One of the items in my Knit That Shit meta-project is an Estonian lace shawl I started sometime in the last four years or so.
When I wrote up its entry on the KTS page, I said I couldn't remember why I stopped working on it.
More recently, I picked it up again and realised it was because it was going to take every last centimetre of yarn to finish it to the size given in the pattern book.
I had a lot of misgivings about that. Ideally I'd wanted the shawl to be a little longer than what was given in the pattern book. It also made me wonder if I'd lost some yarn somewhere along the way. I remembered four skeins, and I had four skeins, but still. The yarn had been bought specially to make this shawl, and I know better than to buy just barely enough.
So I stopped knitting, did some math, and had a good consideration of the pros and cons of continuing. In the end I came to a decision I am comfortable and happy with.
The shawl now looks like this:
The ever-perceptive J-A pointed out I should make a special effort to blog about this because, she says, people don't always realise from the blog how much unravelling I do. I think I was lucky in that the grandmother who taught me how to knit emphasised that real knitters unravel when they have to, instead of just crossing their fingers and carrying on even when every bit of reason they possess is screaming that the piece isn't going to work out.
Well, this wasn't going to work out. So I saved myself a lot of grief and time by unravelling now instead of later. I also saved myself from doing a lot of work on a shawl I was never going to wear.
What's going to happen to the yarn? The same Estonian lace pattern book has another pattern for a shawl in a similar shape, but which only takes half the amount of yarn. That's because this pattern had lots of nupps (bobbles) in the fabric, whereas the alternative shawl only has them in the end-borders. In theory, I should be able to make a nice long shawl and have a comfortable abundance of yarn to make it with. I like both patterns equally, so aesthetics aren't an issue.
In the end it will be a net gain.
More recently, I picked it up again and realised it was because it was going to take every last centimetre of yarn to finish it to the size given in the pattern book.
I had a lot of misgivings about that. Ideally I'd wanted the shawl to be a little longer than what was given in the pattern book. It also made me wonder if I'd lost some yarn somewhere along the way. I remembered four skeins, and I had four skeins, but still. The yarn had been bought specially to make this shawl, and I know better than to buy just barely enough.
So I stopped knitting, did some math, and had a good consideration of the pros and cons of continuing. In the end I came to a decision I am comfortable and happy with.
The shawl now looks like this:
The ever-perceptive J-A pointed out I should make a special effort to blog about this because, she says, people don't always realise from the blog how much unravelling I do. I think I was lucky in that the grandmother who taught me how to knit emphasised that real knitters unravel when they have to, instead of just crossing their fingers and carrying on even when every bit of reason they possess is screaming that the piece isn't going to work out.
Well, this wasn't going to work out. So I saved myself a lot of grief and time by unravelling now instead of later. I also saved myself from doing a lot of work on a shawl I was never going to wear.
What's going to happen to the yarn? The same Estonian lace pattern book has another pattern for a shawl in a similar shape, but which only takes half the amount of yarn. That's because this pattern had lots of nupps (bobbles) in the fabric, whereas the alternative shawl only has them in the end-borders. In theory, I should be able to make a nice long shawl and have a comfortable abundance of yarn to make it with. I like both patterns equally, so aesthetics aren't an issue.
In the end it will be a net gain.