Sound Bites & Snap Shots

I purchased the Quaker Ridge Shawlette pattern back in August 2012 and have been meaning to knit it up for about that long.  Putting my desire into action was another thing, though, because I did not have right weight yarn for the pattern and I have been working on using what I have.  (Yarn comes in varying thicknesses which is called the weight.)   Back in January, the designer launched a knit a long of a large number of her shawl patterns, and offered prizes and incentives.  I’m a sucker for chance to win something and I like riding the coattails of group motivation. 

It turns out that I had the right yardage of a heavier weight yarn that I initially earmarked for another garment but had let languish.  I wasn’t sure how the yarn substitution would effect the finished size but the pattern was written in such a way that I could modify the pattern if I felt I was going to be running short on yarn. 

Since I started the shawl mid-February, I set myself daily knitting goals so I could complete the shawl by the February 28th deadline.  Each day I had to knit 14 rows which was easier at first because the rows were shorter but even as the rows grew longer, I was able to keep up.

I made it all the way to the ruffle edge when I hit a major roadblock.  It wasn’t the expected yarn shortage.  Rather, after I increased up to 500 stitches across my shawl, my needle cable broke.  In the picture above, the needle on the left should be attached to the cable where the metal tip is exposed.  When it happened, I was at the doctor’s office with Walker and had nothing to temporarily or permanently fix the situation.  I had to just fold it all up and pray until we got home. 

I eventually did get all the stitches safely contained on needles again and plowed ahead.  However, now the game of yarn chicken began.  I was down to my last ball of yarn and I still had a dozen rows to  knit. I knew I would be cutting it close.  I began each row by weighing the remaining yarn, knitting the row, and then weighing again.  I kept running tallies of how many grams of yarn I used and how many I had left.  From my calculations, I thought I would be able to eek out the ruffle if I just omitted two rows.  In order to get enough yarn, though, I had to unravel my gauge swatch and keep all the little bits I had left over.

Finally I got to the edge of the ruffle which called for knitting in 500 beads.  I posted a question online about bead selection and the designer herself responded.  I confess, I was star struck. I love the beaded bind off as the finishing touch.  It was the first time I ever tried it and I learned how to do it with two methods.  It took several hours to do but was so worth it.   

When all was said and done, this was all the yarn I had left.  I’ll have shots of the shawl in a few days but for now, I’d doing the happy dance that I completed it on time having won a very intense game of yarn chicken.