Double Success

Time is running out before I leave for Rhinebeck, and I'm happy to report that the projects are wrapping up just in time! I knit the last few rounds and wove in the remaining ends on Rainbow's sweater on Sunday afternoon while she worked on a project for school. She tried it on immediately, and I think you can tell that she is thrilled with how it turned out.

I popped it in to soak shortly after, and it bled a lot, so I expect I'll have to give it a citric acid soak at some point (I'm really hoping it was just a case of excess dye coming out, but it's better to be safe than sorry). It's now drying, and I'll do a proper FO post once we've selected buttons and I've sewn them on. If there aren't any suitable buttons in my collection, I'll be shopping for some at Rhinebeck.

The good news about this sweater is that I had plenty of yarn in the end. The pattern called for 700 yards of yarn for the largest size, and I had about 650 (though likely a bit more than that, as all three of my skeins weighed a bit more than 100 g). I did save some yardage by making the body an inch shorter than called for, but in the end I used only 580 yards. It was a real relief not to be playing yarn chicken!

Another project that avoided yarn chicken is my handspun Rhinebeck socks, which ended up using a lot less yarn that I anticipated! In theory, I could have kept knitting until I ran out of yarn, but the legs of these socks were already long at 7.5 inches, so I called it quits.

I used the Fish Lips Kiss Heel for these, working toe up using Judy's Magic Cast On with 20 stitches to start and increasing up to 68. There's about an inch and a half of 2x2 ribbing at the cuff, but the rest is stockinette. The eagle-eyed among you might notice that these are not actually finished quite yet, but I've only got about two more rounds to knit on the cuff of the second sock before I can bind off, so they'll be done officially by the end of the day.

Because I signed up to use this skein of yarn for the Down Cellar Studio Slay the Stash event, and you really need to use all of your yarn to qualify, I'm going to use the leftovers to make a simple water bottle cozy to soak up the condensation. I tried one of my socks on the bottle the other day and it fit perfectly, so I'll just cast on 68 stitches, knit until I'm almost out of yarn, and bind off. It will feel good to get a handspun skein out of the stash!