Think of a number
I can’t quite bring my thoughts to bear on a blog post at the moment because my brain is fully occupied by weaving so I’ll show you some photos and come back another time with carefully thought out words. There are no photos of the weaving that is filling my mind because I’m still at the planning stage and my thinking is along the lines of “if there are 600m on a cone and I’m using a 10 dent heddle and a 15″ width then what warp length will I get in inches?” “No wait, I’m using two colours so it’s twice that” “Hold on a minute, I’m using it doubled so it is what I thought it was originally”. I then started down the path of “how much yardage will there be after I’ve dyed it?” and the only answer I have to that is to dye it and then measure it. I’m still trundling through the calculations though, I’ve made so many simple errors already that I’m sure there’s another one ready to bite me.
The number of times that I’ve knitted this pattern is two. It’s possible that I might yet knit it again because it is straightforward enough and it’s a fun knit. Adding the beads prevents the repetition in the leg from becoming boring. The heel is not fun, it’s knit back and forward and some of the beaded rows are purl rows but on the plus side the heel isn’t that big. Last time I moaned about the length of the boring white bit on the foot, this time I flew through it while watching the Olympics.
This is the Victorian Christmas Stocking and I used 104g of the main colour and less than 50g of the contrast. The white is undyed bfl sock yarn and the contrast is a superwash merino and nylon sock yarn that I dyed. I’m fairly confident that if I’d only had a single 100g ball of the white I could have made it to the toe by knitting the 3″ facing in the contrast colour. (Do your own maths on that one, I’m still doing warp calculations) I know there’s an odd stitch on the toe that is the wrong colour and I’m going to hunt it down and eliminate it with duplicate stitch, the heel veered away from the chart too but I caught it early enough to make it consistently wrong so I’m leaving that.
The number of times I will be knitting this again is zero (which is equal to the number of times I will be wearing it). This is the Helianthe hat and it was lovely to knit but it does nothing for me at all. 
I wasn’t sure that I had enough yardage, there was probably enough but it was cutting it a bit fine, so I started above the ribbing with a provisional cast on. After I’d worked the crown of the hat I recovered the cast on stitches and worked downwards. You wouldn’t notice if the ribbing was a couple of rows short (especially not in this photo because you can’t see it at all) but you would notice if I ran out of yarn before I’d finished the crown shaping. Although it doesn’t suit me it does deserve a better photo but this was as far as I got when the camera battery died. Luckily the calculator is solar powered so it’s unlikely to fail on me before I’ve satisfied myself that my warp calculations are right.
That’s all for now, I’m off to research shrinkeage and factor that into my never ending calculations.
