Play Yarn Chicken Like a Pro – Part Two

When last I left you, I was busy knitting the sleeves on my IBA cardi (Play Yarn Chicken Like a Pro – Part One)…

Right from the beginning of the knitting, I wasn’t sure if I had enough yarn to make this sweater as long as I really wanted it to be. So, to eke out all the available yardage I had, I put the body of the sweater on scrap yarn, and knit the sleeves first.

That way, I could use all the remaining main color yarn to add maximum length to the body of the sweater.

Then, once I finished using up that color, the plan was to add a skein of Gold to the mix – this would be the last yarn used, to the end.

But, horrors! I started panicking as my gold yarn ball started to shrink.

How could I know when I could switch to my hem ribbing without running out of yarn?

Here’s some little Yarn Chicken secrets that bailed me out:

• Unravel a stitch, measure and record how much yarn in length each stitch uses.

• Mutiply that number by the number of stitches in the row to get the number of inches or yarn used in that row.

• Now divide that number by 36 to get an estimate of the amount of yards used per row. [36″ / 1 yard]

• Then I measured off enough yards to finish the Ribbed Edging of my sweater and wound that up in a smaller ball Without Breaking or Cutting that little ball from the Main Ball.

• Then I stuck it in the middle of the bigger ball to hold it.

NOW I could just do my favorite: Knit Until the Yarn Runs Out on all the rest of the yarn that wasn’t in the Little Ball!

And, this, my autumn colored Iba wrapper cardi, might just be the Longest Sweater I’ve ever made!

• STATS:
main color – 5 skeins – Foliage (1,000 yds) – took me to 24″;
contrasting color – 1 skein – Gold (200 yds) – 30″ total length

I can’t wait to wrap myself in its woolie goodness!

>>> for all the pattern details, click HERE…