June 27, 2017

Worked out I will need 92 ridges after the first two set up rows to get 200 sts. Going to start with 15 ridges of Tosca, then 1 of Oceanic, then decrease Tosca/increase Oceanic by 1 ridge for each section. Hopefully it works! Final section of Oceanic will be shorter but then the whole border will be that colour.

July 3, 2017

Looking at the lengths required: 400-450m for the pattern as written. The alpaca is ~400m per 200g, so as long as I have 100g of Oceanic left (and I don’t do too many extra rows of the body), I’ll be fine.

July 4, 2017

136sts before starting second Oceanic stripe. Have 70g of Tosca left after the first ridge after the second Oceanic stripe, which means I’ve used 56g so far.
168sts after 6th ridge in Tosca after Oceania stripe. 53g of Tosca left, 132g of Oceania. Have used 73g of Tosca. Worrying about running out now! Also have used 10g of Oceania over 6 rows.

July 6, 2017

196 sts after last Tosca ridge. 24g of yarn left. So I used 102g of Tosca for the body, plus 10g Oceania and whatever the last ridge of Oceania before edging makes.
I have 129g of Oceania before starting the edging, so the body weighs 115g total. I have more than that so hopefully the border won’t be a problem.

July 10, 2017

41 border repeats to go… and 10 days to go. So I need to do at least 4 repeats per day.
Trying to cable without a needle as per here.
4 repeats done.

July 11, 2017

6 repeats of border done today. 31 to go!
Did 8 repeats all up, 29 to go.

July 12, 2017

4.5 repeats done. 84g of yarn left, so have used 45g so far. Should have plenty left.
Total 5 repeats today, 24 left.

July 13, 2017

Only 4 repeats done today, started late.

July 14, 2017

Did 4 repeats before going out for the night.
Did another 3 after dinner. 13 repeats left to go.

July 15, 2017

6 repeats done today, 7 left to go. I will make this with plenty of time!
Ended up doing two more repeats before going to sleep. I think I can finish it tomorrow.

July 16, 2017

Finished!
41g of Oceania left.

I decided to do a mix of steam and wet blocking. So it’s growing a fair bit, but not as much as if I’d washed it. Reading about blocking alpaca and the stretch made me wary of dunking it in the sink and then giving it the towel treatment. Ran out of T pins because I pinned out every single little point. I’m trying to work out how to blockade my walk in robe so that no one walks over it before it dries…