Yarn Chicken

Yarn Chicken - that's the game you play with yourself to see if you have enough yarn left in your every decreasing ball of yarn to finish your project. You are so close! Of course there is enough left to bind off the bottom edge of the shawl! Or is there? The only way to find out is to keep knitting.

A good game of yarn chicken is all well and good as long as there is enough yarn. I usually win yarn chicken but I always buy at least one more ball of yarn than the directions say I will need. That's partially because I HATE to loose but also because I tend to knit loose which takes more yarn. It also means that I frequently end up with something that is miles too big. And that's the reason that I finally decided I need to knit a gage swatch. But I digress...

In this case, I lost the yarn chicken game. That is my shawl with only the bind off row to go and not nearly enough yarn. Well, crap. I tried to fix it by doing the bind off row in a different yarn but that was not satisfactory. This shawl is knitted with a stunning 8 ply fine merino yarn and my finishing it with anything else, no matter how nice, just wasn't good enough.

I tore out the unacceptable bind off and tinked it back several rows so I could finish it as it should have been done - with the appropriate yarn. It's a couple of rows shorter but the shawl is wonderful!