Help please - Yarn

[Waterlily]

I bought some beautiful red sparklyish yarn from Aldi today, it comes with a pattern for a scarf. I would love to make a cardi with it but it doesn't say what ply it's equivalent to. It says to use 5mm needles so would be a fairly loose knit which I would like. Just wondering if you can search for a pattern by needle size lol. Daft I know, I wouldn't mind it being bigger needles but no smaller.

[RozMinis]

5mm needles sound like an Aran weight, but if the scarf if loosely knit then it could be double knitting. I know the shawls I have done in the past using 3 ply have been knitted on needles that are far larger than those used in Sarah Don't book on Shetland Lace.

You could try finding a pattern on Revelry for an Aran weight yarn, then try a tension sample on the size 5 needles to see if it is the same. I've never tried finding patterns by needle size, mainly because we don't all knit at the same tension as the designer, or use the same yarn for that matter.

Hope this helps you a little.

Roz

[Waterlily]

Thanks Roz.

I looked at some patterns online and thought I'm not paying £2.99 for 1 pattern. Most of mine are only pence - old and new pence. I looked through my patterns and found a lot of jumper patterns that I thought would be OK but I really wanted a cardi. Found a couple of patterns and the one I decided to do is for Corinne by Wendy on 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 needles. I'm actually doing it on old size 7 and 5 because I didn't have any of the shorter needles in metric. Can't use long needles lol.

I've just done a bit of ribbing and it seems to be knitting up OK. Can't wait to get on the bigger needles lol.

[Waterlily]

!!!!!!!!! I got to the last row of ribbing which was an increase row, increase in every fourth stitch - got to the last increase and dropped a stitch. The yarn is very fluffy and I couldn't see what was what, tried to pick the stitch up but failed miserably so I had to unpick the whole lot. Couldn't even see enough to unpick row by row. I even found it hard to see what stitch to start with on each row. It did look nice though. The thing I hate most about knitting is casting on and casting off lol.

[RozMinis]

There are loads of free patterns on Revelry. I don't normally buy, at least I didn't until I started buying patterns for the Sirdar Colourwheel yarn. I've just bought two baby shawl crochet patterns on eBay. Both have been designed by the seller in question, so I didn't mind paying the price for them.

I know what you mean about dropping stitches on fluffy yarn. I've just made myself a cowl with Sirdar Touch, at least I think that is what it is called. There was me happily knitting away on Tuesday at the Needle/Natter group, then discovered I had been knitting every row, when it should have been stocking stitch. Tried to pull it back, but had trouble getting the stitches back on the needle. When I did I discovered there were several stitches missing, so I ended up pulling the whole thing out. I started again, then after the first couple of inches I found I had a stitch too many. Well I wasn't going to frog the thing again, so carried on regardless.

Anywhoo it is finished now, just need to make a hat to go with it. I'm waiting for some larger needles to come from Barnyarns (via Amazon) before I can make a start on it. Must remember that the hat is in garter stitch, not stocking stitch!!!

Roz