What? Casting on another project? I am supposed to be reducing the number of projects I have on the needles, not increasing them! But, yes, I did cast on another project this past weekend. Since I retired I have been working on two things (among many others), finishing up (or frogging) unfinished objects, and knitting from stash. Being an engineer, and also not a fan of expending energy making decisions that ultimately don’t really matter, I simply grabbed the first box of fingering weight yarn in my stash and opened it up, determined to knit everything in there. At one point I had gone through my voluminous stash and sorted and cataloged (on Ravelry) and boxed everything that I had (at that time). I sorted by fiber weight, and then alphabetically by fiber manufacturer/maker, so this box (F1) has yarns that start with the letter A. My Lightning Thief shawl was knit with yarn that came from this box, and so is this project. In fact it is the exact same yarn brand - Araucania Huasca.
I also bought this yarn from Earth Faire as a kit 10 years ago, and according to my Ravelry stash page it was supposed to become a Vestland Shawl, but when I went and looked at that pattern my response was “meh”, maybe not. I have lots and lots of shawls, so how about a tee? A quick Ravelry search led me to the Kaya Tee by Megumi Shinagawa. Two colors, and some pretty lace, to which I can add the beads that came with the yarn. Yesterday I pulled the pattern in to knitCompanion, grabbed my leftover yarn from my Lightning Thief shawl, and knit up a gauge swatch. The pattern calls for US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 6 (4.0 mm) needles, with the gauge given for stockinette on the US 6. I knit my swatch with US 4, US 5, and US 6 needles, matched the US 6 gauge and, more importantly, like the fabric.
I caked up my two skeins (a lovely blue and lavender) and cast on. It took me two tries to get the join looking neat because you actually knit one row after the cast on before joining in the round, but paying careful attention to the tension at the join was all it took. Setting up the charts in knitCompanion was a little problematic as they were obviously not made using charting software as the columns were not a consistent width. I briefly considered recharting them (I have charting software on my laptop computer as well as my iPad), but decided that I could work with what I had and it just wasn’t worth the effort. I am delighted with how it is looking so far. As preparation for taking the photo I put some Barber cord on the needles and stretched it out, and then popped it over my head and turned to my husband with a big smile and said “there!”. Unfortunately he had just taken a sip of coffee and he started to laugh at the little collar over my t-shirt, which resulted in coffee up the nose, which got me laughing, and apologizing.
So why did I cast on, when I just picked up an unfinished object (the Taliesin Socks)? Because working on socks for too long (and I will, just as I will crochet for too long) will cause muscle strains in my hands and forearms, plus the pointy needles poking my fingers (because I like pointy needles for working socks) make my fingers sore, and switching what I’m working on is the best way to avoid that.
Pattern: Kaya Tee by Megumi Shinagawa
Yarn: Araucania Yarns Huasca Multy Botany Lace
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 6 (4.0 mm)
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