Knitting with Linen: a Vintage 1980s Lace Blouse (and Frustrations)

[@GymGirl88]

So glad to hear that I am not the only one who doom scrolls on ravelry

[@MijnWolden]

Oh, you're most certainly not the only one haha

[@BookCat18]

I am so spoiled by working with wool and wool alpaca blends that working with this acrylic yarn for a baby blanket is a struggle😂 love the top 💓

[@MijnWolden]

Yes, working with wool might have spoiled me haha

[@sleepydrJ]

Totally agreed!! In California, I get more use out of linen/linen blends than wool most of the year. I’ve made a total of 4 now, and it’s worth the pain because I wear them all the time. Some of the yarns have a very loose 5-6 + pky structure and want to split all the time, but some are easier to work with, so take a careful look when choosing, and perhaps save some pain. The yarn is totally unforgiving! Regarding balls unrolling: I use little “bulb safety pins” all the time in my knitting. I unroll 5-6 feet of linen yarn, then pin the ball “closed” till I need more. I make old fashioned real balls- no center pull balls with this crazy yarn!

[@MijnWolden]

Yes, my mother in law said she also started kntting with linen by rolling it into an actual ball

[@maverickspirit208]

I've never worked with linen, so I had no idea how difficult it can be to work with. Your top turned out beautiful, and I agree that it's style is a timeless classic.

[@annjavoroski491]

I just found your channel in the past few days, while looking for spinning help. I'm loving it here, and I not only learn, but I also laugh. Keep it up.

[@sondragingery5949]

I really like the finished top. The lace vines look really nice in the linen, and the fit and drape on you are very good. Nice job!

[@1st1anarkissed]

The rest of the yarn on an inkle loom could make a lovely sash.

[@afoxgloveshandiwork]

I don’t believe I’ve seen a linen knitted garment so huge props to you for attempting!

[@jenniferbrighty5120]

Hi Jente, I hope you and Dries are having a Wonderful Holiday. ❣️❣️❣️ Thankyou so much for sharing this video podcast . I love the top it ĺooks so pretty. 🎉🎉🎉 Pity bout the Linen yarn though. Enjoy the rest of your holiday Fibre 🌟🌞🐑🥰 Lots of love and Big Hugs to you both Jen xxxx ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🐕🫂

[@deborahspins2909]

It’s beautiful!!!

[@darlenelester9577]

The blouse is beautiful! Way to keep going, even with the struggles

[@jenniferfowler6713]

very cute top

[@robinmccamont]

With the leftover skeins of linen, you might want to try using a “yarn cozy” to help them keep their shape while knitting? If you don’t have a yarn cozy, just try cutting off the foot of an old pair of nylons/socks. Stuff the yarn cake in down to the toe, and just fold over the excess fabric. With this method, you need to “pull from the center” of your yarn cake! Love the blouse, though! Looks very nice on you! ❤

[@MijnWolden]

Good idea

[@robinmccamont]

@@MijnWolden - Hope it works out well for you! I have never tried it myself, but I’ve seen other podcasters try it out and it’s worked well for them!

[@Tinas_Workshop]

Your sweater came out beautiful

[@IB-sl8sv]

Really enjoyed this episode. Thanks for taking us on vacation. Please make a short silent video with a couple minutes of each how you knit and purl. Not a tutorial just a " how i knit." We all benefit from seeing different styles. Thanks and hope you had a great vacay

[@MijnWolden]

I think in most of my knitting videos there are some sections of just that, but I'll keep it in mind for the next one ;)

[@kywire._]

Love your shell pants!!!!!!!!!!!! And love the zigzag pattern of your lace

[@StraylightWintermute]

Inspiring to see you finishing this even though it was a struggle to knit! I also failed out of knitting with linen but I still have the yarn so this inspires me to do something for next summer.

[@Sincyn241]

I love this technique, it also keeps Pet hair out of the cake at least until you knitted into something they insist on laying on top of.😂

[@carolh3664]

Timeless is the best way to describe that pattern! I have found patterns for that particular lace pattern for curtains in Weldon’s practical needlework to 1940’s blouses. I usually find it being called leaf and trellis pattern!

[@Boereprinses]

I would weave with the linen...😊

[@carolgarner5971]

Loved the sweater weights. Lol

[@MijnWolden]

Adapt, improvise, overcome ;)

[@DeniseODaniels]

very lovely knitting ...what fun times u have. i ordered a book from Peggy Orenstein called Unraveling! its very good. Peggy it seems wanted to make a sweater from shearing the sheep to spinning to knitting her homemade wool. i got it on Amazon for 1.92 $ plus shipping. i get alot of books from the used books from Amazon. sure interesting book. thank u for your lovely video's!

[@julieduke7279]

You made a lovely, classy blouse, and now I’d love to give linen yarn a go with all the helpful hints gained by reading through the comments. Maybe make a matching plain blouse with the leftover yarn when you feel like tackling it again.

[@MijnWolden]

Yeah, maybe next summer :D

[@maralusis5434]

When I have balls/skeins wrapped that way, I put them in a plastic baggie, zip the top almost closed and have one end coming out of the baggie. That way, when you pull on the yarn to knit, t just unravels from the ball in the baggie and doesn't tangle.

