twistedloops

Ever since the 2009 Winter Knitty came out, I’ve been thinking about Citron.

While it seems that the majority of Ravelry seems to be knitting it in fingering weight yarn, I’ve decided to stick with the original laceweight.  I’m using an unknown, unlabeled lavender colored baby alpaca laceweight yarn that my mom purchased  She knit a scarf out of it and decided that she was done using laceweight yarn.  Since I received it without a label, and mom didn’t remember what it was, I don’t know the yardage.  I made a guess about yardage based upon the popular alpaca laceweight yarns in Ravelry.  Those yarns seem to average 250 yards per ounce.  Since I have approximately 3 ounces, I figure I have around 775 yards.

Since Citron is a smaller shawl, I think that I’ll probably add a repeat or two of the pattern.  The pattern, as written, calls for 470 yards of laceweight, so I should have enough.  However, I’d like a little better knowledge of how much yarn I actually have and use in the shawl.  After some quick searching this morning, I found this article from Interweave’s Handwoven Magazine on how to make your own yarn balance (like the McMorran Balance).  I may just have to try this and see how much yardage it tells me I have.

I cast on last night and made it through the shawl body first section.  It went very fast.  But, as with all top down/center-out shawls, each section will be slower because of the ever increasing number of stitches.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish this by the year end, but I’m going to try.  I’ve had a goal the last few years of not carrying projects over from one calendar year into the next.

I know I’ve been missing for a while (4 months!), but I plan to update more regularly from now on.  I’ll also post some updates for some projects I’ve finished while I’ve been missing.