So Close, Yet Still So Far...

Did I actually say on Jan. 10 that I hadn't purchased any yarn yet?  I guess what I meant was that no new yarn has entered my house yet.  Somehow I forgot about the yarn I ordered from elann.com which arrived on Friday.  Oops.  Four balls for a custom project (of course, I need only a few yards of each ball); the yarn came to $13.78 yet the bill total came to $21.17.  I thought there was no provincial sales tax when you order from outside your province?  That was only $1.49 anyway.  Still, would be good to know for the future.  The four balls came to 200gr.

Onwards.

Don't you hate it when you finish (knitting) a project and breathe that sigh of relief, thinking, that you've finished a project.  Then you remember you have not just sew it up, but find 5 buttons, sew them on, weave in all the ends....Baby Surprise Jackets are great for using up odd balls of yarn--due to their construction you're working both sleeves, and the back and both fronts on each row.  So, if you get to the end of the row (or, since it's usually done in garter stitch--the end of two rows), before running out, you know that you'll have a nice stripe.  However, this leaves a lot of ends to weave in.  And the sewing of the shoulders is not your normal seaming job; it's stitches to rows and often just looks a little funny.  And then finding buttons....

A long time ago (okay, probably late last summer), I started a BSJ in browns since I don't have a lot of boy stuff in my stash.  I had a Ziploc bag of browns and blacks so figured this would be a great way to use it up.  On and on it went.  I used up several of the small balls of brown (and one of camo) and was left with just one ball of brown and one of black.  I finally decided to finish it off this past week.  Last night I was casting off...the whole time wondering if I had enough to finish the cast off in the brown.  Indeed, I did make it, with about 12" to spare. 

Now, for the finishing.  I usually don't mind finishing, but since this is just going in the gift/store box, it's hard to stay motivated.  Interesting.  I'm using the HTML option for loading the pictures, and Blogger rotated those two pictures, but not the one below.

This is a pretty large baby blanket I was making on the LK150.  It's 5 colours, 25 wedges.  It's going to be a doozy.  I need to graft 142 stitches and weave in lots of ends.  Not just 50 ends, but more, since it was double stranded and sometimes one ball would run out but not the other.  Sometimes I had to cut the second strand because it was the cone and in order to wind a new ball I had to have a free end of the cone.  My ball winder would make only these little balls because the yarn was very slippery, and they'd get to a certain size and just fly off the winder.  I should have used my cone winder instead, but I have to wind that by hand, LOL.  More work!

Yarn In:  200gr

Yarn Out:  92gr (the ruffle scarf from last post)

Balance:  108gr more brought IN than used up

Costs:  $21.17/11 days = $1.92/day

I'm starting this tally from Jan 1.  I do have another hat finished, but I want to wait till I have it's mate done too.