Starting your knitting with waste yarn and ravel cord is a machine knitting staple technique.
Scrap and Ravel Cast on- Chose a yarn that is appropriate for your machine
- Cast on with any method
- Knit a few rows - end with the carriage on the left.
- Knit 1 row of ravel cord (smooth, slippery yarn - crochet cotton works great)
- Cast on over the ravel cord with your garment yarn
- Knit your piece
- After blocking, pull out the ravel cord and remove the waste yarn.
| | When non-machine knitters hear the term waste yarn, they often cringe. Spinners especially are uncomfortable thinking about "wasting yarn". I've even known machine knitters who unravel and re-use waste yarn (even though they have dozens of cones sitting in their stash) ... .but that's a topic for another soapbox post. |
Why Scrap and Ravel?
- Use waste knitting to hang cast on comb and/or weights
- Protect delicate/fine yarns
- Immediately start patterning (tuck, lace, etc) with weights in place
- Leave waste knitting in place to make blocking easier - especially for edges that roll
