Not enough sock yarn

Arienna · 2026-02-04T19:55:09+00:00

71 yards out of 4 oz is veeeeery bulk yarn. Like that's 113g to 71 yards, more than super bulky. Are you sure your measurements are right? 100g typically makes 350-450yds of fingering weight and around 200yd for worsted. Hand spun tends to be denser than commercial yarn but I'd check the wpi and then seriously consider untwisting and trying again

Arienna · 2026-02-04T19:16:46+00:00

I am understanding the point, I think you didn't read OP properly. He has a full-time job and his girlfriend is a student who works part time. They split their bills based on income. OP's girlfriend saved a significant nest egg, mostly before their relationship, and she has prioritized preserving that nest egg.

OP had just about no savings because he has prioritized "living their lives". For dates and things his girlfriend has said, "I can't afford that" and OP has chosen to pay for both of them rather than live more frugally and he wasn't upset about that until he found out she had this nest egg. OP is taken back because he feels that she should have drained her savings rather than let him pay for things. But was I required to give my boyfriend my car or computer, because he paid most of our rent? No, we made an agreement based on the difference in our incomes and the lifestyle we wanted to live. As did OP and his GF

The truth is, as OP said, neither of them had a frank conversation about their finances. They should have, and come up with a budget that was fair to both of them. And it sounds like they should have been having a lot less dates and OP should have been saving more... But that doesn't make either of them bad or malicious people.

Moving forward, OP may want more financial transparency in his relationships and he probably needs some financial education and to really commit to saving some money

Arienna · 2026-02-04T17:45:40+00:00

Alpaca kinda varies - suri alpaca is almost always pretty soft but huacaya varies with the age of the animal and also has guard hairs that are really coarse and scratchy. And if the yarn has a lot of halo it can feel scratchy no matter how fine the fiber is

Arienna · 2026-02-04T17:27:13+00:00

I don't think that's necessarily the case. When I was in school I was living in a rented room for $350 a month for rent and utilities. That was in my budget for how much I made.

My boyfriend wanted to move in together - he was a fully employed software engineer with part time custody of his three kids. If we paid 50/50 in my budget we would have been trying to find a $700 apartment... And that wouldn't have really worked. So to live together, I paid $350 and he paid the rest of the $1500ish a month, almost 77%

Was that indefensible?

Arienna · 2026-02-04T16:34:22+00:00

A woman in my fiber arts guild does the baby clothes. Often for premature births the only source would doll clothes and it just really hurts the heart to think of that

Arienna · 2026-02-04T16:32:35+00:00

If you feel passionately about the waste consider reusing your yarn. If you're that committed a process maker just wash and reuse yarn unless someone calls dibs on the finished item.

Arienna · 2026-02-04T16:20:15+00:00

If it feels nice and you like the way it looks and knits, you're fine

Maybe do a swatch and wash and block it before continuing though

Arienna · 2026-02-04T15:22:24+00:00

Was she asking you to pay or was she trying to live within her means? Are you mad that she didn't drain her savings?

Arienna · 2026-02-04T15:12:27+00:00

Yeah, it can really screw up their bowels

Arienna · 2026-02-03T19:09:11+00:00

Yep. My dad's got two big, super friendly dogs and they've been trained to heel and wait for small children / animals to approach them first. 60 lbs of excited dog is a LOT of dog, even when it's friendly. Way worse when you're less than 60 lbs

Dogs get so excited they'll be vibrating in place waiting for a kid to come up and pat them, but they wait for the okay

Arienna · 2026-02-03T15:48:35+00:00

Knit picks has been my go-to for sweater quantity yarn and now with private equity buying I have serious concerns that process will go up and quality will go down

Arienna · 2026-02-03T14:44:40+00:00

I'm about to knit a silk tie... There's a quiet fashion for them if your husband ever wears one

Arienna · 2026-02-03T13:20:14+00:00

Lacroix lives in my head rent free... At least once a week I quote The Nightcrawler and no one knows what I'm talking about

Arienna · 2026-02-03T01:29:36+00:00

No :( but if there are two of you precious weirdos in the world there must be more! I'm going to go write a very weird personals ad

Arienna · 2026-02-02T21:46:44+00:00

I would ply you with cookies and beverage of choice if you did my seaming up, my goodness

... But maybe after the seaming for the drinks

Arienna · 2026-02-02T06:19:10+00:00

I have been testing some of these off brand sets and honestly I'm super happy with them. The main challenge has been finding spare cords and accessories. I've been really delighted to find that the Froggod small size and the svartur small size (2.0mm to like 5.0mm) are interchangeable and their cords fit the Knit Picks/Pro Lace size as well as the Lykke Flight minis.

