I Blinked

I have had quite a day of productive knitting. I took care of a couple household chores this morning, but by 11:30 I was knitting and by 1:30 I had decided that was what was on the docket for the rest of the day and I was going to stop feeling bad about all the other things that wouldn't get done. And except for some short breaks and a time out to make and eat supper, that is what I did until about 9:00. Yup, more than eight hours of knitting and catching up on "Bones" on Netflix. A good day.

So what was I working on? The body of my pink tshirt with the big bias collar. In my last post, I mentioned that I would probably show pictures of a fitting the next time you saw this shirt, but it's not quite long enough for that. Instead, I had my pillow model it:

You can see that I finished the raglan shaping, split off the sleeve stitches and in fact have started the gradual waist shaping. Trying it on was an adventure of figuring out how the collar should sit, but it also indicated that it is fitting good. It's the right size and seems to be proportioned properly. I am going to have to lengthen it as much as I can (as my patience and yarn will allow) and most of this will happen in the waist area.

Some raglan style sweaters do not have you add any stitches under the arms when you split off the sleeve stitches. I have never found this to fit very well and was relieved to find that this pattern called for some additional stitches to be cast on.

Since these stitches will be picked up and knit for the sleeves, I went ahead and used a provisional cast on so that the underarm will be completely seamless. Some parts of a garment (like a shoulder) can benefit from a good seam for structure and other reasons, but underarms are a good place to have a lot of stretch. (I'm sure you can recall a time of hearing that seam ripping "popping" noise as you have taken your arm out of a sleeve the wrong way. It's not good.)

I did some knitting on this shirt last night as well and that was when I finally "did the numbers" and weighed the pink ball I was working with. It wasn't good--I had already used two thirds and wasn't nearly far enough.

I looked around on Ravelry to see if someone had the same dyelot for sale, you know, just in case. And someone did! She had one of my dyelot and two of unknown dyelots. I went ahead and sent her a message to ask about price, you know, just in case. She responded this morning and said she had just listed them the day before I wrote her and wasn't I quick like a bunny. She gave a very good price and was able to tell me that the two mystery balls do not match the known dyelot.

As I was knitting today, I reached the end of my first (of three) balls before I even got to the underarm. I realized I was staring at the very real possibility of not having enough yarn. And it was staring back at me. I kept knitting even as I joined the second ball (with a very neat Russian join when my braid join didn't work), thinking that I could wait and see if I could stare the monster down. But then I blinked. I couldn't let that one ball that showed up on Ravelry get away. I sent a message to its current owner and said I'll take it! I'll take it!

I may gamble at times, but sometimes you have to know when to fold them.

Now, I hope four balls is enough...