Casting On

I was ready to scream for something new to hold in my hands, and rather than just suffer and not enjoy the knitting of some truly lovely sweaters, I took action.

I cast on.  I knit a couple of rows and then I ripped it all out and cast on again.  And then I knit a couple rows and pulled back.  And knit again.  This is where I am right now

and I am about to rip it all out and cast on again.  Sounds fishy doesn't it for a sweater which I have knit four times already.  

The thing is that in order for it to work out to have a second great sweater in this yarn, I have to use a very healthy portion of the rich teal Diamond Llama Silk.  There is not enough of the green to do it without the additional fibre.  Part of the issue is that the yarns are the very slightest different weight.  I am not sure if you can tell it here but the teal yarn is shown as 7 WPI (wraps per inch) and the green is 5-6.  

I am not particularly daunted by this, but it does mean that if I used teal for a complete section of lace, it might be a good idea to go up a half a needle size for that part.  And yet, I don't really want stripes from it.  That would detract from the lace.   The teal would ideally accent everything, but it needs to be more than that, just for yarn consumption.  

  

The next cast on is going to be about making a frame of sorts.  I want to try making all the buttonbands and hems, cuffs, in the teal as well as making the rows which form the garter ridge in the teal.  That garter ridge will, I hope, make the teal feel very much part of the whole.  I am a bit concerned that having the button bands et al in teal might be too much of a good thing, so my final fall back position is going to be simply that if none of the above works, I will have teal ridges throughout and will just have a couple of teal sections at the bottom of the garment.  

In other less happy things, I have not kept up my spinning.  In the heat of the season, I suffer and spinning in the evenings is next to impossible.  I haven't given up.  I am still gong to keep on working on it, but I doubt that I will make it into the second bag of fibre.  Still, if I can get one bag done, that is the speediest spin I will have ever done on 225 grams and that is a huge victory.  

So time to be off and running.  There is wool to wind.  There is things to spin.  Plenty to fill the day and more.