[@MijnWolden]

But then what if it tangles up inside the baggie?

[@maralusis5434]

@@MijnWolden In my experience, it doesn't.

[@raevynwoods9403]

What a lovely top! I'm glad you enjoyed the result so much. I unfortunately had the opposite happen recently: I knit a sweater with lovely local non-superwash sheepwool, and it was even done in time for the colder weather! But it's too big, and not in a nice, oversized is fashionable, kind of way. The neckline doesn't allow for a shirt underneath, the shoulderseams sit a few cm out from my shoulders, and the sleeves are both almost 10 cm too long... So time to frog, I fear!

[@RicaKramer]

Hey.hope you had nice holidays. Obviously knitting is cooler than skating. And I have the same experience with linen yarn. And let me tell you it gets worse when you are supposed to make twisted stitches or cables. But unfortunately it's amazing to wear afterwards and perfect for summer. So I still have some linen yarn around. But I try to rewind the skeins to balls to avoid the mess and will not have it as my only project. Bye

[@eddavanleemputten9232]

Oh dear… hate the yarn but love the end result… been there multiple times. My neurospicy self likes soft fabrics. My low blood pressure, often rather hypoglycemic carcass that spent a significant portion of its formative years in tropical countries is perfectly capable of feeling cold in the throes of Summer when everyone is wilting. Consequently I tend to gravitate towards fluffy yarns. Some of them tend to feel sticky when knitting: it’s hard to pull the loop of a new stitch through the previous one, if that makes sense. Tension becomes a nightmare and knitting is slow. The yarn is, for lack of a better word, stroppy. Spinning is a blessing because my home spun yarns ‘glide’ easily. Especially alpaca and alpaca blends. Now, am I the fortunate girl that has an alpaca farm just a few minutes down the road? Yes I am. I’ll blissfully pick myself through an entire alpaca fleece, getting rid of guard hairs just for the reward of spinning and knitting with it. And I now adamantly refuse to paw through bins of bargain’ yarns for those seductively soft looking balls of yarn that are a nightmare to knit. I’d rather pull apart a sweater from the thrift store to use that yarn. And that too, is very much a less than favourite job.

[@MijnWolden]

Oh yes, stroppy yarn is a whole other thing

[@lajsa8160]

Oh no Jente, oh no. I love it too much, and I have just the right amount of linen yarn. But I do not have a late 80s belgian pattern 😢 Also huge props for listening to your hands and heart and scrapping a pattern when you started it. Intuitive, and inspiratial is what I'm trying to say, I think. Even if it sucked in the moment.

[@MijnWolden]

Hint: it's actually two rectangles with a rather easy lace pattern, you'll be able to figure it out ;)

[@bloomune]

I worked a crochet piece with a cotton/bamboo blend, and it did the same thing. I hated working with that yarn and vowed to never touch it again. It's a shame, because it's a gorgeous yarn, but my patience has its limits. Also- kitty! When you were on the swing, a kitty ran across the bottom right. ❤

[@MijnWolden]

I know! When I was doing some of the talking bits, she kept running up against my legs. Very lovely kitty. Although I did also witness her maul and eat a snake, so a force to be reckoned with.

[@catpawrosales4265]

It turned out lovely! And yes, I have the same experience with (reclaimed) linen yarn, it splits when I crochet and I need to keep a close eye on it at all times. I will grab it again if I come across it, I'm especially curious to try a linen/cotton mix if I can find it. Coz linen reigns superior in this hot climate.

[@MijnWolden]

It is indeed the superior fiber for hot weather, so maybe I'll be tempted again next summer. For now we're back to wool :)

[@sonya8988]

I’ve had kind of a similar situation with knitting a garment for the summer. I planned to knit a cotton blouse in early June to wear it throughout the summer but I’m a very slow knitter so I only managed to finish it by September😂

[@MijnWolden]

Hoping for an Indian summer it is!

[@etienne6916]

It turned out really pretty! :) having played with cotton recently, I understand your frustration haha! I'm going back to wool xD

[@linr8260]

Hahaha the billiard balls... I lowkey expected pétanque ones tbh. Things I'm very proud of: the very fluffy scarf I wove for my mother with fluffy mohair weft. Things I did Not enjoy: weaving the damn mohair yarn. It's so fluffy but SO grabby.

[@MijnWolden]

The pétanque ones were outside and I was lazy because that would have been peak vacation-in-france-core indeed :D

[@CaitlinKlein11]

I look forward to every one of your videos! I can relate so much to g the struggle. I started some beautiful socks with a slippery linen yarn and 2 years in, I'm still not finished! 😅

[@MijnWolden]

socks with linen, damn, you must be a superhero if you manage that

[@saraht855]

Love the top! I made a hobbi t-shirt pattern that had similar lace down the back and I think it looks soooo good. I found the yarns that had more grip (cotton, linen, singles, silk) that sizing up a needle and using metal rather than wood helped the process of knitting less hard. You could also consider adding something moisturising to the yarn while you use it? Maybe some form of oil or soak to make it run smoother? (I haven't tried that myself though so might not work)

[@rmlrhonda]

I’ve only used linen to knit with once so far. Though I liked the feel of the top on, I found that it shrank shorter and shorter each time I washed it, though I tried to do so very carefully. Also, every join showed in the finished top, again, even though I tried to be so careful about how I did it.

