Yarn tales

One sleeve and some yarn labels. That's what I have to show for myself on Friday night. I will not win the gold medal. I will not, until next week sometime, finish. I am out of yarn.

People knit differently from one another. That's why "good" knitters do a gauge swatch -- because they can't count on the fact that their stitches, with a certain yarn and needles, match the designer's. But maybe people use up yarn differently too. I bought the yarn for this sweater at Churchmouse Yarns and Tea, not long after the pattern came out in Interweave Knits. I had decided to make the second size, in hopes that it might fit me and/or my daughter some day. This size called for 9 skeins of the gray/black (actually khaki/black) Funny Lux and 4 skeins of Funny in the black color. My receipt for this transaction shows that I paid for 13 skeins of this yarn. But, when I finally got ready to knit this sweater, there were only 8 skeins of the gray/black yarn in my bag. That's problem #1. Problem #2 was that when I was exploring on the web, I discovered that on the designers website, the amount of black yarn specified is 7 skeins.

First, I e-mailed Annie Modesitt to ask about the black yarn amounts. Her reply was, that she wasn't sure. She'd had people need more yarn, and others wonder why she had them buy so much.

Then, I called Churchmouse Yarns & Tea - only to find they no longer carry this yarn. Luckily, it is still available. I ordered the missing skein of gray/black and two extra skeins of black here. If you're doing the math, you can see I'm hedging my bets on the black --

Which turns out to be funny (ha ha, not the yarn) - because all the yarn I have left today is: two and a half skeins of black. So, the order went in today for 2 more skeins of the gray/black Funny Lux. It SHOULD be enough (notice I didn't say would).

So, to answer my friend Sue's question, "Is it better to be Michelle Kwan or Sasha Cohen?" My answer is: Emily Hughes.

I'm glad to be here -- I don't regret pushing myself, or being part of this huge group of knitters all working separately toward knitting glory. It would have been wonderful to win knitting gold, but someday I'll have a great sweater. Maybe I'll wear it to Vancouver someday!