Last week I posted on Instagram about playing yarn chicken on my Piper’s Journey Shawl. I calculated how many stitches I had remaining when I was halfway done with the border, I weighed my yarn ball 3 times and it looked like I had exactly enough yarn. However, knitting is anything but exact..... so I chickened out.
As as I was going through all of this, my husband said, “why don’t you just get some more yarn? You probably have some that would work anyway.” It is a hand dyed yarn that I got from Fiber Universe in Peoria IL. I live in Indianapolis. I purchased it back in November when I was at the Knitting Pipeline Eagle Crest Retreat. There was a chance I could still get some more yarn...but I might not be able to get more. It is hand dyed, so it might not match. I also didn’t want to buy a whole new skein when I might only need a few more yards, or I might not need any at all. I am sure I would not need it at all if I did actually go to the trouble, and have the good luck to get a second skein that matched.
I decides not to get more yarn. I ripped out the half a border that I had already worked, and I ripped out 6 garter stitch rows. After getting the stitches back on the needle, I weighed my yarn and I had almost exactly 40 grams. I had 33 grams when I started the border on the first try. I was working on the shawl at the February Retreat, and someone had told me they thought they had heard you needed about 30% of the yarn for the border. That may be true but it was a bit too close for comfort for me.
The pattern tells you to increase to 247ish stitches. I am not looking at the pattern, so that might not be the exact number. I originally got to closer to 280 stitches and now I am in the range of 260. I did not bother to count because the way this border is worked makes the actual number of stitches very flexible.
As you may know, the designer of this pattern is Paula Emons-Fuessle of the Knitting Pipeline Podcast. Paula is going through treatment for ovarian cancer and I decided to use this shawl knitting as my dedicated time to pray for Paula’s recovery. So, some extra knitting time is really a good thing.