Knit Along: Noro Legwarmers from Yarn Company - Day 5

Victories and future lessons...

You know, it has been a victory getting over my second sock/leg-warmer syndrome.  I feel really quite smug about having successfully launched myself over that hurdle.  Stay tuned though, for a smug Allie has almost always resulted in highly entertaining complications.

This project was another of those nail-biter endings, where the ball of yarn kept getting waaaay to small for my comfort.  I really should learn my lesson and buy a second ball/skein/sheep so that I never run out of wool.  Not that dye-lots would matter a great deal with the multi-colored Noro, but you never really want to take that chance.  Add that to the fact that I was finishing these on an out-of-town trip where I couldn’t just haul off to my favorite local yarn shop, and you can see why I might have gotten a bit nervous.  

I didn’t, though, and I should have been a good blogger and told you why.  I kept calm because of a little trick I learned back during the Traveling Vines Scarf from my visit to Lexington KY’s Magpie Yarns.  In short, it operates on the truth that the amount of yarn it takes to create a stitch is approximately the same amount of yarn it takes to wrap around a needle once.  Back then I used it to see if I had enough yarn to finish a row.  This, because I was using it to see if I had enough yarn to finish six rows, got a little more complicated.  Essentially, you wrap an easily-multipliable number of stitches around your needle (in my case 25), and then stretch that back out.  Let’s say 25 stitches requires 20 inches.  Now, I just measure 24 (or six times the four sets of 25 I need to get across my 100-stitch row)  20-inch lengths, and I’ll reach the point of my yarn where I know I need to start my four-row ending pattern. Clear as mud?

Like lots of things in life, this works MUCH better if you do it in advance, when you first start winding your ball.  Your finishing yarn is on the inside of your ball, remember? Otherwise, you’ll have to do what I did--unwind the last part of your ball, do the measuring trick, and rewind it.  And oh-my-goodness that twists up the yarn.

Live and learn.

Knit Along: Leg Warmers from The Yarn Company - Day 4

Triumph over limitations...

I have come up with a handy coping mechanism for my wicked case of “second sock syndrome”--or in this case, “second leg-warmer syndrome.” 
 
When I bound off the top of the first leg-warmer, I was NOT ALLOWED TO GET UP OUT OF THE CHAIR until I had cast on and accomplished an inch of the second leg-warmer.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t allow myself to seam up the first piece until I’d done an inch of the second.  Sort of the knitting version of Mary Poppins’ adage “well begun is half done.”  Now that I’m started, it doesn’t seem like such a monumental challenge to keep going.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  This did make for a rather miserable 90 minutes as I cast off, cast on, drug myself through the first inch, and then did my least favorite task of all:  seaming.  I hate seaming.  And this twisty yarn kept tangling on every stitch, so that even a couple of decent TV shows and half of a good movie didn’t redeem the time.  This was sheer I’m gonna get it done willpower--something I don’t often possess in great quantities.

Will they end up on legs?  Or adapted to be sleeves?  I don’t know yet.  I do know, however, that there’s now a halfway decent chance that there will be TWO of them. 

And that’s a victory.

Knit Along: Noro Legwarmers from Yarn Company - Day 3

Stitch literacy...

Especially with a simple pattern, it’s fun to get to the point in your craft where you don’t have to keep staring at a paper.  It’s rather like that magical moment where you can cook without a recipe...it somehow feels more like art, less like science when you’re not continually peering at written instructions.   

Memorizing a simple repeating pattern is only half the battle.  You’ve got to be able to look at your knitting and see where you are.  My friend calls this “stitch literacy.”  

These leg warmers are a perfect example.  “Increase one on each side every 10 rows” (or in the case of my chunky calves, every six rows) doesn’t tax many brain cells.  You can either employ a stitch counter--and there are scads of adorable or practical ones--or you can learn to count your rows visually.  

Here my needle is pointing to the knit-one-in-front-and-in-back increase.  It’s that purl-looking loop snuggled in between the two columns of knit stitches below it.  Now, if you go by my favorite adage that “knit stitches wear v-necks and purl stitches wear turtlenecks,” you can count the v-necks up from that loop to know you’ve done your six rows.  

Remember, however, to count the stitch on your needle.  This means five v’s in your knitting with the sixth around your needle.  Here I’ve simulated that so you can count up yourself.  See?  It’s not that hard.  And you’ll feel oh-so-skilled when you can pick up your knitting and know exactly where you left off--even if your toddler has made off with your stitch counter because it’s shaped like a sheep and he was playing farm.