Monday, March 22, 2010

Working with Lumina

I like to work with a variety of yarns. I am always interested to try different blends and fabulous new colours. I notice from reading knitting blogs and Ravelry that this is not a universal affection. Some people are very disparaging about any yarn that does not behave like wool. I don't think this is a reasonable requirement unless you are prepared to only work with wool.
Off my soap box now, but this common disparagement is why I am writing this post about Jo Sharp Lumina.
SAM_0305
Lumina is an eyecatching, beautiful yarn, and it does not behave like wool. It requires some care to knit, but is truly lovely and unique. It has a strand of a tube knit structure, that appears to be mostly viscose twisted with two strands that appear to be cotton. The yarn is liberally threaded with gold coloured sequins. This beats threading hundreds or thousands of beads onto the yarn for a beaded effect IMO! The composition of the yarn is 62%viscose, 36%cotton and 2%polyester.
SAM_0307

The twist of Lumina is quite loose. This means that a sharp, hard needle is likely to encourage the yarn to split. I would not choose metal needles for this yarn. I used bamboo needles with a slightly rounded tip, but casien or wooden needles would also work nicely.
The sequins in the yarn are not hindering to the knitting, as they are small and soft. I do not find them at all scratchy to wear when they end up on the inside of the garment.
The only extra care I needed to take with the knitting of my first garment from Lumina was to deal carefully with the viscose strand when joining a new ball. I found that the knit tube tended to unravel. I tied off the rayon strand with a reef knot whenever finishing or starting a new section of yarn, and the unravelling was tamed.
SAM_0309
I did not stitch up the garment with the full yarn. Initially, I simply removed the sequins from the yarn by snipping open each sequin, as sewing with sequins would be just asking for catching and pulling. Despite this preparation, I had to remove some stitching, as knotting the rayon strand for sewing proved insufficient to stop the unravelling. Instead I fully untwisted the yarn, and sewed up the garment with the cotton strands, which was quick and effective.
The garment I knit was the A-line short sleeved cardigan from Knit 4. Photographs of the finished garment will be displayed soon.

1 comment:

  1. Lovely! A little bit of bling without the addition of beading - very swish!

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