Sartorial Sundays
Get your knit on! So, now I have the yarn and I have a pattern... knitting is the next step. But before you dive in, there's something very important you need to do. While buying your yarn you might have thought, wow, I should also pick up these lovely Addi Turbo circular knitting needles (best needles in the world, like knitting with needles made by alchemists from liquid mercury, yes, they are that good, and that pricey) for my project. The pattern says size 10, so size 10 it is. Don't do it! You are being lulled into a trap. You need to gauge your yarn! This is a very amateur mistake, the worst amateur mistake I've ever seen? Sewing your sweater together with thread not yarn. But this is a big mistake too. Because if you don't gauge your yarn, the finished size will be wrong, could look short or wide, or any variety of wrong. So, you start with the given needle size, you should have some laying about, then look at the gauge, for my pattern it's:
In garter stitch (knit every row), 14 sts and 28 rows = 4”
So I need to knit 14 stitches for 28 rows, and if they don't equal 4", than this is not the needle size for my yarn, and I keep trying, depending on how close the size 10 needles are I will go up or down, so let's get to work!
Ok, first I tried the 10... and it was too small, by 3/4 of an inch, so up a size. Note, I usually just frog this and start over to not waste yarn, but for your pictorial benefit, I saved my gauging.
Ok, now 10.5... and still too small, closer though at 3 3/4 inches. Damn, this is taking longer than I thought it would...
Ok, final try, fingers crossed. 11 and... yes! Finally, it's right on 4" as you can see, and as for what you can't see because of the ruler, a stitch I dropped, hey, it's only a test after all. Whew, was worried there. I've never worked with needles as bulking as 11s, so this should be interesting.
As for the progress I've made. Well, it's not done yet, but it's getting there.
As you can see, I can't really get a striking and lovely picture, the circular needles make it all bunched up, but you can see there's a mass of yarn there!
Here you can see the detail of what goes down my spine. Because that is where the majority of the increases happen, it's not only expanding the pattern, I mean there's over 300 stitches by the time I'm near the end, but it creates a nice detail too.
So you can see my copious notes and how I'm keeping track. As you can see from the bold "x's" that's where I inadvertently messed up (added and stitch and when fixing lost two stitches, but frogged it out in the end). Quite a few more rows to go, but now that I'm at 200 stitches, it's taking awhile for me to get through a row. I'm hoping the Emmy's next weekend will be a good chance to finish! That and re-watching all of last season's Community. Man, I love that show!
That yarn color is beautiful! It looks like you've got a lot done already. Can't wait to see the whole thing put together!
mariepea said... September 16, 2012 at 7:35 PM
And hopefully sooner rather than later ;)
Miss Eliza said... September 16, 2012 at 7:46 PM
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