Sweaters and Food Scales

The knitting for Caleb's moose sweater to done, I have a ton of ends to weave in and some sewing to do.  I'm not sure when that will happen as the next couple of days are really busy, but we'll see.  It was a close call with the yarn, I made some changes to the pattern to accommodate it and some of the colours I have about a meter to spare.

If you see the post on June 9th there's a picture of the sweater.  I did the main colour two different colours, and the sleeve cuff's are the same as the collar rather than continuing in the orange.  I also make the arm's stripes slightly thicker because I had ample yarn in those colours and adding a few more rows of that yarn meant I'd be able to get all the way to the cuffs in the main colour.  I'll post pictures when it's sewn up.

Sweaters are a bit finicky when trying to use up leftovers as we usually want the two sides and the two sleeves to match one another.  I've found my food scale really helpful for situations such as this.  Before I started the sleeves I weighed each ball of yarn and wrote down how many grams I had, then as I was knitting the first sleeve I'd periodically weigh the ball of yarn that was left.  When it got to half the eight it was when I started I knew I had to save the rest for the second sleeve.

When I started knitting I'd be really faithful to the pattern and wouldn't have tried to make something without knowing I had the right amount of each of the colours.  I've gotten a lot more comfortable in problem solving, and if you're stuck because you've run out I've found that a really good solution is to look at what other parts of the pattern do and see if I can incorporate those elements into the solution.  This helps tie things together visually and makes it look like it was a motif instead of just what happens when you run out of yarn.

Also, it helps to remember that the people who see the finished garment (usually) won't have seen the pattern.  They'll think it looks good or it doesn't, they won't be focusing on ways it was different from the original instructions.  It's easy to loose sight of that fact when we've been working on something for a while and are hyper-aware that things are not the same as what the designer originally did.