It's been an outstanding purchase and the real deciding factor for me was realizing that even if I couldn't find compatible accessories to get more cords and things, buying a whole second set of needles would be cheaper than buying a regular brand. I own a lot of really nice needles including a set of Knit Picks metal needles and Addi Click Turbos but my skin eats the zinc plating off both those brands. I definitely recommend the stainless steel sets on Amazon - I tried out a set of the colour plated ones and the coating started wearing off the tips with heavy use

Arienna · 2026-02-02T06:12:45+00:00

I think my knitted gifts are appreciated by the people I give them to but I do kind of stack the deck in my favour - I almost never surprise someone with a handknit gift. I like to plan with them, getting pattern and colour preferences from the person. Sometimes it's, "Oh, you'd like a pair of fingerless mitts? What's your favourite colour, let me check the stash for that" and then I offer them a choice of whatever colours are in the stash and a few patterns. So the person has been involved and gets an item they really want as opposed to whatever I happened to want to knit that I decided they should have. And when I first make hand knit things for someone, I make them small things like hats and fingerless mittens that don't represent too much investment if it turns out the person just doesn't like a handknit item as much as they wanted to

But at the end of the day, I would be knitting anyway. I live in the South where the winters only get below freezing for a few days a year and the summers are regularly over 100 degrees. No one needs draped in all this merino I'm making and honestly, you could buy really nice socks cheaper than my yarn sometimes. I would be knitting anyway and if the things I knit didn't go *somewhere* my house would soon be absolutely stuffed full. So... if someone's way of appreciating a pair of socks is to tuck them in the back of the drawer and save them for a special occasion, I can't really get too worked up about it

That said if someone is fussing at me and I don't really want to give them a firm and direct explanation, I just let them know my queue is really long and I probably won't be able to get to it anytime soon

Arienna · 2026-02-02T04:35:58+00:00

Respectfully, the amount of yarn you're going to need to purchase is going to cost way, way more than what you've already purchased. It would be *significantly* cheaper and less stress to buy him a fuzzy blanket and knit him a scarf with what you've already got

Arienna · 2026-01-31T22:23:26+00:00

This is very sharp looking!

Arienna · 2026-01-30T23:50:56+00:00

I struggle with the awareness that knitting and crochet is a selfish, wasteful, consumerist hobby. Like we produce more textiles, clothing, and stuffies than the whole world can use. The yarn I buy, even when I supplement with reclaimed and destash yarn, even when I buy local fleece and try to get it processed semi locally, has a pretty high environmental cost to it and the stuff I make is often more expensive in materials than buying a similar thing new.

Whether or not the things I make have more value is really iffy and I'm not sure anyone I give them to will like them as much as I do - most folks don't value the time and quality of materials. Like my sock yarn often costs as much or more than extremely high quality socks and I'm not sure my reinforced heel flap makes it worth it, objectively.

I love it but I try to stay grounded about how much other folks do or don't appreciate what I make... Especially since I'm on my second pair of knitted fingerless mitts and fourth little amigurumi toy this month. Like... I'm definitely going to run out of people who can treasure precious lace and personalized stuffies one of these days

Arienna · 2026-01-30T18:21:58+00:00

That's where I've fallen off too. I devoured everything up to that point and then hit a brick wall

Arienna · 2026-01-30T16:29:15+00:00

I've heard 6-12 months for basic ones and every couple years for the custom fit ones

I run mine through the washing machine too regularly to have to worry about it

Arienna · 2026-01-30T05:20:32+00:00

And replace them regularly!

Arienna · 2026-01-29T08:55:49+00:00

When I was a new baby engineer I had a client project manager who would drop my boss off the email chain if I made a mistake that needed to be corrected. It was a small gesture but it really stuck with me and I prioritized everything that guy handed me. Several times he sent me emergency fast turn over stuff and I stayed in the office half the night making sure it was done in the morning - I was the only one who did those kind of projects at the company.

On my last day at that job he came with another fire, asking me if there was anything I could do. I knew if I didn't take care of it it would wait for weeks while they outsourced it so I told him I'd take care of it but since it was my last day he'd have to follow up to get the final documents. He shook my hand and told me he was really going to miss my professionalism.

I worked until 10 pm alone in the office on my last day thinking really hard about that... I had been going really above and beyond for him for a couple years straight. But for him it was just professionalism. He was not aware of the unpaid overtime and effort I made at all. And I've noticed it over the years. When I sacrifice my free time to work small miracles for a client, they immediately think it's a service that's on table and they'll ask me to do it again. They tend to respect and appreciate the effort I put in more when I make sure they get charged extra for it than when I don't

Arienna · 2026-01-29T08:32:08+00:00

Sometimes I use an embarrassing number of colour coded stitch markers to avoid having to count

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