Nothing to blog about? Buy something!

This just arrived:

I needed a flicker for fleece preparation. Ashford Australia was recommended by the spinning teacher. Ashford Australia is where I bought my weaving loom from. I’d been thinking for a while that I’d like to get more reeds in different sizes. So this was the perfect opportunity to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.

Or three birds, since varying the different fibery crafts I’m doing means I’m not making photo-worthy progress on any. It gives me something to blog about. But I suppose I do have something to blog about. Last night I finally got to an interesting bit of the Zhivago top.

This top has been giving me my first pronounced experience of the knitting Black Hole. I think I started the collar over a month ago. No matter how much I knit, it never seemed to grow any longer. When I finally reached the second half, which is knit on larger needles, I gave a whoop of delight because it freed up my 4mm. I could put the collar aside and start on the sleeves.

Wary that I might go from being stuck in a Black Hole to being stuck on Sleeve Island, I decided to knit both sleeves at the same time:

There’s one disadvantage, though. The sleeves are 3/4 length. I dislike 3/4 length sleeves. The pattern calls for 9 balls of Zhivago. I bought 11. I’m hoping that’s enough to make them full length sleeves.

Because if I knit them together and I’m wrong, that’s two sleeves I’ll have to frog and reknit.

I suppose, if that happened, I could always make the collar a little narrower…

4 thoughts on “Nothing to blog about? Buy something!

  1. Is the Zhivago top a jumper or a cardi? As a general rule, I reckon a sleeve takes about the same amount of yarn as a cardigan front. There’s always your smaller collar option, too – but if the collar is a key design feature, you probably don’t want to do that unless you hafta.
    Jill.

  2. It’s a jumper, and a whole front or back took about two and a half balls. If the sleeves turn out the same I’ll be fine… but I have long arms!

    Ah, but there’s nothing like the suspense of not knowing if you’ll have enough yarn to push you toward finishing!

  3. Why is that? You’d think you’d knit slower so that you put off the inevitable but you knit faster and faster as though the amount of time remaining is somehow related to the end of the ball.

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