I'm Back!

Unfortunately I wasn't vacationing in some exotic locale, I came down with the weird Starts-Like-Allergies-But-Then-Settles-Into-Your-Chest-And-Head-Virus that's going around.  Medical scientists have no interest in curing it because by the time they type the name of the virus, their test subjects are over it.  Anyway, much sleeping, coughing and sneezing has been taking place.  Now things are better though and we're getting back to normal.

I did a little bit of knitting in between naps and hot tea and stars are perfect for short little bursts of creativity!  I found that if I have pre-measured the yarn lengths, I can get a Small star knit to the point of blocking in just under an hour.  Medium and Large stars take just a little bit more time.  Fortunately, I had done some pre-measuring before I got sick so all I had to do was knit and block stars.  Yesterday, when I was feeling better, I stuffed and finished them, so now I have seven more stars!  There's one more Hydroponic star and the others are Hedgehog Fibres Sock in Dragonfly using leftovers from my first Relax.

Just a note about the pre-measuring:  in the pattern (Scintillation) you measure your yarn (she gives lengths) and start in the middle.  That way you only have two ends to weave in, which is a very nice thing.  I found that for me, and in fingering weight, the suggested lengths are longer than necessary.  As a pattern writer, I totally understand why - you can knit these in any yarn and heavier yarns will use more yardage than finer yarns; and everyone's tension is a little bit different, so even if two people knit the same size star from the same yarn using the same needles, they might use different lengths of yarn.  If you underestimate yarn necessary in pattern writing you will get complaints - think torches and pitchforks here, maybe a crazed mob or two.  If you vastly overestimate yarn, the most you will hear will be mild grumbling but even that will be minimal.  When I knit my first star (the Large size), I measured out the length for the Large in the pattern and I kept up with my yarn ends when I finished knitting it.  Then I measured the yarn ends - what I didn't use - and subtracted that from the original length.  I added back a little bit for wiggle room, safety, and variation between yarns and that's my new length for Large.  Then I worked backwards, knitting the Medium and Small stars the same way, figuring out how much fingering weight yarn each size of star takes for me.  I'm not going to share my lengths for the reason that you might need more or less, but I will tell you that the pattern estimation for the largest size has less waste than the medium and small, so start there.  If this sounds ridiculously complicated and you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.  Just use the recommended amounts in the pattern and use the leftovers for stuffing your stars!