Irish Spring Delight Shrug

1Irish Spring Delight Shrug
Originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/38484177@N04/

After knitting myself some socks with my Handspun Irish Spring Delight yarn. I decided to knit this shrug, because I still had quite a bit of yarn left over.
August 27th 2010

I usually don't try to get gauge when working on projects, but with this shrug I thought I'd better since my handspun yarn wasn't near as thick as the pattern calls for.....besides I have a tendency to knit tight. So I started with the size 9 needle that the pattern called for and cast on the 16 stitches and then working in the traveling leaf pattern for 22 rows to see if it measure the 4 inches that the gauge recommended.

Well, of course I didn't get the gauge the first time out, so I moved up to a size 10 needle and again cast on the 16 sts and knit in the pattern for 22 rows....again I still didn't have gauge so this time I figured I'd try a size 11 needle and repeated the same number of stitches and rows......now I was way over the 4 inches so I figured I'd go down to a size 10 1/2 and give that a try. Well, the third time was the charm and I got the right gauge and then ripped my gauge swatch out and started casting on for my shrug.

I worked the cuff just like the pattern but my cuff didn't come to the length that the pattern called for. The pattern said that the cuff should measure 1 1/2 inches and my cuff was 1 1/4 inches....even with the gauge being dead on. Then the pattern said to knit in the Traveling Leaf Pattern for 13 repeats and that from the cast on to the last row of the 13th repeat the shrug should measure 21 1/2 inches.....my shrug was 23 inches. Then the pattern said to repeat the cuff only working backwards from row 7 down to row 1 then bind off. The pattern says that the finished shrug should measure 24 1/2 inches.....mine measures 25 1/2 inches. This is due to my using a larger needle size then what the pattern calls for. Other then this there is no difference in the pattern.

This picture shows the front of the shrug. Hopefully the link I've posted here shows up and will let you see the back of the shrug. http://www.flickr.com/photos/38484177@N04/4945181529/

I really enjoyed knitting this shrug. It was a very quick knit. I started it on the 27th and finished it on the 31st. I probably could have finished it a lot sooner if I would have worked on it more then 3hrs and 40 minutes a day.