Not going to plan

Since it’s the end of the working week, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to be hitting the beer cellar. (Other tipples are available). Please join me in raising a glass to knitting projects that didn’t always go to plan. 

Last Friday, Mr Knitty and I had tickets to see a live recording of The Last Leg  (If you get the opportunity, go). The Plan was to knit something in the queue. 

As an aside, Adam Hills must be a brilliant person to knit socks for. If anybody’s going to benefit from hand knitted socks, it’s going to be somebody with two very different feet. 

 Anyway. I had some un-labelled yarn from Sweden and a pattern which is basically knitted until you get to the end of the yarn, so can be as big or as small as you wanted.  I bought the yarn because I liked the colours, and the mystery of it having no label appealed to me:

The yarn with no name

And, because I didn't have a clue how long the skein was, having a pattern which didn't rely on having a specific length of yarn, also appealed to me.

The problem with having a skein, is that it needs winding into a ball.  Trust me, if you try doing this, ten minutes before you need to leave the house to catch a train, it's going to get messy.  It took Mr Knitty and I two days to sort it all out, by which time the waiting for the TV programme was well over.

(Seriously, I wanted to give this a standing ovation).

Once I got knitting, it was lovely.  I'm crediting the train delays earlier this week as a major factor in this getting finished so quickly.  As is the way with self-striping yarn, it's kind of exciting to watch the colours change.  And, oh my, the colours were beautiful.  Muted, autumnal and beautiful.  It was almost like watching the seasons change, as I knitted:

Scarf on my desk at work

Close-up of the colours

I did worry that I was going to get pooling, but I got to the end of the yarn before the rows got too long.

Then it came to binding off.

There's always the problem when using circular needles to knit flat, that you're not always sure how long the live edge is.  In my case, I didn't know how much yarn I needed to bind off.  For this, I used the Russian Lace bind-off to give a bit of elasticity.  (First learned in Kate Atherley's Sick Day Shawl) 

Got about a third of the way through and realised that there was no way I was going to get to the end.  No problem, we all misjudge from time to time.  Ripped out the bind-off and tinked back the row, before trying again.  This time was better; I nearly got to the end before realising there wasn't enough yarn to complete the job.

Yup, just a few centimetres of yarn to bind off eleven stitches

I appreciate this is a fairly personal definition of 'better'. 

So, one more row ripped out, and I was able to bind off properly. At this point, I wasn't that fussed about stitches being twisted or not. I just wanted the thing done, so I could get on with the next thing.  I got to the end, I had yarn to spare.  Everything was looking good, until I pulled the yarn through the final loop...

The snag at the end of the Rainbow

Here's to knitting projects which don't quite go to plan.

Cheers.