Frog in knots

Knitting, knots and frogging.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

So where do I sign?

I must admit to never having worked in a knitting friendly workplace. I did bar work when I was a student, so between the potential spillage and smoke it just wouldn't have been practical, not to mention how busy it was. I've also worked as a watersports instructor in the Med and you can't knit whilst windsurfing. My military days didn't exactly lend themselves to knitting either... although I think you could do a lot of damage to the enemy with some needles and yarn, you'd die of embarrassment wearing some of the things I've knitted. I was in John Lewis in Liverpool today and the ladies there don't seem to have the same problem, six of the eight Habidashery Department staff were sat knitting, so where do I sign up?

Unfortunately I was only looking for mundane bits and pieces like buttons and not on a yarn mission, but I did manage to find these clasps for my coat (i'm still in the process of lining it - well still thinking about the process of lining it). I needed three, but there were only two and a half in the tube. Two and a half - I'd like to know how they ended up with a half, but the lady was kind enough to locate more at other stores.

I also managed to pick these up (not JL) for the grand sum of 71p. They're plastic, not wood, but i'm still looking forward to designing a bag to go on them.





My other less obvious yarn related purchase was a set of
electronic scales. I tend to work by weight and not yardage and so it's important for me to know exactly how much I have. My old mechanical scales are er..well..a long way from being accurate. They were also half price in Argos and it would have been rude not to...

On the actual knitting front not much has been happening. The tiny cardigan I was working on yesterday got ripped so many times that I gave up. I was too tired and annoyed and couldn't face casting on again. To make up for not sending something else, I decided to jolly up the boat neck sweater by swiss darning a teddy bear's head onto it. It's not so big that it won't fit reasonably soon.

I just wanted to get it all out of the way as I have other things on my mind...and they're adult sized!

6 Comments:

At 1:31 pm, Blogger Rain said...

Thanks ladies.

Catherine, that can be a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question as different yarn fibres give you different weights per yard and i'm not familiar with your homespun. I'd say at least 150g for a 4 foot long scarf that's 6" wide.

An easy way you can figure out how much you need for your homespun is to decide how wide you want the scarf and treble the measurement. That is how much yarn you need per row.

Cast on 6 sts or so and knit just over an inch. See how many rows you have in one inch and multiply that by how many inches long you want the scarf to be.

Multiply that by your row length. That will tell you how many inches of yarn you need for the whole scarf and divide it down to get the yardage. (Did I say easy?)

If you have a ball prespun where you know the yardage then weigh it and work out the weight per yard. You can then mulitply it up to match your requirements and work out the total weight that way.

Hope that helps.

 
At 2:43 pm, Blogger Sharon J said...

I love the little bear on the front of baby Sol's pullover - I'm sure he'll love both cute and handsome when wearing it. That's a great pattern to use as a "jumping off point", so I'm sure I'll be knitting quite a few of them in different variations. ~Sharon

 
At 2:43 pm, Blogger Sharon J said...

Errmmm... typo alert! That should've read "look" rather than "love"... up above. ~Sharon

 
At 9:37 pm, Blogger turtlegirl76 said...

Those are nice looking clasps for your sweater. But I too would wonder where the heck the other half went and who would have sold just a half!

 
At 11:34 pm, Blogger Rain said...

Sharon - i'm terrible for typos too. I can't type as accurately or quickly as I can think.

I can see a few more of these sweaters too, very handy for a last minute gift.

Turtlegirl - I can't figure that out either, unless someone broke one half. They had plenty in gold but they were sooooo tacky.

 
At 12:59 am, Blogger Knittypants said...

I really like those clasps. Very nice, will look so good on your coat. The teddy bear head is a perfect touch adds a lot to a simple sweater.

 

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