Yes It's True, I Swatch With Fancy Yarns....

My training for the Knitting Olympics continues.......

The sweater starts with a provisional cast-on, so I thought I had better give it a try before the opening ceremonies.
The first two yarns I grabbed were some Manos and some GGH cotton. Not the cheapest yarn for swatches! Ah well, they're left overs, so what else am I going to use them for?

The pattern specifically calls for doing the long tail cast on, so here I go.....

It was easy to do the cast on, but when I started to take out the waste yarn, it was a bit of a pain. If I pulled out the waste yarn (the orange yarn) as I went, the stitches would start to disappear, like the were getting "sucked in". If I put the needle in the stitches first, it was a pain to pull the waste yarn out, because with the long tail, it wraps around a few times. Something that takes too long isn't really conducive to quickly finishing something for the Olympics, is it?

I looked through some of my books, and on the internet, and there seems to be another version of a provisional cast-on, where the working yarn seems to go around the waste yarn, so the waste yarn is easy to pull out when the time comes. I'll give that a try tonight, and ask the girls at stitch and bitch about it.


As for other knitting news..... I've started a pair of socks in Reggia. I thought it was the patterning yarn rather than just the variegated yarn. It's also going to be too big for me, so it will have to be a gift. I wanted my next project to be for me, so I'm not so interested in them at the moment. But they are small and travel well.












I've also been working on the Blissful Jacket. It's all brown stocking stitch, so not so interesting to look at. I've finished the back, and have started the left front. The finished measurements seem to work for my size, but I know I'll need a little more space for the boobs, so sped up the increases above the waist. Instead of every 10 rows, I increased every 5 or 3, that way I'll be at the correct width a little earlier, hopefully leaving a little more room for the ladies.



All right, I'm off to try another provisional cast-on, but this time I think I'll try using the actual yarn......