The Knitting Fiend

My red capelet will end up at least 11″ long. That should be enough to cover my shoulders in my off shoulder New Year’s Eve party dress. Yay!

Here’s what I’ve done so far. Last night, I ran my “stealth generator” and cast on 76 stitches using what I call a “cheater’s provisional cast on”. This involves using waste yarn; you can see the first row is knit from Red Heart yarn (which previously appeared on my blog about toilet paper holders.) Don’t worry, the cast on row will be removed when I pick up the neck stitches to finish the collar.

To widen the cape, as I knit down toward the hem, I’m increasing 20 stitches every 6 rows. I will continue at this rate way until I reach the shoulders. After that, I’ll increase at a rate of 16 stitches every 6 rows. I plan to keep knitting until I have just enough yarn to finish the collar, edge trim, and whatever I need for the neck closure. (I may knit I-Cord and make frogs. Or maybe, I’ll probably close this with a pretty broach — as I did for my pink machine knit cape. On the other hand, I’ve seen some pretty knit flowers, and I could figure out some sort of closure with a flower accent at the neck. Hmmm….)

I decided snap a photo after finishing the first skein. Admittedly, it just looks like a 3 1/2″ long strip. Close up, you can see it’s wider at the needles than the cast on, but that’s not obvious in the picture since the knitting is bunched up on the needles.

I did a quick and dirty estimate estimate, and I figure the cape should measure at least 11″ from neck to the hem. I’m not going to explain how I estimated this, but it involves the principle that area increases by four when the length doubles.

Since I know the long rows at the hem take much more yarn than the short ones at the neck, I am anxious about running out of yarn. So, I’ve decided that I’ll include some sort of estimator with the generator so knitters can confirm their yardage estimate after they finish their first skein. That way, if they are knitting with well aged stash yarn, they can decide if they want to unravel right away. If they just bought yarn, they can go out and buy more. (Or return some. )

I’m hoping this is past my shoulders by tonight!