Wednesday, September 14, 2011

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.

2 comments:

Allie Pleiter said...

I doubt I'd be anywhere near fast enough, but thanks for the vote of confidence! It's really not that complicated if I were doing it right in front of you--it's just one of those things that's hard to explain in writing. Maybe I'll try and do a video explanation one of these days.

Brodsky Org said...

A video post would be absolutely wonderful! And so helpful! Maybe we'd be able to knit our own sweater for these cold nights in Cheslea! Thanks, Allie!