Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

I'm as irritated by infomercials as the next person.

But one infomercial has been scratching at my designing mind, and that's the draft stopper made of what looks like plastic and foam inserts which slides under doors and windows to keep the drafts out. Draft stoppers in general have been permeating my head lately - just the nature of that beast we call Winter, and it's co-hort, The Heating Bill, particularly this year, with all this single digit and low double digit temps.

For awhile now, every time I see it, all I see is 2 tubes of I-cord with a stockinette section in the middle. And as this sounded familiar, I pulled out my 4 EZ books, and lo and behold, she did something similar - her I-cord belt.

Except. Her belt was in garter stitch, which is too thick for this application, and it was only 7 sts wide, with 2, 3-st I-cords and 1 separating stitch.

Now, I figured that, even if I could get a useful draft stopper made, it probably wouldn't suit for under doors, BUT, most people have way more windows than doors to stop up every autumn, and as a stationary piece, this might actually do the job.

Because lordie, I do hate having to caulk 40 some odd windows every autumn, then uncaulk them in the spring.

So, I began swatching. I figured 3-st I-cords would be a bit too skimpy. So I tried 4-st cords. And the stockinette section in the middle has to be wide enough to fit under a window, but not too wide, as, ideally, the I-cord poofs should be taught against the window and windowsill, when the window is lowered onto the draft stopper.

I began with some Country Roving by Briggs & Little. Love the wool, not good for this app - too thick and not easy to pull those I-cord sts tight.

So I swatched again with B&L's Atlantic and  size 10.5 (6.5 mm) ndls. Ah. Nice sturdy wool, 3-ply. And as one would want these things to last many years, it should be able to take a licking and keep on ticking.

Now unlike typical I-cord, there is not sliding of the sts to the other end of the ndl. The pattern would be a 2-row pattern, but easy to remember.

My window frame is 1.5" thick, so, serendipity reigned, as I had put 5 sts between my 2 cords and when flattened out (as the window will do) it spanned the 1.5" tautly. (At least in the swatch that worked, I later had to rip out1 row of cord and add 2 more rows.)

But after a few inches the inevitable struck. The middle stockinette section was buckling. Why? Those cord ends were only worked on every other row, but the middle was worked on every row. So *that's why* EZ used garter stitch - smart woman!

OK, not to be defeated yet, I tried k1, p1 in the middle - no go. Then I tried a sl 1, k1 pattern - which worked, but made the middle part too thick.

In a thinner yarn, the garter stitch center panel would probably be fine, but a thinner yarn would make a smaller I-cord.

So, back to the drawing board. It turns out that a simple long stockinette strip with applied I-cord at both of the long edges works best, and won't be too fiddly to knit in a roving into the center of the I-cord. So that it resembles that infomercial item and the extra wool padding means extra insulation, making the I-cord tubing do its job better to keep air from creeping under the windows.

But. Isn't there always a but?! The darn thing doesn't work. The swatch worked. I could close the window tight and still close the window lock, but when trying to close and lock the window against an entire strip of wool fabric, I couldn't close the window tight enough to lock it.


Some ideas do this. They sound good, but the execution of them leaves much to be desired.


But. Another but.


The Stuffed I-cord idea is enticing me. I immediately thought of making a long Stuffed I-cord strip for a rug, coiled up and sewn together, or maybe crocheted together - who wants to sew?


Right now I'm working on a smaller version - a mug mat, to see if it works.


I would have posted yesterday, but had a phone conference AKD board meeting (Association of Knitwear Designers) and spent much of the rest of the day emailing each other like mad with ideas and thoughts.

I'm a board member and on a couple committees. We're the behind-the-scenes worker bees turning our organization into something it's never been before - THE organization to belong to if you're a knitting pattern designer. It can take alot of time and work, but is well worth it.

Labels: AKD, Stuffed I-cord