Tonight I finally finished knitting the last row of birds on the double-knitted jacket before I make the Great Leap Up the Chart. The leap happens in two parts. I recently leaped about twenty rows, and am now in this weird space where the only colourwork I have to worry about are the very vertical tree trunks (here's the most recent photo to help you visualise):
No birds, no side branches, nothin'. I haven't looked at the chart at all today.
Three rows from where I am now, I get to start the tops of the trees. It's exciting to think I'll be working something besides birds (all the birds are the same motif, I memorised it ages ago) and curlicues, which, while gorgeous, are just lead-ups to the main tree-topping event. On the other hand, that means a lot of gawping at the chart, and probably a lot of ripping back mistakes as well.
Deep breath. Be positive. Once I start the treetops, I'll have about twenty rows before I get to the underarm shaping. That will be another cause for excitement.
Since I'm working from stash yarn, this also seemed like a good time to take a real account of how well I'm doing with using up all the yarn without running out. This thing's been on the needles so long I don't know how many skeins I started with (there are knots in the skeins, so counting ends isn't a good measure). So tonight I put my big stainless steel mixing bowl on top of my digital food scale, hit the tare button, and then dumped the whole jacket into the bowl, working yarn and all. Then I took out the jacket and just weighed an empty circular needle that's about the same size and material composition as the needles I'm using.
The entire jacket, including needles and working yarn, comes to 787g as of tonight. The empty needle was 11g, so that means the yarn itself weighs about 776g. The skeins are 100g each, and I find it believable that I've trimmed off about 24g of ends in the course of making the jacket (that's 12g per colour, remember). So call it 800g, which means 8 skeins total, or 4 skeins of each colour.
I have 5 skeins of black left (and supposedly 5 of the blue, although it's been knitted up into something different that is hard to weigh out). Only one of them is in my current dye lot — the rest is in the very-close-but-not-quite dye lot. I'm about halfway through my current working skeins, which should take me almost to the armholes to use up. That means I'll be switching dye lots in the treetops, which is probably the least worst place it could happen.
Onwards.
Three rows from where I am now, I get to start the tops of the trees. It's exciting to think I'll be working something besides birds (all the birds are the same motif, I memorised it ages ago) and curlicues, which, while gorgeous, are just lead-ups to the main tree-topping event. On the other hand, that means a lot of gawping at the chart, and probably a lot of ripping back mistakes as well.
Deep breath. Be positive. Once I start the treetops, I'll have about twenty rows before I get to the underarm shaping. That will be another cause for excitement.
Since I'm working from stash yarn, this also seemed like a good time to take a real account of how well I'm doing with using up all the yarn without running out. This thing's been on the needles so long I don't know how many skeins I started with (there are knots in the skeins, so counting ends isn't a good measure). So tonight I put my big stainless steel mixing bowl on top of my digital food scale, hit the tare button, and then dumped the whole jacket into the bowl, working yarn and all. Then I took out the jacket and just weighed an empty circular needle that's about the same size and material composition as the needles I'm using.
The entire jacket, including needles and working yarn, comes to 787g as of tonight. The empty needle was 11g, so that means the yarn itself weighs about 776g. The skeins are 100g each, and I find it believable that I've trimmed off about 24g of ends in the course of making the jacket (that's 12g per colour, remember). So call it 800g, which means 8 skeins total, or 4 skeins of each colour.
I have 5 skeins of black left (and supposedly 5 of the blue, although it's been knitted up into something different that is hard to weigh out). Only one of them is in my current dye lot — the rest is in the very-close-but-not-quite dye lot. I'm about halfway through my current working skeins, which should take me almost to the armholes to use up. That means I'll be switching dye lots in the treetops, which is probably the least worst place it could happen.
Onwards.