Completion -- and Then Some

As I hinted in my last post, I achieved success in my goal to finish my wrap before the end of July with time to spare -- but trying to photograph it on my own was another matter!

Pattern: ADVENTuresome Wrap by Ambah O'Brien (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (80% superwash merino/20% nylon) in Wisp (main color) and Holiday Pops mini skein set (contrast colors)
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm)
Started/Completed: January 14/July 29

This project had been on the needles for far too long, and once I forced myself to be monogamous, I did the bulk of the knitting in a relatively short amount of time. So don't let the dates fool you -- there were actually very few days of active work on it during that time span.

The wrap was designed to be knit with one of those Advent mini skein sets that have become so ubiquitous the past few years. I've been getting Lisa's holiday sets for a while now, but I think last year was the first year I decided to do yarn mini skeins rather than her fiber option because I was feeling so overwhelmed by the size of my fiber stash. I figured that unless I had a pattern that was specifically for such a set, the minis would never get used, so that's how I got to the wrap. The pattern itself isn't too terribly challenging, but there are three wrong-side rows in each pattern repeat that have decreases, and the problem with not working on a project regularly is that you forget such things, and that leads to a lot of tinking. After just a couple days of monogamously working on it, though, I had the pattern memorized and could get through it faster. I still had those moments of forgetfulness, but I caught them much faster.

As with any pattern designed for mini skeins, I had a lot of ends to weave in. At first I was cutting the main color, too, thereby giving myself an additional two ends for each stripe, but I quickly realized that I could just carry it up the side and save myself some finishing time. I also paused my knitting after every four or five stripes to weave in ends so that I didn't have to deal with them all at the end, and that proved to be a smart move.

I made no changes to the pattern other than accidental user-error-type ones; there were a couple of times I'd missed a decrease or somehow was short a stitch, so I fudged things to make up for them, and I honestly can't find where they were now. I must admit that I did a quick-and-dirty blocking job and thus the wrap is probably not as tidy or crisp as it could be, but I just wanted to be done at the time, and as I'm not entering it in any beauty contests, I'm happy with it the way it is.

In all, I used 1,124 yards/1,027.8 meters of yarn, about 63 grams (252 yards/230.4 meters) of the main color and 218 grams (872 yards/797.4 meters) of the mini skeins. When I finished each stripe, I cut the mini skein strand and tossed what was left in my project bag, and there was enough yarn leftover from the whole project to whip up an easy charity hat, which I finished yesterday afternoon:

This is just a basic beanie holding the yarn double -- one strand is the Wisp (the main color in the wrap) and the other strand is the leftover from the minis. I used the clasped weft join to add in each scrap and ended up using all the mini leftovers. The reddish yarn at the very top of the crown was dug out of my big bag 'o scraps. The finished hat used a total of 240 yards/256 meters of yarn. I have just a small amount of the gray leftover, and it makes me very happy to have used up nearly all of the yarn from a big project. I'm also quite happy with the cheery colors in the hat and hope it'll make someone smile (and keep their head warm) come this winter.