Project Rockefeller: Ready for clue 3....or am I?

[janestarz]

A few days ago, I was this far with my Rockefeller knitting:



This was the end of Clue 2, and I was almost ready to get started on the third part of this shawl.
But there was a nagging doubt....which was confirmed by a tape measure:



Gee, isn't that a wee bit wee?
Measuring only 23 centimeters from neckline to bottom edge, this is not even half my back length. The third part of the shawl would only add 5 centimeters at most to this length, and as Kat likes to say: "We like our shawls big."

I asked on Ravelry (twice, since my first message of how high the "piano fingers" were for everyone never got a reply) and used Ravelry's awesome database to look up what other people had done with the same yarn. There were a number of people using 2.75 mm needles just like me, and their shawls were not very big either. Then I looked at people using 3 mm and 3,5 mm needles with this yarn. Some used around 400 meters of the "colour B" yarn (I'm most worried about the colour B, since I've got ample colour A), some used twice as much. There's just no telling why there is such a large difference between the projects, and the project notes were not very helpful.

But then I weighed the skein I had left and found out there was still 60 grams on it. I wasn't nearly halfway through my yarn!
This allowed me to consider the following:

I have several skeins of navy Filcolana to use in the fourth clue should I feel I run low on Malabrigo blue.

I would love to have this shawl cover at least ¾ of my back, but the wing tips don't need to be very long. I can decrease faster in clue 4 if I need to.

The largest eater-of-blue is the back panel in clue 2. If that doesn't use up 50% of my yarn, I can stand to switch to a bigger needle.

I can use some of the Malabrigo blue cut-offs for clue 4, and alternate between dark and ligther blue in the "squares" of clue 4.

Biem and Dorine from Ravelry gave me the final push in the right direction: I could frog back to the start of clue 2, not having to re-do the piano fingers would save me a lot of time and short lengths of yarn. It might actually work to my advantage to have a slightly more sturdy neck yoke and have considerably more drape in the rest of the body.
Thus, I frogged.



You can see just how often you cut the yarn in this shawl: all those little balls of frogged yarn. And using a larger needle means I'll use more yarn this time around, leaving me with more yarn tails to weave in. It's always something.

And because I'm (slightly) overconfident, I've gone up to needles 3,5 mm, as I don't have a 3,25 mm. It knits very, very fast and the fabric is lovely and loose. This will drape beautifully and block airily. Looking forward to zipping through clue 2 for the second time!

Comments

[absintheskiss.livejournal.com]

I love the piano finger effect. It will look lovely when it is done.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Thank you!