holy smokes, the number of aran project participants has doubled!
5. donny
6. tracy
7. melissa, and
8. alice
thank you so much for joining the knit along! i'm already loving everyone's choice patterns. looks like we'll all be making a sweater except donny. check out his comment:
I'm working on an aran blanket that I started several months ago.
it's my "I'll work on this when I don't have anything else to work on"
project. [...] hey ladies... get your men knitting!
ooh, those fighting words! i've already tried and failed to get jg on the needlecraft train. meet someone who has done donny proud.
amanda
crafters' circle
that's beeze, me, and amanda all freshly showered and sitting around the stove talking needlecraft. we had just gotten back from a full day at northstar. anyway, amanda taught beeze to crochet a while back so he could put his time riding the italian subways to good use. together they've made and sold many of their beanies for 25 euros a piece. amanda even has her own label!
only available in florence
isn't it impressive? them two are powerhouses with their crochet hooks as well as their snowboards. they look like they're dancing when on they're on the slopes. unfortunately, the knitter of the group is still an out of control skidding hazard when attached to a snowboard.
car knitting
the day after i learned to carve back and forth without slamming into pines, i began my aran along project. i was left alone in the cabin all day friday to knit and i was rather pleased with myself. "oh yeah, i'm gonna be way ahead with my sweater. the aran alongers will weep when they see how far i've gotten."
well, no evil thought goes unpunished. it hurts me to even type this: i'm going to have to start all over. let's see if i can recount this story without sobbing.
it started out innocently enough. the picture above shows the exact moment i realized i didn't like how the major cables transition vertically. i decided to rip it back three rounds so i could try to make the cable twist less tightly. as i took the stitches off the needles, i thought, gee, why does this sweater feel so wide? then i held it up properly and saw that it was huge! it's at least 48 inches in circumference! i would have never guessed because it looked and felt just right when it was all scrunched up on the needles.
so, i furiously counted the cables over and over thinking i might have added a few too many. nope. then i checked each and every cable for extra stitches. of course there weren't any. the cables would have looked all tweaked if there were extras lying around. i was at my wit's end. i got so upset i made myself carsick. i was swearing up a storm when jg decided to intervene. he had to tear the knitting away from my death grip and calm me down.
what's the difference between these two hanks of yarn?
as soon as we got home, i ran to check my gauge swatch. it's the only thing i could think of that went wrong. when i picked up the swatch to recount the stitches, i thought it felt thinner. then i noticed how the yarn's end splits in two. wait a minute! two? i had to spit splice the yarn for the sweater earlier and there were, you guessed it, not two!
the source of my misery
i bought twelve hanks of that yarn over a year ago from a canada based website. i got nine 3-ply and three 2-ply. the difference in gauge is exactly half a stitch per inch. so, when i casted on for 42 inches, i was making a 48 inch sweater!
so, it's back to square one for the schmeebster. let this be a lesson in buying yarn without labels. tomorrow i'm going to send briggs+little a sample of the 3-ply and beg them to rustle me up a few more hanks. meanwhile, may your aran along project be blasting along and your gauge swatch yarn be extra-ply free.
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