Mother-In-Law and Math
Remember how I mused a few days ago about having to explain all this yarn to my mother-in-law? The one who doesn't speak all that great of English, doesn't really surf the web much, and already thinks I'm a little nutty? Well, today I got to do just that and it wasn't quite as horrifying as I expected.
It seems that the daughter of a close family friend of theirs, sister to one of Joe's good friends at church while he was growing up, reads the Yarn Harlot, followed her link to me and quickly realized who we were after seeing his picture. Hi, Grace! Grace was in town visiting her parents a week or so ago, and brought some yarn scraps for me with her. She gave them to her mom to give to Joe's mom to give to me, only they ended up at the church office where Joe's mom works with a note that they were for Joe's mom but no explanation about it. Hilarium ensues, and eventually it is all worked out. Joe's parents came over today and dropped off the packet along with a delicious container of kimchee tchigae (korean spicy pickled cabbage soup - yum!).
Which led me to bring Mom Kang back into the office room where she saw this:
It's pretty stunning in the picture, but I assure you it is even more so in person. I've been trying to sort through some of this stuff and make some sense of it all, so it's even more spread out than ever before. That's a lot of yarn. Mom said "You should open a yarn shop!" But she didn't seem too freaked out by it all either.
Here is what was in the package from Grace - two very nice exactly-what-I-asked-for yarns, and a note in Korean except for the word Grace. Ko-map-sup-ni-da, Grace!
Catching up from yesterday's mail, I have to more packages to report. Megan from Ashland, Missouri sent some very nice scraps. Megan, what is this delicious blue and brown stuff? I'm feeling a need to go buy some of this myself and make some socks! Or at least add it to my stash to make socks eventually. It's so pretty! Also, seeing your address brought back a few memories for me. I grew up in Columbia, and lived for a while in Deer Park while I was in college. I doubt I'll be back in that neck of the woods any time soon if ever, but it made me wonder if you have a good yarn shop in those parts these days. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what this yarn is, though.
I also received some Trekking and som Lorna's Laces from Brigitte in Toronto. Brigitte, I love the colors on both of these yarns. The Trekking is going straight to the work basket to contribute a square. The Lorna's will join the koigu-types for a future project.
Thanks to Brigitte, Megan and Grace along with all the other generous knitters for bringing the package total up to 81!
Now it is time to do a little math. I have been firing up the synapses to wrap my brain around this part for a while now, and tonight we will have a little start at blanket-math. I apologize to all you lovelies in non-american parts of the world. It is truly stupid that we here are still stuck in inches and ounces, but alas, we are. I could do this all in metric, but my poor little brain might overheat, and I only have a limited amount of time. Let's start with some known statistics.
Current size of my blanket-in-progress: 55 by 11 inches. I wanted a nice, wide couch blanket that two people could snuggle under together without having to fight or stretch the poor thing out.
Size of our current couch blanket: 40 by 60 inches. Crocheted by my Grandma Mary, whom I did not know very well, but was an avid crocheter. It's junky acrylic, but the love is in the stitches. I was a thankless spoiled-rotten teenager when she made it for me, and even the junky acrylic probably cost a lot of money to her at the time. I'm a tall person, and there have been times when I've wished this was a little longer.
Estimated size of finished blanket-in-progress: 55 by 75 inches - should be very generous to cover frozen toes.
Weight of current blankie: 7 ounces
Number of squares (or single-square sized units) in current blankie: 112
Weight of each square: well under 1/10 of an ounce, but let's use that number as a generous estimate.
Here's a fun statistic - number of stitches per square: About 512, depending on how you count the decreases.
Number of stitches knit so far: 57,344
Estimated stitches total for the blanket: 390,981
Estimated weight of finished blanket: 48 ounces
Which leads me to a little dilemma. Where am I going with this? Well, I was trying to sort out all this yarn and figure out how to put it into kits for other people who want to make blankets. I need to know some things like - what size blanket are they knitting? How much yarn do they already have of their own? Do they have color preferences, and am I going to go so far as to try to accomodate them? How many different yarns should I try to include per kit? For my blanket, I'm going to try to get as many different blocks as possible, and I think I probably have a good chance of getting at least one block of each different exactly-what-I-asked-for type yarn received into the blanket. But I'm not sure I'm willing to wind a bajillion .10 ounce balls in order to mix it all up and send to other knitters. They're going to be getting larger chunks, just like I did- and it works out fine. I think I'm going to have to send some e-mails out.