[@amydebuitleir]

I find that shaking the fabric vigorously really evens out most tension problems when using linen yarn. So I just do that periodically as I knit.

[@MijnWolden]

The mental image I have is very akin to the Despicable Me girl shaking the fluffy unicorn :D

[@annas2912]

If you want to give linen another try, you could look for a chainette yarn like Shibui Knits Linen. I've done a summer top and currently working on a lace shawl in that. It's by no means my favorite yarn ever, but it's quite tolerable. The chainette structure means it has a lot of texture, so it stays balled up pretty well, and you also can't split the yarn particularly easily.

[@MijnWolden]

I'll look into it!

[@Roehrtribe]

Weave your linen! It is much easier comparatively. And it lasts longer as a woven item. Your top is amazing though! (I don't like knitting linen either)

[@siarlpotatoshoe]

i live somewhere that's very hot in the summer, so i do work a lot with linen and hemp yarns and yeah they are inelastic. if you can find some with a chainette construction, i find it helps a lot with the hand pain. another thing you could do is put the rest of it as a weft in a weaving project. i'm weaving with linen warp and weft right now and it is very challenging, so i can't really recommend that. if you want some not really vintage but vintage looking lightweight tops i can recommend light ampelie by melina hami and bessie by jacqueline cieslak for linen. i've made both and like them a lot. light ampelie is a little difficult to understand in the english version imo, but once it clicked it worked up so well.

[@MijnWolden]

I'll check them out :)

[@resourcedragon]

The finished top looks absolutely gorgeous. I sympathise with you in relation to knitting linen - I've not knitted with pure linen but I have knitted with cotton and, no, it's not my favourite. Like your linen yarn, it's not particularly forgiving. (It did occur to me that it might be a good idea for linen yarn manufacturers to make a more slubbed, slightly uneven yarn. That would deal with the issue of the yarn being unforgiving in relation to tension, as well as adding texture.) I would suggest that you consider using your remaining skeins of linen for a weaving project.

[@MijnWolden]

Uneven linen yarn sounds interesting indeed

[@FairilyFiberFun]

My first experience with linen is the same as yours... my yarn is extremely slippery as well as splitty and unforgiving of tension variations... worth the pain? Well, most definitely! There is no plant fiber superior in strength, durability, and cooling as linen.

[@rashna671]

Oh wow looking at these comments surprise me; I love linen yarn! Ive been having a bit of a "linen girl summer" because I accidentally ordered 3000 yards of the yarn tho. (i thought my first order didnt go through. i was very wrong.) I made a dress, but it is quite sheer (cellulose yarns always seem to end up really sheer even on teeny needles imo) so Im also making a woven slip to go under. I wanna say its fate that I the same color of green in my fabric stash but I think Im just attracted to emerald green.

[@MijnWolden]

Some of these comments recommend a specific type of linen yarn that doesn't fall apart as easily, so maybe you're lucky to have that type of yarn? But yes, linen girl summer all summer too. I'm really on the lookout of linen garments every time I visit the thriftstore. (Both the yellow and blue dress in this video are 100% linen)

[@andreahughes1500]

Suggestion for your next try at linen: try crochet. Have found that cotton, linen and blends of the two make for difficult knitting, but easy crochet. It might be just me… but worth trying, eh?

[@MijnWolden]

Worth trying indeed!

[@eiszapfenkobold]

Maybe ply it together with a thin wool yarn? Would be a nice experiment.

[@MijnWolden]

Interesting train of thought...

[@SaraTweedie]

I've worked with linen recently and I'm not a fan. It's not stretchy at all and the top I made felt so heavy. I'd be so irritated with those skeins of yarn tangling up like that. I'd probably have angry wound the 2nd into a ball for it's own good. I do love your ingenious use of household items to pin down your garment for blocking! So chaotic!

[@MijnWolden]

Oh, I was irritated. My mother in law made fun of how irritated I was for at least two days

[@TJtheBee]

I always think of linen as having no bounce, and thus hurting my hands...so I've never tried it. Your blouse turned out so lovely, though. Maybe it's just the particular yarn that's the trouble? Or maybe the fiber is just trickier to work with? Hard to say.

[@amydebuitleir]

You might try a linen/cotton mix like Sandnes Garn line. It shouldn't hurt your hands.

[@MijnWolden]

It didn't hurt my hands, but yes, there was no bounce.

[@jirup]

I love the feel of linen garments, but I don't love working with it at all.

[@MijnWolden]

Exactly!

[@cherylcarlson3315]

When did cotton top ball fell apart so stuck drop spindle through and index cards at each end. When did my hand spun linen top just knit straight from my plying spindle. Refused to pfaff around with skein,ball...my goal was wear top not do uarn play. Being irritated proved to me all the