915 WHAT??

We’ll get to the title of the post in a moment. First things first. John’s brown socks are finished.

And, as you can see, I did run out of yarn. Kristieinbc suggested making the second sock slightly shorter but that wouldn’t have worked because I was already halfway down the foot by the time I’d finished the first sock. I work on two socks at one time, on two sets of needles, alternating them. It was John’s suggestion to use any brown sock yarn to finish the toe. He has no problem wearing them like this. They may not be pretty, but at least they’re finished.

You may notice that this post is marked Friday, some time in the morning. I did go to work yesterday, worked on one task all morning, a job that needed to be delivered by Monday. By lunch time, I was exhausted and went home. The bus trip, which shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes, took nearly two hours (seems the buses come every half hour at that time of day, not every 15 minutes as they do in the morning and late afternoon). In addition, I realized that John had my house keys (long story) so I had to hunt him down at the college, which happens to be the transfer point for my ride home. I never did find him, but his co-worker and I found my keys on their workbench. Thankfully. By the time I got home, I was almost numb.

Today, with John’s encouragement, I stayed home; I will probably be going to see the doctor later today, not because anything’s wrong, but just to have my hand held. The swelling just doesn’t seem to be going down as quickly as I think it should and last night, it seemed to be affecting my ability to swallow. I just want to be told I’m being a hypochondriac and that there’s nothing wrong. Taking today off will give me just that little extra time to get stronger. All of you who have emailed or commented about the bruising, thank you so much for your concern. It really isn’t as painful as it looks. It’s tender, but certainly not T3 worthy anymore.

One of the good things about going to work yesterday was that which was waiting for me there. I had put in a KnitPicks order just over a week ago and it arrived while I was off. It included this little notion…

…a darning egg. I don’t do a lot of darning, but I decided it would be a good thing to have for those times that I DO want to darn a sock or a glove’s finger.

The package also contained some yarn.

It’s KP Gloss fingering weight (70% merino, 30% silk) in the (now discontinued) colour, Parsley. I bought 11 skeins to make a cardigan for myself. I’d picked out the pattern over a month ago now. It’s a Drops pattern #123-1 (available free here). Going by the yardage of the Drops yarn used in the pattern, I figured that I would need 10 skeins of the KP Gloss.  When ordering discontinued yarn, I like to play it safe and order an extra skein. You just never know! I started it yesterday afternoon.

This is where the title of the post comes in. The cast on for my size (done on 3.0 mm… US2… needles) is 915 stitches! 915! That is a LOT of stitches to cast on. It took me almost two hours just for the cast on and the first row! And the best part? I only had to cast on once. Incidentally, the cardigan is worked in one piece from the hem to the armholes and is shaped; that’s why it’s such a large cast on.

For a cast on of that magnitude, I chose to use a crochet cast on (should I do a tutorial for the crochet cast on?). I placed a marker every 50 stitches; then on the first row, I replaced the markers at every 100 stitches, just to double check. I’m really proud of the fact that I got it right the first time. I’d hate to have to redo a cast on of that many stitches.

The first section of the cardigan is k3, p3 rib and even though there’s just over an inch of it, it’s taking a long time. I’ll have to time it to see how long a row takes, just for the sake of curiosity.

 

Wow, this has turned out to be a long post. I hope you don’t mind. Now, though, I think I’ll go back to knitting, icing my neck, and listening to my latest audiobook download.