The yarn is here!

I found a box on my porch yesterday. Unfortunately, it was as I was loading mom's things into the car for a 2 1/2 hour drive. Each way. Takes some of the knit out of you, let me tell you.

I did cut the box open when I got home. And I wound a ball. Let me tell you that is one big ball o' yarn. The yarn is Knitpicks Spinnaker and comes in 200 gram skeins which is an excellent idea since it is chunky (or bulky) not sure what the technical term is, but there are 132 yards per 200 gram skein.

I am knitting the fisherman shrug which was the cover pic on Knit It magazine some months ago. The pattern is available free online because they had to rewrite it from what was published in the magazine. Google for it if you want a copy. But don't count on the republished pattern to work out too well either, as rewritten, but if you want to knit along, I'll try to give you enough details to make it work, as I get it figured out.

I knit some last night on the button bands for my vest (and I will post about these and my pick-up theory later) but tonight I just couldn't stand it and cast on for the shrug.

You may remember from an earlier post about my plans to use the front triangles for my swatch. Well, I held onto that plan. The pattern calls for a gauge of 9 stitches per 4 inches which is 2 1/4 stitches per inch on size 10.5 needles. The yarn calls for a gauge of 2 1/2 stitches per inch on size 11 needles. Size 11s it is. The cast on for the triangle fron says cast on 18. So I do. Knit a row, purl a row. Knit a row with a ssk at the front and a k2tog at the back, purl a row. Pause to look at the gauge. Hmmm, not 8 inches wide (as it should supposedly be). Offload the knitting to a smaller needle. A 7 or 8, whatever was handy. Let it rest. Pull on it a bit. Where're those 13s. Cast on again. Same sequence of knit/purl rows. Looks pretty good. Offload to a different smaller needle. Still looks good. A bit airy (hey, J3, love that description) but pretty good. Measure some gauge. Hmmm. 2 1/2 stitches per inch. Well we can work with this. Sooo pull it out... it doesn't frog too easily as the yarn is lumpy bumpy (and dh threatens to take a pic of the frogging). The next size up calls for a cast-on of 20, so that's where we've going.

Now about the decreases. The patt calls for decreasing on every knit row (after the first) in the knit 1 ssk knit a bunch k2tog knit 1 way. Then purl back Well, if you do that, and starting at 20 stitches, and going down to two (they say one, but an even number of stitches, decreasing 2 per row is never going to result in an odd number), that is 19 rows. And if you get 14 rows per inch like the gauge says (on the re-written pattern) that's going to get you maybe 6 inches, not 8 like the picture. So we need a different decrease pattern. Here's what I did.
cast on 20 (I cast onto a 15, then knitted with 13s. I almost always go up a needle size or two for the cast on)
knit a row and purl back
knit a decrease row (result 18), purl back,
knit a row (still 18), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 16), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 14), purl back,
knit a row (still 14), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 12), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 10), purl back,
knit a row (still 10), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 8), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 6), purl back,
knit a decrease row (result 4), purl back,
knit a decrease row (this row is ssk, k2tog, result 2),
purl 2 togther, pull the yarn through. [If my count is right this is 26 rows.]

Repeat the whole process. And you have 2 triangle fronts that look much like the pattern graphic. I was going to show you a pic but the upload is not cooperating.

editted to add picture of the triangle fronts:



more later,
j