as mentioned before, this month i plan to create something using the shibori technique described in IK Fall 2005. To that aim, with my long-weekend plans smacked down with a massive flyswatter, i set out to do test swatches this weekend. The goal was to find out more about shrinkage ratios in the fulling process and determine how applying shibori to said swatches would alter shrinkage as well as final product characteristics.

Not having any bulbous objects in the house, i used coins to create little bulbs in the knit fabric, bound off with elastic bands. Let’s just say that, at a guage of 3 st/in, dimes do not work. Well, dimes to not work from the get-go. In truth, pennies, nickels and even quarters did not fare so well. After the first wash, three bulbs had lost their pennies and nickels; after the second wash, one bulb of 2 quarters remained.

notice the texture on the bulb where the contents survived?

interestingly, i think i like the bulbs that tossed their coins best, and so i’ll probably try replicating it by using all pennies, or empty bulbs, on the final project.

You can see that the overall shrinkage was not affected much; the stretchiness of the swatch was. The shibori-ed swatch was a lot stretchier than the plain-fulled one. I also plan on marking where i want the bulbs to be on the final project BEFORE making any bulbs. I had hoped for a less symmetrical pattern, and thought i had less symmetry as i made them, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Now, what to make… i have a couple ideas, so we’ll see what happens.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 12:20 and is filed under knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.