Knitting with Mohair

General Knitting
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So I purchased a cone of lace weight 60% SUPER KID MOHAIR, 40% Silk in black from Hasegawa art. Seika produced in Italy. It’s beautiful! Exactly what I wanted. I also purchased a cone of black nylon polyester sequined yarn. I CO 38 st. and began to knit my first swatch. I used two strands of the mohair and one strand of the sequin yarn. I was in the middle of my 3rd row when all of a sudden I couldn’t slide the yarn one nanometer in either direction! It was as if it was super glued onto the needle. I am not exaggerating in any way it would not budge!! I recalled seeing a web site labeled knitting with mohair never looked at it because I thought what’s the big deal. I googled it and it talked about mohair being sticky! At any rate I didn’t like the two mohair strands and sequin strand for the effect I’m looking for. Plan to now purchase a fingering weight merino to do my project in.

I wanted to share this to see if anyone has ran across this before? It was so weird i couldn’t believe it was happening. I finally broke it loose by getting my knitting needle in to do a stitch but getting that yarn near the tip of the needle to do that stitch was insanely difficult! :joy: Crazy experience! :crazy_face:

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That’s a shame, the yarn sounds gorgeous, with or without the sequins (love a nice/novelty carry-along thread!).
Haven’t knitted with mohair in ages, but I can imagine this happening while working two strands of it together. I like mohair, but even with one strand it’s often kind of a headache :joy:

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What sort of needles are you using? When I used mohair (just the one project, never going to punish myself like that again!) I used slidey metal needles. I use wooden needles for very slippy yarn, but can imagine with mohair it would stick.

Maybe also size up your needles so you have a bit more room for the stitches?

What’s the project?

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Thanks for sharing your experience. I’ve never used mohair and now have had the warning! I only have/use wood/bamboo needles so I think I would have a problem. It sounds difficult to say the least.

Hope you find a yarn you’re happy with for your project.

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I use KnitPro Zings most of the time. They are slippy enough for mohair.

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Oh I’m not at all discouraged and plan to use the mohair it’s beautiful! Not at all unhappy with the mohair. I’m sure it will make a big difference if I use a strand of fingering or even sport wt merino and a strand, maybe two strands of the mohair and my sequined yarn. Instead of my wood needles I’ll switch to metal.

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Definitely switching to metal needles, I was using wood. I’m in the process of designing a tunic, will be my own pattern.

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Trust me when I tell you the stitches were not tight on the needle, I used a US 10.

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Ah, when you mentioned the fingering weight yarn I thought you’d changed your mind about the mohair, but glad that isn’t the case! Good idea to change the needles, too. Look forward to seeing the finished project!

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I’ve used mohair a fair bit - you’re right, it is sticky, meaning it will happily cling to any neighbouring strands!
My experience is of using it as fairly light fabric and it’s easy to overtighten the stitches when there’s that much air between them and no weight to the project to allow gravity to pull the fabric down from the needles.
Imagine the analogy of the German short row - if you tension the mohair yarn tightly as you knit, it will pull up the legs of the row below, giving you a stitch size smaller than that of your needles!! Hence, it gets tighter and tighter.
It may be worth having some downward tension on your fabric as you knit ( e.g with your left hand if you knit English). Alternatively, make sure you hold your working yarn with the tension directed downwards ( to reduce tendency to pull up the legs if the row below). I find this hard as I tension with my right finger held up in the air!
So I tend to try and hold the fabric as well to add a bit of gravity to it.
Hope this makes sense- so hard to describe!!

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I’ll be honest I don’t quite understand but I will re-read until I do! I found a site explaining the German short row and kinda scanned through it. It talked about “the legs below.” I saved that site and will read that too! I do knit English but I kind of throw the yarn over if that makes sense! I appreciate everything you have shared and I will figure it out!!

Thank you so much! I live in USA and it’s 0617
And I have not been to bed yet! :joy: Having insomnia lately. I’m going to try to get a little sleep in maybe a few hours so again, thank you so much!

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Random, but taking magnesium has helped with my sleep no end.

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