Today I finally got around to something that I arguably should’ve done weeks ago: estimating to what length I can knit my Estonian shawl, given the amount of yarn that I have.
Really, I should’ve made my estimates after completing my swatches but before casting on for the shawl itself. I should’ve weighed and measured the swatches, figured out how much fabric I could squeeze out of each gram of yarn, and from that figured out how much shawl I could squeeze out of one skein.
Bah. I was too excited to get started. Similar shawls used about as much yarn as I had, right? So I just figured out how many stitches to cast on for a reasonable width – 5 repeats of the main pattern plus a couple inches of edging on each side ought to add up to about 21" wide – and had at it.
With 8 vertical repeats of the main pattern done, though, it was high time to decide how much further to go before setting the body of the shawl aside and starting the edging. With scale and calculator in hand, I made a few assumptions, and…
…depending on how I conservatively I fudge the numbers, the answer wavers between 15 and 16 vertical repeats of the main pattern. That ought to add up to a shawl between 49" and 52" long. And that means I’m at least halfway through the body of the shawl – whoo hoo!
So now the question is: do I trust my estimates? Of course not. I’d like to make the shawl as long as possible without running short on yarn while knitting the edging. So I’ll knit until I have, say, 14 repeats done, then make some more estimates. Hopefully, being closer to the finish line will give me more confidence in my estimates, and tell me whether to stop at 15 repeats, or to go on to 16… or, with luck, maybe even 17.
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