ideally you should rewind the balls into into ‘cakes’. You do this with the help of a wool winder. The standard type of wool winder will rewind balls up to 100g. The resulting cakes can be used with your machine by taking out the thread from the middle of the cake and threading this into mast/carriage. However, you also need something to hold the ball in place otherwise it can move around, e.g. a bowl or yarn holder. You can also keep the yarn on the ‘hat’ or ‘plastic cone’ and take the thread from the outside. The weight of the cone will hold it down. I have also created a cake and then transferred it gently to a spare cone from an old cone of yarn and used it like a normal cone.

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Twisting Yarns

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If you have purchased a mixed pack of cones and you find them too thin for your type of machine, you can use a twisting stack to twist 2 or 3 yarns together. You will need to put the stack and cones on the floor. My next post will give more details about yarns and thickness to help you to decide what yarns to twist. I twisting stack will allow you to twist up to 3 yarns. I have two so that I can twist waste yarn with my main yarn, or I can do fairisle with two colours.

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Jumbo Wool Winder

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I have a large/jumbo wool winder that I got cheaply on the Internet and love it. I buy large cones of yarn from BSK and wind off some onto a spare plastic ‘hat’ (also known as bobbin) and twist them together using my Hague twisting stack. I would get at least one more spare ‘hats’ or ‘bobbins’. (Alternatively you could tape some card around the hat and then take this off and slip on another spare empty cone!).

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I have also found another cheap jumbo option here. If this supplier does not have one do a search for ’10oz heavy duty wool winder’ as they are being sold by several people on eBay.

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Best Practice Yarn Option

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I highly recommend going to Yeoman Yarns and choosing one of their starter packs of yarn. They cost £30 for 4 kilos and £35 for 6 kilos. The yarn is good quality and this is a fantastic deal as postage is free to UK. Update: currently they are only doing mystery starter packs, same value with good range of colours.

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You should specify your type of knitting machine and thickness of yarn needed. You can try and get your favourite colours, but this is practice yarn so colour does not really matter. However, I would ask to not have black or dark blue if you do not have good eyesight. You will not get everything you want as it depends upon what they have in stock, but they will try to meet your needs.

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• if you, like me are allergic to wool, then specify this alongside the gauge of machine you need the yarn for.
  • FIne Gauge: preference for 2 ply or 3ply (can also use 2 strands of 1ply)
  • Standard Gauge: preference for 4 ply or 3 ply wool. (can also use 3 strands of 1 ply)
  • Mid-Gauge: Ask for mainly DK wool with some aran
  • Chunky: Ask for aran and chunky

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You will also notice that they have other 4 kilo and 6 kilo packs of specific type of yarn. For example, you can get a chunky/aran yarn pack for £45 and you can specify your favourite colours. These packs are a little more expensive but they are ideal for your next pack to try and make some garments.

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Unfortunately BSK has now closed down which I am very sad about.

So order some yarn and lets get ready to do some knitting!