Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Weasley swatch

Weasley swatch
Weasley swatch

I figured last night basically counted as a Monday, so I planned to whip up a quick gauge swatch for Weasley (since I'm switching to size 5's, and need to figure out how many stitches to cast on for a sweater to fit me), and make a snowflake.

However, I was out of clean dishes. After washing the mountain of dirty dishes, I didn't even have enough time to finish the gauge swatch... although I did manage about two thirds of it. I cast on for an expected size of 6"x6", but the edges must behave funny... even though I hit the exact stitch gauge, the swatch was only 5.5" wide. So I made it 5.5" tall... I'm going to turn it into one of those cute little swatch bunnies!

I have a horrible time trying to count stitches and rows, so I added a little scrap of thread every five stitches across, and then every four rows up (so that I'd always be adding on a knit row). I hit the stitch gauge exactly, but I'm off on the row count. I don't care, though... it's fairly close.

Deneen: Thanks again for the needles! They work great. :) They don't seem to want to straighten out, but I imagine the weight of Weasley will take care of that.

Tonight I'm moping around. I finished off this swatch, had a bowl of cereal for dinner (even though I still have clean dishes and could have cooked something... I wanted "comfort food" tonight), and then wrapped myself up in my fuzzy housecoat and read a chapter. I'm going to head to bed early tonight too. I'm feeling rather crummy. :P

I may make a snowflake tonight... or I may just go to bed. I hope you have a nice evening.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

you probably know this but -- to straighten out circulars, dunk em in a cup/pan of boiling (or almost boiling) water for about a minute. Then you should be able to straighten them.

stockinette curls at the edges as I'm sure you have seen -- is that why the swatch wasn't quite the right size?

noricum said...

I tried dunking them in hot-from-the-tap water... they seemed somewhat less curly for a little bit, but I think they reverted. :P I'll give it another shot.

The curling may explain it, but I tried to hold the swatch flat.

sara said...

Almost boiling works the best. I felt like such a dunce the first time I did this and they straightened right out. I thought "why haven't I done this before?"

I admire that you actually do a gauge swatch. I'm way too impatient.

noricum said...

I'll give it another shot. I suspect they're rather old, and thus reluctant to learn new tricks. ;)

Doing a gauge swatch was actually neat... I finally reached the point where I had to relearn how to cast off. ;) Plus, I've been starting and ripping-out Weasley so many times now, it's nice to have a "knit FO"... even if it's only a gauge swatch. ;)