(no subject)

[which_chick]

I will not undertake projects with insufficient yarn. I will not undertake projects with insufficient yarn. I will not undertake projects with insufficient yarn.



It's the HoHI. There's been some progress with them even though Socktoberfest is over and they aren't fucking done yet. (wootsauce can start chortling any moment now...)

When last we checked in, the HoHI looked like this:



Now, they look like this:



Including ribbing, I have about five inches of sock finished. This is five inches of the biggest it gets. As we progress, the sock will get a lot smaller... like six fewer inches around smaller. I do not, however, have enough yarn to complete the socks without ordering more. Now, fancy-ass sock yarn like I buy, besides costing an arm and a leg (The HoHI will wind up costing on the close order of eighty dollars, assuming they don't need more than eight balls of yarn total. The eyestrain purple socks cost about forty dollars. People don't hand-knit socks for purposes of economy. Economical socks are the six-pack of white tube socks at Wal-Mart. This is not at all about economy.), comes in something called a dye lot. Because it's artisanal or some such shit, they can't guarantee that the color Bold Red from dye lot 31 is going to be the same as the color Bold Red from dye lot 45.

To avoid having two shades of Bold Red in your project (and even a very slight difference is amazingly visible because human eyes are quite good at color), you're supposed to plan ahead and know how many skeins of yarn your project is going to fucking need before you ever get started. You're supposed to be able to do this even if it's your first-ever two-color project on an untried pattern with only a general idea of the gauge.

I've ordered some more fucking yarn. It probably won't match the existing yarn. I'm currently trying not to think about the whole dye lot thing.

Comments

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I've actually been wondering about the HOHI but I didn't want to inquire so as to look smug about finishing my socks. Rest assured yoru socks are at least twice as good as mine (which have a really bad cuff to the tune of not nearly enough ribbing....)

Am also currently undertaking a project with insufficient yarn. WHen I get sufficient yarn, I tend to have a metric asston left over (my sweater? The yarn I ended up with constitues 175% of that sweater. WAY TOO MUCH. These socks... I have about 66% of the yarn I should have got. Let's see how that works. I think I can make it work except I have feet larger than the universal "women's medium" of sock patterndom.)

Also, woah, 80 bucks? I haven't gotten that into it yet. (Then again, I don't even have a job.)

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Four balls of the stuff (two red, two grey) is $37.00, something I know because I just ordered it online. I am already halfway through four balls (two red, two grey) and I've got about four and a half (on leg) linear inches of sock. Admittedly, that's the fat part.

From here on down, the things decrease from ~14" around to ~9" around in some kind of decrease algorithm over about eight inches. Doing mathly-math, we can see that the first section of sock can be approximated as an open-ended cylinder 4.5" long by 14" (or thereabouts -- it stretches when I put 'em on) around. The amount of sock yarn used to generate this surface can be represented as 4.5" x 14" or 63 sq. in. (The surface of an open-ended cylinder is a rectangle and its area can be calculated as one would do for a rectangle, LxW.)

We can also see (or at least I can see and the rest of all ya'll are nodding with that glazed-eye expression that, to a normal person, would signify boredom of the audience) that the lower portion of the sock down to the ankle bone split can be thought of as a truncated cone section where the base is 14" around and the height is 8" and the ending circ. is 9". We are going to treat this as a trapezoid because that's what it is. The area of a trapezoid is 1/2 (base1+base2)*height. 14 + 9 = 23. 23 * 8 = 184. 184/2 = 92.

I am about halfway through the existing yarn. (Estimating how much of a ball of yarn has been used is fairly difficult for me. I'm ballparking it, here.) I hope that I will have enough yarn to get there. If I'm halfway through the yarn and have generated 63 units of knitting, then a whole ball makes about 120 units of knitting. The legs of the socks will take 63+92=155 units of knitting... and then there's the foot portion. My feet are about 10" long and about 8.5" around, so figure 85 units there (ballpark -- I'm skipping over the heel issue and stuff). A total sock should take 240 units of knitting, or two balls of each color... the amount that I've actually purchased at this point.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

What I like about knitting is although it's all about math, it's geometry-esque math I can actually get behind. That doesn't mean that I actually bother to do it half the time.
Both times I've made socks, my estimation of the halfway point has been far before the halfway point, and I end upw ith a lot of leftover sock yarn. I arbitrarily predict that you will either make it, or make it so close it will make you mad.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I also have the fact that the yarn company says "normal pair of socks takes two balls of yarn" for this yarn. When the yarn company says "normal pair of socks takes one ball of yarn", that means that one ball of yarn will make one knee-sock with a wee bit left over. (I learned this in the eyestrain purple socks.) Therefore (huzzah for deductive reasoning!), when it says "normal pair of socks takes two balls of yarn", then that means that "one knee sock takes two balls of yarn" except that this is stranded and uses basically twice as much yarn as non-stranded. Allowing for the stranded thing, what we're looking at here is "one knee sock takes four balls of yarn". That's the amount of yarn that I am expecting to use, an amount supported by geometry-maths and by deductive reasoning.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

And yeah, I could have done all this work and thinking and stuff *before* I ordered the first batch of yarn. In a perfect world...

I'll know better for Mk II, though.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I have heard the rule of thumb is that stranded knitting takes 1/3 more yarn but I haven't tested that.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

The best way to blend dye lots is said to be to use the two balls in alternating rows for a while. This will give a short vertical float where you switch yarns each row to go along with all those horizontal floats, I think.

For telling if you are or are not halfway through the yarn, nothing beats a nice cooking or postal scale, hopefully one with grams.