Monday, September 2, 2013

Knitting on the Edge

So I've been working on Fiori Autunnali, and I'm running into some yarn issues.  I knew when I started that I was taking a bit of a risk.  The original pattern calls for a 1200 yard skein and I only had 1040 in mine.  It's a OOAK color that I bought several years ago, so there's not much chance of getting more if I do run out.  I checked out Teresa's project notes.  She is one of Romi's test knitters and she takes terrific notes on yarn usage.  I looked at what she did and thought I would be okay.

Well.  I started knitting, and as I started the first wing, I noticed that my ball was looking a little smaller than I was expecting.  I had already done a couple of repeats, but I stopped and weighed my yarn and I looked at what Teresa had used at the same point in her project, and I could tell I was several grams ahead of her.  I thought I would still be okay, but when I finished the wing repeats, I weighed again and concluded that I wasn't going to have enough.  I decided to eliminate one wing repeat.  There are 2 charts after the repeats are finished on each wing, so I before I knit the last one, I weighed my yarn so that I would know how much I need to reserve for the last chart and bind off on the second wing.




After I finished the first wing, I have about 30 grams left.  Because I wasn't really careful enough about weighing everything before I started...I'm not really sure whether that's enough or not.  I think I am right on the line of "just enough" or "a few grams short" and there is nothing for it but to soldier on and see what happens!

If it looks like I'm not going to have enough, I will eliminate another repeat on the second wing and have an asymmetrical shawl.  I would rather have it even, but I think after blocking that I will have enough length to wear it comfortably even if it ends up being uneven.  The only other option would be to frog the shawl entirely, and I really don't want to do that - so I'm just going to commit and see what happens!