Some other good news: I'm pretty sure I have enough of the Koigu-type yarns to make at least a couch-sized blanket, and the same goes for the wool/cotton/nylon blends.
To answer Karin's question about the Artyarn's UltraMerino - The web site didn't have specific care instructions as far as I could tell at a glance, but it doesn't say anything about superwash either, so I'd say probably hand wash, hang to dry unless we hear differently from another reader. Also, since you mentioned doing both at once - it can be done on two circulars, but my preferred way is to cast on for each on seperate dpns and just alternate working on one then the other. This way it's more portable to carry with you and there's no fumbling with floppy needle ends and multiple balls of yarn. I know, there is the two-circular camp of knitters and they'd tell you the exact opposite. It's all a matter of preference.
It seems that the daughter of a close family friend of theirs, sister to one of Joe's good friends at church while he was growing up, reads the Yarn Harlot, followed her link to me and quickly realized who we were after seeing his picture. Hi, Grace! Grace was in town visiting her parents a week or so ago, and brought some yarn scraps for me with her. She gave them to her mom to give to Joe's mom to give to me, only they ended up at the church office where Joe's mom works with a note that they were for Joe's mom but no explanation about it. Hilarium ensues, and eventually it is all worked out. Joe's parents came over today and dropped off the packet along with a delicious container of kimchee tchigae (korean spicy pickled cabbage soup - yum!).
Which led me to bring Mom Kang back into the office room where she saw this:
It's pretty stunning in the picture, but I assure you it is even more so in person. I've been trying to sort through some of this stuff and make some sense of it all, so it's even more spread out than ever before. That's a lot of yarn. Mom said "You should open a yarn shop!" But she didn't seem too freaked out by it all either.
Here is what was in the package from Grace - two very nice exactly-what-I-asked-for yarns, and a note in Korean except for the word Grace. Ko-map-sup-ni-da, Grace!
Catching up from yesterday's mail, I have to more packages to report. Megan from Ashland, Missouri sent some very nice scraps. Megan, what is this delicious blue and brown stuff? I'm feeling a need to go buy some of this myself and make some socks! Or at least add it to my stash to make socks eventually. It's so pretty! Also, seeing your address brought back a few memories for me. I grew up in Columbia, and lived for a while in Deer Park while I was in college. I doubt I'll be back in that neck of the woods any time soon if ever, but it made me wonder if you have a good yarn shop in those parts these days. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what this yarn is, though.
I also received some Trekking and som Lorna's Laces from Brigitte in Toronto. Brigitte, I love the colors on both of these yarns. The Trekking is going straight to the work basket to contribute a square. The Lorna's will join the koigu-types for a future project.
Thanks to Brigitte, Megan and Grace along with all the other generous knitters for bringing the package total up to 81!
Now it is time to do a little math. I have been firing up the synapses to wrap my brain around this part for a while now, and tonight we will have a little start at blanket-math. I apologize to all you lovelies in non-american parts of the world. It is truly stupid that we here are still stuck in inches and ounces, but alas, we are. I could do this all in metric, but my poor little brain might overheat, and I only have a limited amount of time. Let's start with some known statistics.
Current size of my blanket-in-progress: 55 by 11 inches. I wanted a nice, wide couch blanket that two people could snuggle under together without having to fight or stretch the poor thing out.
Size of our current couch blanket: 40 by 60 inches. Crocheted by my Grandma Mary, whom I did not know very well, but was an avid crocheter. It's junky acrylic, but the love is in the stitches. I was a thankless spoiled-rotten teenager when she made it for me, and even the junky acrylic probably cost a lot of money to her at the time. I'm a tall person, and there have been times when I've wished this was a little longer.
Estimated size of finished blanket-in-progress: 55 by 75 inches - should be very generous to cover frozen toes.
Weight of current blankie: 7 ounces
Number of squares (or single-square sized units) in current blankie: 112
Weight of each square: well under 1/10 of an ounce, but let's use that number as a generous estimate.
