Tag: ishbel

WIP Blitz

The last, oh, while, I’ve been feeling quite determined to finish off all the knitting projects I have sitting around partly done.  Which is good!  Right?  Right.  It feels like I’ve done more knitting this year than I actually have in terms of finished projects (though the Knitting Meter in the side bar tells me that I’ve knit 2023 yards in the last year… and I’m only putting entries into that when I either finish a ball of yarn, or a project).  But maybe that’s because I still have seven projects on the go.

I had planned not to start any new ones until I’d finished several of those I had lurking.  But well, best laid plans and all that.  Mum asked me to make a couple of things for her, and then I finished my basic “portable project” socks, so I just had to start another pair for that purpose, didn’t I?  And now Christmas is fast approaching… eek!  Still, I am feeling more organised and purposeful about the whole thing.  My knitting, I mean, not just Christmas.  And bizarrely, I think a lot of that is because I finally made the decision to (temporarily) frog my Ishbel and restart it – probably after Christmas – on larger needles.  I checked my gauge again, and I had 23½ sts / 4″ where I should have had 20sts.  No wonder it’d come up so small, and the knit fabric was probably a bit too dense.  I shall swatch again with 4.5mm and 5mm needles and see how it goes.  Whether I’ll end up running out of yarn again I don’t know, but I’ll give it a try, anyway.  I’ve weighed the re-wound ball, and it’s as it should be, so I assume the yardage is correct too.  But the best thing is, I feel much better – obviously that one had been hanging over me without me even realising it!

Now, I know I’ve said this a thousand times, but I’m going to knuckle down and sew up my two “UFOs” – the jumper and the cardigan.  I’ve decided that the pieces of the mohair jumper really do need blocking before I sew them, since mohair is so floaty, but at least now I have the table sorted out and ready to sew on.

So my plan is to finish my Gap Year Travels shawlette / scarf (which frees up the needles for whichever cardigan I go for, I believe), and also my Menace jumper (block, sew, crochet, block again).  Then to start my Christmas knitting and… just keep knitting until I have finished stuff!  I reckon that’ll work.

P is for Projects

I had a sudden bout of startitis today (the urge to cast on new knitting projects) but I’ve managed to restrain myself!  Why did I do that?  Well, for the last… oh, good while, I’ve been resolved to finish the projects I currently have on the needles before I start anything new.  I’ve got a lot of things that have been meandering along for a long time – I have started and completed other projects in the mean time, but I haven’t finished these others.  So I’m making an effort to do that now.

The thing that’s helped me the most with doing that is that I decided to pick a “WIP of the Week” every Friday, and concentrate on that project for the next seven days. I’m not forbidding myself from knitting on my other WIPs if I feel like it, but I’ll be focussing on the one that I’ve picked and hopefully be doing the most work on that.  I haven’t kept that up completely all the time, but it’s certainly helped before so I’m going to try it again.

When I first started it, it worked like a dream – I finished my first three picks very quickly that way. At the moment, I have two – the Menace jumper, which is a UFO (I count something as a UFO rather than a WIP if it’s been hibernating and not worked on for ages) and now only needs seaming, and the Clapotis scarf which is somewhat more portable. By the end of this week, I intend to have finished the straight portion of the scarf, and made a start on the jumper seaming. Although if I haven’t managed that, it doesn’t matter – I’m not aiming to finish the projects within each week, just to get as much work done on them as possible.

So, the current WIP(s) of the Week will be at the top of the “Currently” section of my sidebar. Below them are my Ravelry-powered progress bars for my In Progress and Hibernating projects. The hibernating ones are greyed out and italicised (and if you want to know how I got it to do that, drop me a line – it involved some code wrangling that I’d be happy to share with anyone interested). The links go to the Ravelry project pages, so I’m afraid if you’re not a member you won’t be able to get in unless I remember to set them as ‘open’.  Or at least I think that’s how it works.  Although if you’re not a member and are a knitting/crochet/spinning fan, I’d definitely recommend you go and sign up – it’s a fabulous site :-)

Anyway, I thought I’d do a round-up (with pictures) of my current lot of WIPs and UFOs. And project details for those I haven’t mentioned on here before.

Continue reading “P is for Projects”

Insufficient Yarn Error

The main project that I’ve been knitting on recently has been the Ishbel scarf, and I was using some really lovely soft, squishy yarn for it: some BFL sockweight by Nimu.

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Isn’t it preeeeeeeeeetty?  I know you can’t see it terribly well in that picture because it’s only some of the stocking stitch portion.  But trust me, it’s lovely – the colour of ripe blackberries.  The pattern calls for 300m of yarn, the skein was 365m.  I used the suggested needle size because I liked the drape of the fabric that gave me, although it put my gauge a little bit off.  That’s not important in a scarf, triangular or not, right?  Well, I knitted all of the stocking stitch section, and thought I still had plenty of yarn.  The I started on the lace charts: chart A, then B, then as I started A again I began to get a bit worried.  I kept going though.  Right up until I ran out of yarn with essentially 8 rows to go.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Has my dodgy gauge has eaten more yarn, or something?  I’m not sure that makes sense – I haven’t knitted more stitches, after all.  I’ve got more stitches to the inch than I should have: that means that to get suggested gauge, I’d have to go up a needle size or two, thus making larger stitches, and therefore less per inch.  My stitches are smaller, so they should be using less yarn, right?  The resulting scarf must be a bit smaller than intended, that’s all.

As I see it, I have a couple of choices: rip out the whole thing (noooo!) and start again with different needles or yarn, or knit the remaining few rows in something else.  But what?  I only have this one skein of lovely Nimu ‘Striding Edge’ BFL, and I love the way it’s feeling so much that I do want to use if for this project.  Bah.  My first instinct is to edge it in a black yarn, since it’s such a dark colour to start with.  But the only black yarn I have in what to my naked eye looks like a comparable thickness (I mentioned that it’s a very squishy sockweight, and it’s relatively loose-spun) is acrylic DK.  No.  I also have some similarly squishy sock yarn by the Yarn Yard – their merino ‘Hug’ yarn, in a couple of colours that might do:

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I don’t know which, if either, would be better though.  So I’m posting a poll.   Help meeeeeee!

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You know what’s really annoying, though?  This is the fourth time I’ve run out of yarn on a project recently.  I must be doing something wrong.