Rethinking: Ribbon Yarn

Last week I wandered into the local big box craft store.  They were selling ribbon and novelty yarns for $2 a ball (normally priced $5.50-$6).

I figured this was too good a deal to pass up, so I picked out three patterns and bought some yarn.  All in all, I spent less than $50 on yarn.

Project 1: X-back tank

The Ribbon X-back tank.  Seemed so easy from the pattern...

I'm using Lion Brand Incredible, the Carnival colorway.  It's my first time working with ribbon yarn, which is more annoying that anything I've dealt with so far.

First, it has a tendency to fold in half, which when you're using large needles, means it's not covering very well.  This tendency also occurred when they wrapped the yarn into balls, which means trying to press creases out with my fingers.

Second, my normal method of wrapping the yarn around my working hand twists the yarn, so I have to hold the yarn in a different way than I'm used to.  I think this is making me knit more loosely than normal.

Third, between the ribbon yarn and the seed stitch, I have a hard time figuring out where I'm making mistakes in my knitting, and I can only estimate gauge since I can't count rows or columns very well.

I made it almost to the end of my first ball: (click to enlarge)

Isn't it pretty!  Unfortunately, I knew that if this was as long as my shirt was so far, I didn't have enough yarn to make the it long enough to wear comfortably.  So I pulled it off the needles to frog it and tried it on for size...

Um.  A little too big... (I'm not stretching it very much in this picture)

I'm going to take the pattern size down a notch, and use needles that are two sizes smaller.  Then I'll do a real swatch and check gauge before I get this far again...

Project 2: Bolero Jacket

The Four Seasons Bolero.

I worked up a swatch (see... I can learn!). (click to enlarge)

Pretty pretty pretty.  Unfortunately, this yarn is a railroad/ladder yarn, with two parallel threads connected by wider ribbony ties/rungs.  This means that it's quite easy to stick your crochet hook through the ribbon, which doesn't make for great stitches.

It's also pretty hard to figure out what threads belong to which strand, and where the tops of my stitches are.

Current plan is to purchase some black fingering weight yarn and work with a strand of each so I can see what I'm doing.

Project 3: Lace Leaf Top

The Lace Leaf Top.

I can't start this until I finish up the project that's currently on my 6.5 mm circulars.  I'll be using the Lion Brand Incredible in a variagated blue.  Hopefully, this pattern will adapt more easily as it's written for a 100% nylon ribbon yarn, like Incredible is.  I'll also be less worried about holes and gaps, so if I end up working with the ribbon folded it should look fine.