My step-mom wants a new pillow to go in my folks’ new RV. The old knitted pillow didn’t match the decor, you see!
She wanted it done in Quick and Easy Lion’s Brand chenille wine color, and it’s making a beautiful fabric, but I think I may have overestimated my ability with this pattern with this yarn.
I’m doing a cable knit pillow, and although I’ve done this pattern before, this chenille yarn is very thick and I’m afraid of making a mistake and not catching it, especially since the directions on the skein warn to not re-use the yarn or unravel it. Besides turning on every light in the house and positioning spotlights over my work, what else should I keep in mind?
I certainly wouldn’t unravel anything made from Chenille Thick ‘n’ Quick that had been blocked or washed, but undoing a few rows to go back and fix a mistake wasn’t a big deal for me. I even unraveled and reknit a gauge swatch about three times without any noticable problems.
sigh I had a Chenille Thick ‘n’ Quick scarf that I wore for about two years. After a while it started leaving little shreds of black everywhere, and it was down to bare strings in a few places before I retired it. Now I have to make myself a new scarf. Isn’t that tragic?
Also, I’ve noticed that the Lion brand Chenille yarn breaks somewhat easily – the "thread " of it is actually thin with a lot of fuzzies that make it look thick. So if it catches upon itself don’t try and force it by tugging… snap.
The good news is, if you get a little blob of stuck yarn, absolutely no one will notice because this yarn hides ALL mistakes.
I did a Chenille scarf in plain knit this winter. It came out beautifully and looked very densly knitted and flat with no visible “holes.” Now a different scarf I made, using same stitch, the same needles, but with the Homespun style yarn, had lots of open spaces with a very visible ridged garter stitch pattern.
I crocheted a hat with chenille yarn. I did unravel things (I think they recommend not re-using the yarn, but I did anyway). It was easier to work with than some other fuzzy yarns I’ve used (I’m not even going to talk about the scarf fiasco). It’s a little hard to see what’s going on, but it’s not the most difficult yarn I’ve worked with.
Dammit. You’re right. I’ve had to rip out 16 rows of 92 stitches each and start all over again because the stupid thread snapped and because my cable patterns weren’t right.
I’m going to cheat on the knitting. I know you’re supposed to knit by inserting the needle left front to back right of the yarn, but until recently, I was doing it right front to back left, similar to purling except the yarn was going in the back. I didn’t know I’d been doing it wrong until I was watching DIY Network and took a closer look at my knitting books.
In any event, doing it “backwards” seems to be easier on the yarn, so I’m going to do that.
I won’t knit with this yarn again. It looks good when you’ve knitted it, but it’s too damn flimsy for my taste, since I like a fairly snug knit.
