I've finally found the right project for that unruly no-gauge purple yarn that I tried to force to become the Garter Yoke Cardigan - instead it's going to be come Ink Flare.
I first found this pattern in a knitting-pattern-a-day calendar in 2006 and kept it because its simplicity appealed to me. This would be a good casual jumper, I thought, cosy and good to hang out in. And then, as you do, I put the pattern aside and promptly forgot about it.
In the spirit of my new-found knitting-from-stash resolution I was looking through my stash of patterns and there it was. I cast on with the purple yarn (which has no name I think - I remember buying it years ago from Texere to make an hourglass with it but guess what - it couldn't get the right gauge. Ha!). Anyway, I cast on and yes, you know it, I couldn't get the correct gauge. It seems like no matter what you do with it, this yarn wants to come out at 11 cm rather than 10 cm. I decided to go with it and just accept that this yarn wants to be different. I cast on for Ink Flare and deliberately picked up fewer stitches. Since it's a slouchy kind of jumper I'm hoping for a slouchy, cozy kind of end product that isn't going to be too huge.
Since it's on 5.5 needles it knits up really quickly and I've already completed the front. I then decided to do a sleeve next because I wasn't entirely sure I'd have enough yarn for full sleeves (that flared body takes a lot of yarn!) - and as I predicted it was a bit tight, so half-sleeves it is. To be honest, I'm amazed how far this yarn goes. I only have 4 balls of it and it really doesn't look like much. I only decided to try because I vaguely remembered that I had calculated yardage for the Hourglass so I thought that it couldn't be too far off. It turns out that one part of the body takes about 1 1/2 balls of yarn - not too bad!
Also linked to Frontier Dreams - KCCO (Keep Calm, Craft On)
No comments:
Post a Comment