Finding Joy in Snarkville

I wanted to write this morning about how I’d finished this big project I’d been working on with just enough yarn.  I’ve been working on my thoughts about how stressful it was at the very end knowing that it would be really close and then sighing with relief as I had a simple foot or so of yarn left.

I’ve also lived in denial for the past few days.  Serious denial.

So, around the time of Mother’s Day, I was stressed beyond belief and couldn’t pull it together to get something ahead of time for the Queen Mum.  I wagged a book of patterns across the country and handed it to her and said, you may have anything in this book you want.  We went page by page, we looked over all the patterns.  She liked this one or that one, but not this piece of it.  Then she saw it.  I knew she’d love it — but the yarn requirements were daunting.

Seriously, this is done in Sport/Sock Weight yarn (for the non-knitter, think about a fine gauge sweater) and it calls for 2205 yards of yarn.  The largest shawl I’d done to date wasn’t over 1000 yards.  I was afraid.

Now, the Queen Mum also wanted something soft and not as lacey as a 100% wool.  She mentioned cotton thinking it would be cooler or lighter than wool (common misconception of the non-knitter, cotton in a heavy fiber and has a nasty habit of just stretching and stretching).  I thought silk (though the cost was more daunting than the yardage.

Then I hit a sale, a really good sale, and happened upon a basket of the right yarn.  An Alpaca/Silk Blend from Jo Sharp.  (Let me stop to announce I’m a sucker for Jo Sharp lately — I’m in love with this yarn.)  I found a Pearl color that I think will be perfect, though it is a blue/gray/silver and ma be a touch too light.  However, the deal was right and I am confident I could dye it once knit, if needed.  I bought all the balls there were — 13 balls of yarn.

I cast on and knit.  I knit like a fiend.  I wanted to get this done and I loved knitting with the yarn.  The shawl grew and grew.  The rows closed in on 600 and 700 stitches.  It was a dream.  I looked into my bag of yarn and saw the balls dwindle and I was undaunted.  I used a special join to make sure I used every inch of the precious yarn, because I knew it would be close.  I was not doing the colorwork nor the beads (again, beads add weight) and figured that had to save yarn too, right?

With 4 balls in my left, I finally did the math.  The total yardage on the shawl in the book was 117 yards more than what I had (less than a ball).  I reasoned that with my joins, lack of color, and lack of beads, I’d surely have saved that much, but accepted it would be close.

I got to the second to the last ball a little before I’d wanted to.  I joined and it seemed that I knit that ball gone quickly.  I joined the last ball and hoped a little that I was right.  I knit and knit the last ball, then it happened.  I saw the lat bit of the ball, you know the stage where the ball only slightly still looks like a ball but there are still two or three rows left.  I made plans to cut the border short, to look up a different bind-off that uses no yarn.  Anything to make the last of this last to the end.

Yesterday I woke up and faced facts, I’m going to need ONE.MORE.BALL.  I’ve called every shop near me, no go.  I searched on the internet and found one shop that has my yarn (though probably no hope of the dye lot) and I put the ball in m cart and knitted on.  I begged the yarn to last, I begged it to make it through to the end so I wouldn’t have to spend full price plus shipping on ONE.MORE.BALL.

As I went to bed, I thought about it and finally accepted my defeat.  I tossed and turned all night thinking of possible edgings that could be in another yarn, but seriously, it was just one ball.  I woke and ordered the ball.

Then I wrote this, I redid my math and realized that had I only done the math on the yarn from the book in yards and not meters, I’d have seen clearly that trying to make 13 balls do 16 balls worth of duty was a fool’s errand.  I do however, firmly believe that I will be able to do this with 14 balls.  My denial is never ending, but seriously, I’m 7 rows from the end — so I think I’m right.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Be Smarter than the String. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.