Here's a fun statistic - number of stitches per square: About 512, depending on how you count the decreases.
Number of stitches knit so far: 57,344
Estimated stitches total for the blanket: 390,981
Estimated weight of finished blanket: 48 ounces
Which leads me to a little dilemma. Where am I going with this? Well, I was trying to sort out all this yarn and figure out how to put it into kits for other people who want to make blankets. I need to know some things like - what size blanket are they knitting? How much yarn do they already have of their own? Do they have color preferences, and am I going to go so far as to try to accomodate them? How many different yarns should I try to include per kit? For my blanket, I'm going to try to get as many different blocks as possible, and I think I probably have a good chance of getting at least one block of each different exactly-what-I-asked-for type yarn received into the blanket. But I'm not sure I'm willing to wind a bajillion .10 ounce balls in order to mix it all up and send to other knitters. They're going to be getting larger chunks, just like I did- and it works out fine. I think I'm going to have to send some e-mails out.
Some other good news: I'm pretty sure I have enough of the Koigu-type yarns to make at least a couch-sized blanket, and the same goes for the wool/cotton/nylon blends.
To answer Karin's question about the Artyarn's UltraMerino - The web site didn't have specific care instructions as far as I could tell at a glance, but it doesn't say anything about superwash either, so I'd say probably hand wash, hang to dry unless we hear differently from another reader. Also, since you mentioned doing both at once - it can be done on two circulars, but my preferred way is to cast on for each on seperate dpns and just alternate working on one then the other. This way it's more portable to carry with you and there's no fumbling with floppy needle ends and multiple balls of yarn. I know, there is the two-circular camp of knitters and they'd tell you the exact opposite. It's all a matter of preference.
posted by Shelly Kang at 11:45 PM
5 Comments:
I've been working on the blankie this weekend, but more to the point, I've been spinning for the blankie. Specifically. Silly. I pull out about a 10th of an ounce of roving and spin about a sportweight single. Then I pull out another one and spin that. So now I have two cakes of yarn with four yarns each in them. They look terrible on the niddy noddy! But the first square from the first ball is LOVELY! I shall post today, but I wanted to get a few more new squares in.
Now I'm thinking about going bigger than I was but since I haven't achieved any full width yet, it doesn't really matter. And I finally explained the project to DH yesterday (he's been working an awful lot) and told him it really is infinitely expandable (and it is) until the i-cord. Which I won't start early. So off we go!
I've only got circulars available, so that'll have to do ^_^. It's a learning curve, either way though. As for the care, at least I wasn't the only one unable to find any information on their website about that yarn. Thank you for looking though ^_^.
Once hubby's home form work, I can start knitting again on the socks, hoping to at least get the second toe done before I pass out (upside/down schedule, gotta love it). Mind you, it be my b-day today, so I may not get a chance to do much of anything, who knows.
As for the kits you're talking about. Just put some together to what you think will work, and have it be that. You didn't have much say in what you got for amounts or colors, and that's partly the charm of the whole thing, isn't it? So why deny others that ^_^. Makes your job easier, too. Just my 2 cents worth ^_^
Hi Shelly!
So sorry that I didn't leave a message w/the yarn...my mom wrote the Korean, not me! I can barely read it let alone write it. I'm glad that Joe's mom got the blankie idea straight--I know how hard it can be to communicate with someone with limited English (my grandparents did not speak ANY English). Hope you use my yarn in the blankie!
Grace
Update on my socks (since I can't share pictures). I finished the toes for both of them and just started on the actual foot. I ran into a snag while picking up stitches with one of them, but I think I fixed it *crosses fingers*.
The best part? The toes match as closely as I could possibly want. Who ever balled these, made sure the colors were darn close to being in sync. I love it! ^_^
Hey Shelly! I just noticed you received my yarn. Do you know about Etsy dot com? I found the blue\brown yarn there. It is from sunshineyarns. It is called 'Taos'. Dani at sunshineyarns is great and dyes bee-yoo-tiful yarn. I am addicted to it! Your blanket is looking great! Between that and your girls, you are one busy lady!
Megan in Ashland, Missouri
P.S. If you are ever in the Columbia area, Hillcreek Fibers Yarn Shop is a wonderful place! Bex, the owner, will take great care of you!
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