Time Out

After stepping away from the shawl in my last post for a few days, I tried it "on".  It still wasn't wide enough to really wrap over my arms--it just barely did.  It could be shortened quite a bit though.  I did some math to see how much more width I'd get with making it shorter, but I don't know if that's enough, or if the math even translates into real life.  I'm wondering about knitting it a bit looser, but I don't know if that would make the yarn go further or not (how exactly does that work--same yarn, looser gauge, same number of sts---uses more or less yarn?).  The shawl is currently having a time out as I was expecting to go away and didn't want to get started on something I didn't think I could finish.

So, instead, I whipped up some dishcloths.

 I started with Marg Coe's round dishcloth pattern on the left.  Then, I did some waste yarn, and started with the one on the right.  I thought, what would happen if I didn't cast off for each scallop, just let them grow until the end of the wedge.  Well, that's what happens!  Still used the same 15 stitches, but it appears much bigger because in fact, it does grow much more.  You could make some cute Christmas stars with a finer yarn.

I was almost out of the brown yarn so I moved on to some yellow.

Again, I did some waste yarn between each one, instead of starting each one "fresh".  The one on the left is a sort of square.  I found out after the first section that I had to change yarns on the outside edge, instead of being able to carry the yarns up the middle stitch.  Somehow, this meant that the yellow section ended up being short a row or two (this might have been where I grafted it, and used white instead of yellow....it was late, it's just a dishcloth).  The next is similar to the round one, in that I moved the fourth stitch onto the third to make the eyelet, but I didn't move the outer three stitches over, so there are no scallops, and no casting off for each scallop.  Super fast to make.  The edge curls under a little--perhaps having only one or two stitches on the edge would work better.  The one on the right was an attempt to alter the round one again, by doing the short rowing in and out for each wedge, instead of putting them all into work at the same time.  I realized part way through the second section that the original had 6 sections, and since I was doubling up sections, I would now have only three sections so I couldn't alternate yarns.  I figured I'd use blue for the third section.  Well, after knitting the second section, I held it up and realize it was becoming a square!  So I was able to alternate colours.  I really like this one!  Again, it uses 15 stitches, like all of them do, but it's bigger.

All together, the 5 cloths used 134grams of stash.  I've just scanned through my old posts, and see that I didn't mark down how much the first dishcloth weighed; I've already given it to my mom.  And did I make one or two?  So, I'm weighing the two brown ones, along with what's left of the yarn, and it comes to 62grams.  The two balls were 85gr total, so the one for my mom was 23grams (which does match the note I have on my pattern, but I hadn't written a date or other identifying feature, and I've made a lot of dishcloths with this pattern!).  So, my total for this post will be 157grams.

Yarn In:  10 566grams

Yarn Out:  5538gr + 157gr = 5695 gram

Balance:  4871 gr grams more In than used

Costs:  $177.48 averages to $2.34/day

Still to calculate:  wool skirt; green afghan; green mitts; charity donation; red scarf.  These items will definitely put me in the more used than bought balance again!