Patches Is Home

Patches and I are home to temperatures in the minus category and snow versus sand.  Remind me again why I love Canada.  Oh yes.  The blessing in our winters is that the temps and times are good for knitting.

When last I showed you Patches,  I had this much completed.

 

 All knit in Florida, in the sunshine on the back deck.  Consider it a great gauge swatch.  Because that is what it became.  On my last night down south, I ripped it all out and re-started.  

You see, my gambling  was fallible.  For years, I have used  an easy - and accurate - formula for "what would the gauge be if I doubled this yarn?"  But the yarn for Patches had a range.  I gambled on the higher end, and was wrong.    

For Patches, I am using a box of yarn that Nicki gave me.  One year for Christmas her husband gave her the entire colour range of Knit Picks yarn.  Palette they call it.

Nicki used or kept all the colours that pleased her.  Then one day at knit group, she arrived with a box of autumn colours and plopped them in front of me. 
"Here", she said. "These are your colours."  And just like that,  I was several balls of yarn richer.

The gauge on this yarn is  28-32 stitches over 4 inches.  My formula for doubling has always been that the doubled yarn gauge will be about two-thirds of the stated ball band gauge.  In this case, two thirds of 28  would be roughly 18 and  two thirds of 32 would be roughly  22.

Thinking most likely the higher gauge would be the more accurate, (why, I don't know) I calculated my cast on number accordingly and started knitting.    8 inches later, I thought to check.  Whoee!  I had a giant sweater on the go.  Rip.

Now, using the two thirds theory again but for 28 stitches over 4 inches, plus a few stitches for my hips, I am on track and back to where I was a week ago.  Such is the life of a knitter. No wonder we need long winters.