Bright Ideas

I think there's a fine line between a genius idea and a stupid idea.

Sometimes I scare myself.  Need a reminder?  Check out this dumb move from the archives.  You'd think with past experiences and living with my brain for as long as I have and knowing the way it works I'd learn and become very leary of a bright light bulb going off over my head.  But nooooo.....

You are not allowed to laugh at me and I will share.  I want to knit two socks at once (because I never seem to finish the second sock) using a ball of the Regia I showed you in the last post.  The problem is it's one ball.   I need two.  Normally I'd just remedy this by knitting from both ends of the ball.  If I do that with this yarn the stripes will come out vice versa from each other on the sock.   Could be an interesting design detail for some but I'm a matchy person and they have to be the same.  Just sayin'   ;-)   (that's for Norma).

So I started thinking about how I could separate the ball into two that are the same size.  I thought I could just wind off a ball and weigh it as I go until I get to 75grams on my scale.  I thought that wouldn't really work though because you can get a lot of extra yardage in a gram.   Okay.  Not a lot but I wanted to be more precise. 

Light bulb!  I'll wind it off on my niddy noddy so I can actually count the wraps!  Genius, right?  That's what I thought, too, until my arm was about to fall off about halfway through the ball.  Stupid.  I could have used my skein winder.  It would have been quicker and easier.   

I used my 1.5 meter Ashford niddy noddy.  The yarn band says there's 375 meters in this ball.  I counted 226 wraps.   I could have counted wrong and be off by a few wraps but I figure that at only 339 meters (and don't even get me started about the knot near the end).  That's 36 meters off.  Even if I miscounted a couple of wraps, that's a lot of yarn but we'll worry about the difference in yardage later.   

Back to my plan.  I'll count off half the wraps and put a marker there so that when I'm winding it back into balls off the swift I'll know where to stop.  I know.  Genius.....

Yea.  Not so much.  When it's on the niddy noddy... you can't tell exactly which wrap goes in what order, so if I put a marker on wrap number 113, it's not necessarily going to be in the middle of the yardage.  In fact, the odds are that it definitely won't be in the middle.  ARGH!  See?  Stupid.

Light bulb!  I'll put it on the swift and mark off one spoke so that I can count rotations as I'm winding it off into balls.  It may not have been the most efficient way but it only took about 45 minutes (counting taking pictures) and now I can just knit toe up until the yarn is gone.  This makes me very happy.  I know.  You don't have to say it.  I've lived with me for 43 years. I know I'm a little tightly wound.

They each weigh 75 grams.   Ahh.  Perfection.   I recounted the yardage.   Still came up with 226 wraps.   I realize that the yarn company probably had it under tighter tension when they measured it but holy cow!

So now I'll be in a big rush to see what I come with at the end of each sock.  Of course, I'll lose a little yardage on one from making the socks start out at the exact same color repeat (again... I know.  Just let it go.  I can't be changed).

I'll keep you posted.

Forget Saturdays!  28 DAYS LEFT!

Comments

[jayne]

Okay, I might not go that far, but I wanted to count yardage on some handspun yarn I bought from a spinner. I didn't have any winders or tools, so I wound it around and around the two posts on either side of a set of stairs, measured, multiplied (got my yardage) and rewound it all by hand. Socks...I do them the same if it is not more work than knitting them in the first place. I'm not that obsessive about it. I'm making a stripedy pair of knee socks that I could match but have decided to allow to be mismatched this time around. J, who used to be a lot more obsessive and is in a process of reforming. I like the changes you've made to your blog. Nice clean look.

[PJ]

oh, i didn't mean it like that, but I think you know what I meant ;}

[PJ]

loved your winding story. yeah, what a person does in their last 28 days! haha..

[Angelika]

Sometimes we just have to go to extremes to accomplish the perfect look. Don't worry, same thing would have probably happened to me.

[Cate]

Well, at least you can laugh at yourself. I kind of like unmatched socks myself. Happy day 27.

[Kat]

Woo hoo! And when you wake up tomorrow it will be 27. I hope the time flies until Dan gets back and then slows to a crawl so you can savor every moment together.

[Kathleen]

It's the process, right? :)

[Lisa]

When DH and I were in Italy a few months back, I stood in front of Michaelangelo's David and thought, D*mn! I wish I brought my Knitter's magazine - this would be an awesome picture. And then I thought of your Egypt picture and had a little laugh. The funny part is when I first read your post, I couldn't for the life of me understand why you called yourself a dork. I looked and looked and nothing. Finally, I realized what the problem was and I was happy to know I was a card-carrying member of the knitting dorks as well! Happy Sock knitting.

[Kim]

Hahahaha....I'm laughing because it is nothing I would ever do....LOLOL! Not because I am smarter, but because I am too lazy to put that much thought into it...LOL

[Lisa]

Someone at my LYS is almost as picky as you and I are. (I would have gone through all your maneuvers too!) She has simplified it all by just buying two balls of yarn, knitting one sock from each, and then knitting a second pair the same way. I don't think I could do it though--I like all my socks to be different!

[bets]

I would just wind off to a certain part of patterning. Lazy ass me. Bets

[Leisel]

I'm not sure the link came through... if not, you can just go to my blog, and click on the Socks category... it's currently the second post from the top there.

[Leisel]

Yeah, same here... I'm trying to figure out how this is a weird thing to do (I can even see myself making the niddy noddy mistake). See... I do such things, too: http://sagebrush.typepad.com/knotagain/2006/05/a_peek_into_my_.html I'm very proud of myself for letting the heels be just close. The ladies in my knitting group all love to laugh at my perfectionist nature about such things. And you're right... there's really no changing it.

[Wool Winder]

I didn't laugh because it sounds exactly like something I would do.