New knitter with 2 (somewhat stupid) questions

How-to Questions
1

Okay, I feel silly even posting this- but I keep telling myself the only way I’ll learn is by doing, right??!!

I’m in the process of knitting my 2nd felted bag. I was so pleased with the way that the first one turned out, I decided to make another, larger one. I got adventurous, and am using a bullky weight black wool with a blueish, blackish eyelash. The finished bag is supposed to be 17 inches long before felting. I’ve gotten about 12 inches finshed. Here are my questions:

I realized last night that I must have dropped a stitch- there is a hole about 4 inches down!!! The eyelash is so fluffy I didn’t notice until then. Question: is there anything I can do to fix it, aside from ripping out those 4 inches? Since the bag is going to be felted, could I just take a bit of yarn and close the hole with that? :doh:

Second question: I had a hard time putting down the knitting last night and kept on going longer than I should have- this morning, I picked it up, and realized that somewhere along the line I lost my stitch marker. It is lying on my family room floor, next to the couch where I was knitting!! Uhhhhh…how important is it in this instance? Do I need to do anything?? :oops:

Oh- and while I’m at it- one more question- the pattern calls for 4 skeins of yarn, worked double strand, for the size bag I’m making. I chose to use the bulky weight yarn- the woman at the yarn store said I could do that and use one strand. I figured it would be easier to do that since I was using the eyelash also. So, I bought 2 skeins of the bulky, since I wouldn’t be doing double strands. I don’t have enough yarn! Was this just a beginner’s mistake- should I have known to buy more? Yikes!

Thanks for your help-----------------------

Margie

2

First off, there are no stupid questions!

The hole–you could use a crochet hook to bring it back up, but in this instance with the bulky yarn and eyelash, I would just stitch it closed, making sure the dropped stitch is caught.

Stitch markers crawl away. It’s the nature of the beast! You might want to have an idea where the round begins for when you bind off, but again with the felting, I don’t know how critical this is.

As for the yarn, did you check the yardage? I use that as a way to determine how much yarn to buy. Different skeins have different yardage, so that may be where you ran into a problem.

3

let’s see if i can remember what you asked. generally the fix for a dropped stitch in stockinette is pretty easy but i would say that if you are felting and you have fluffy eyelash you can probably close it very easily with a piece of yarn. this is likely what i would do anyway. i think you won’t kow where it was when you finish felting.

if you are not using any special pattern repeats in your circular knitting you will probably be able to get by without the stitch marker. ideally you want to be able to know where the beginning of the row is but if you can’t find it i think you will still be okay.

as far as the extra yarn goes…i don’t really think eyelash adds too much to the weight of the yarn which is probably why you still don’t have enough.

GOOOOD LUCK!!