I was well into the first section of this afghan before realizing I hadn’t tested yards/row. The first section is 24″ on the knitting machine, which suggests it will take six feet of yarn, and that was what I found: it takes three times the width of a piece to knit in stockinette. At 50″ wide, I’ll need 150″, or 4.2 yards/row.
- Purple: 4.2 x 192 = 807 yards. (I have 364*3=1092, or 285 yards left over.)
- Blue: 4.2 x 128 = 538 yards (I have 364*2=728, or 190 yards extra.)
- Yellow & green: 64 x 4.2 = 268 (I have 364 of each, or about 100 yards extra.)
100 yards/4.2 yards per row= 23 extra rows of green and yellow. Either I can make the afghan wider, or longer. I can also do something else with the additional extra yards of blue and purple.
As I write, I have completed five units of the 15 that make up the first stripe. I will continue in pattern and revisit the math when this section is off the machine. I want to see how wide the knitting is when it is not stretched and may wash and block this section before continuing. The first section is 24″ wide on needles and about 20″ off. At this rate, one section (there will be three) will need to be about 10″ wide to make a 50″ width.
The finished afghan will look better if the middle section is wider than 10″, or I could let the section I’m knitting now be the center, and let the two sides be less than 24″ each. Will test. This is a great case for Photoshop, by the way: take a picture of what you have, and cut and paste to see how it looks if assembled in different ways. Finishing this section and blocking it will let me get a picture of the front, too.
I’m carrying the purple up along the right side, and carrying the blue between the two stripes. The green and yellow yarn is cut at the end of each stripe.
