Sunday, 21 May 2017

A wedge too far?

For the past week I have been working on the final wedge of my Dotted Rays shawl, hoping to finish it this weekend. On Friday evening I got to the end of the final wedge, leaving just two rows and an i-cord cast off. I knew I was cutting it a little fine with the amount of yarn I had - the penultimate wedge used a little under 50g, and the final ball of yarn (which I started on the second row of the final wedge) weighed about 54g, so it was going to be tight.


I weighed my yarn, then knitted the final two rows. I weighed the yarn again. The i-cord cast off meant that for every stitch cast off you have to knit three stitches; I did some quick (late at night) maths and concluded that I would not have enough yarn. I stuck the shawl back in its bag and went to bed.

The following morning I rummaged through several bags to stash to find 11g of purple yarn that would finish the shawl off nicely. I had lots of purple, but it was either too sparkly, too variegated, too speckled or too pink. I had a think and decided that rather than buying more yarn (and risking it not matching), the final two rows before the cast of weren't critical, and that I could get away with pulling them out, then doing the cast off two rows early.

I sat down and carefully tinked back the 525 sts of the previous row, then, for no particular reason, weighed my yarn again. Never trust maths done late at night: there was enough yarn! I swore a bit - delighted that I had enough yarn, annoyed that I can't do basic maths (I'd missed out a factor of two - I did think 11 g was a bit much for a cast off, even a 500 stitch I-cord cast on).

I carefully re-knit the row I'd just unravelled, and over the course of the day cast the shawl off (mostly while sat at soft play while my son was playing). And by the evening I had cast the whole thing off, with just a little scrap to spare.

An out-and-about cast-off
The final few stitches

The shawl is beautiful, the gradient is perfect for it, and there was virtually nothing left from any of the shades (the shawl weighs 270 g and there was 1.93 g of scraps left at the end). I'll share proper pictures later in the week (if it ever stops raining), but here's a little peek for now.

Cutting it fine? Or a job well done?

Have you finished anything this weekend?

2 comments:

  1. Looks like a job well done to me!

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    1. Thanks. I enjoyed making it. Still need to model it, but the heatwave is hampering that!

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