this cramp got its start in april of 2012, when i attended the columbia fiber festival in hood river, oregon. with great trepidation (not), i ventured into the merchant area - big mistake for my pocket book but something more exciting than a candy store in my book - where i found several skeins of yarn that screamed 'pick me, pick me!' and was forced to succumb to their cries.
speaking of candy, a treasure i scored that day were two skeins of this gorgeous yarn.
the yarn is: candy skein in the delicious series, which is indeed delectable in a 70% alpaca, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere blend in the color way: blue snow cone. i purchased two skeins because of a dandy little summer sweater that caught my eye on display near the yarn. i was smitten. this sweet yarn hopped in my bag and headed home with me where it secured a place of honor in my knitting area, winking at me each time i passed. weeks turned to months and months to a year until summer rolled around again and i vowed to knit this sweater.
since my eyes are bigger than my stomach, i have managed to amass a collection of yarn that could last several lifetimes! in an attempt to get a grip on 'my collection', i have placed a moratorium on yarn purchases in 2013 forcing myself to knit from my stash. so far so good as i've managed to last eight months with no slowdown in knitting production!
this brings us to late june when i decided that it was time to knit this yarn! i gathered the necessary supplies: pattern, yarn, needles, markers, measuring tape, etc. and set to work. this is when the brain drain set in! i read the pattern (error #1: not as thoroughly as i should have) cast on and began the process of knitting a top down sweater. this was basically a stockinette stitch number so i put in hours of endless back and forth monotony until i reached the armpits where i began the body. i was about four inches into the body when i started the second skein of yarn. after knitting about an inch of this new skein i realized that it was looking very different from the upper portion - a tad less lightness in this skein - which was not noticeable when the yarn was in skeins but very obvious when it was knit! (error #2) this is sometimes the case with hand-dyed yarn as each skein is individually dyed. in the meantime, i noticed that the sweater seemed much larger than the size i had intended and i probably would run out of yarn before the sweater was complete.
shoulda, coulda, woulda! what to do! upon rereading the pattern (actually, reading it carefully for the first time), i realized that i was knitting a size extra large instead of a medium and since hindsight is 20/20, it became crystal clear to me that i should have been knitting with both skeins of yarn at the same time, alternating skeins each row.
so.... i frogged... rewound the yarn into skeins... washed it... and when dry, rewound it into cakes, ready to begin again, but, did i really want to reknit this sweater? did i really want to deal with alternating skeins? did i really want to do all that plain stockinette again? no, not really so, i knit this:
the ashton shawlette by dee o'keefe - a freebie on ravelry!! it only took 1 skein which solved lots of problems, no worries about matching skeins or sizing and much more usable as it feels so good wrapped around ones shoulders! i am a much happier camper and my friend, susan, will be when i gift her the second skein. a win for everyone and another dent is the stash bin!
