Friday, January 12, 2007

Take off your shoes and socks...we're counting!


I hate to run out of yarn. It stops me dead in my tracks, of course, and it kills my motivation. I might as well frog it if I run short. I hate it MORE when I don't think it's entirely my fault.

Take, for example, the Blue Sky Alpaca Cropped Cardigan. The smallest size calls for SIX 100 yard balls of sportweight, knit doubled. Silly me, I thought 300 yards of Classic Elite Beatrice (63 yards per ball) would do. I had four balls, and knew I'd need to get more. I thought one additional ball would do it, but thought I'd knit a bit before I reordered. I'm glad I waited.


Behold-my cardi at 3 balls. No WAY can I get an additional 10 inches of body, plus 3" of sleeves (twice) out of the 300 yards I THOUGHT I needed. I didn't order one additional ball, I ordered THREE. That's almost 450 yards, not the 300 I believed would do it.

I gotta take my shoes and socks off to count past 10, and I am the QUEEN of knitting much larger than gauge, but somehow, I think someone in Blue Sky Land is knitting a VERY fluffy gauge.

5 comments:

smariek said...

I'm often overwhelmed by the math involved in knitting, lol. Looking forward to seeing your completed cardigan...

Anonymous said...

Annoying. I just cast on my cropped cardi with substituted yarn and new math. I'll be the first to let you know if and/or when I run out of yarn! bri

Anonymous said...

Tres annoying. I thought most designers estimate up. That Beatrice is lovely. I'm so easily enabled. kelly

jayne said...

When I knit mine with Baby Cashmere, it was a very light fabric. The Blue Sky sportweight (doubled) was supposed to be knit on 8mm needles. If you think about it, that is a very open guage. On the other hand it works because of the texture of two strands of BS held together. I used Baby C and it is a bit lighter as fingering. I used 6 1/2 mm needles and got the right kind of light airy fabric, but had to go up a sweater size to get the correct dimensions. I used 8 balls of BC to follow the 36" pattern and had just a tiny bit leftover.

Joan said...

Oooooh, what a beautiful colorway! Drop dead gorgeous. I'd buy more and finish the sweater.

I have no business knitting. calculating yardage, gauge, more sts here, fewer sts there...ack!