This is going to be my last post for a couple of weeks. I realised this morning that, since I’ve been ill, somehow it’s gone from being three weeks to the exams (which is scary but manageable) to two weeks to the exams (which is frankly panic-inducing) without me managing any revision at all in that time. I am finally starting to feel better so revision has re-started but there’s lots left to do!
What I have managed to achieve in the past week is a new pair of socks. They’re soft, squishy, warm and terribly unflattering but will make wonderful bedsocks when winter rolls around again.
In my last sock-related post, I mentioned that I was sure I was going to run out of yarn and, as can be seen from the photo below, I did—just as I was starting the toe of the second sock.
I found a swatch for another project that I had used this yarn for and unravelled that … and still didn’t have enough yarn. I ended up unravelling one pattern repeat from the top of each sock, which gave me enough yarn to finish the toe and cast off the unravelled stitches on one sock … but not the other. I unravelled another couple of rows from the top of the second sock to make sure I had enough yarn to work a stretchy enough cast-off … and this is how much yarn I had left after casting off the unravelled top edge of the second sock:
It seems I like to live dangerously.
Lessons I should learn from this (but probably won’t):
- Divide your yarn into two equal amounts before starting knitting socks. That way, you won’t be at the end of the second sock when you realise that you’re going to run out of yarn. If you don’t do this and you weigh your remaining yarn after you’ve knitted the first sock and it weighs less than the first sock, don’t just start knitting the second sock until you’ve worked out how you’re going to fix the fact that you don’t have enough yarn.
- Check your gauge before you get too far. Don’t assume that because you have more yarn than is listed in the pattern requirements (340 yds to 285 yds) that it will be enough.
- Actually, it might not even help if your gauge is right (I’ve just checked and mine is spot on) if the “wraps per inch” for your yarn is different to the yarn listed in the requirements. Check this if you can, but life is short and running out of yarn isn’t the worst thing that could happen.
I’ll see you on the other side of the exams!