Friday, March 19, 2010

what's done is done

surprisejacket2

As you can see, the Baby Surprise Jacket is done. Yay! This is going to be a great little item for spring.

I did venture to the yarn store, and though I was sorely tempted by all the new spring colors (new colors!!), I stayed focused and bought only one skein of yarn to complete the project at hand.

It's always the sock yarn that tempts me. I think I justify it to myself by saying, "but this is an entire knitting project for just $20! What a bargain! I'd be crazy not to buy it!" Lately whenever I do that, I come home and put the sock yarn away in the sock yarn department only to discover that I actually had a different skein of $20 sock yarn in almost precisely the same colorway. After doing that twice in a row, I finally realized that I really could not reasonably buy even one more skein of sock yarn, which has helped tremendously with my focus in the yarn shop.

So what was I talking about? Oh yeah, focus. So I stayed focused and I just bought the one $6 skein, although it was kind of a gambit, because it wasn't the same yarn that the rest of the project was made from. It's not even the same fiber content! They didn't have any Cascade Sierra or Sierra Quatro with any of the colors I was using, so in my desperation I bought some Cascade Pima Silk, which they happened to have in precisely the right colorway. Despite the fact that the Sierra is at least two years older and a totally different fiber, I have to say that the Pima Silk was a pretty good match. At least, color-wise and gauge-wise. But it has a totally different handle (of course) and hangs in a totally different way (of course), and I am hoping against all odds that blocking works out the weirdness, and also taking comfort from the fact that most of the time when my child is wearing something, at least a third of it is in her mouth, so nobody will notice the drape. Right?

Pragmatic as this move was, I do fear that I have committed a cardinal sin of knitting: Nonchalantly mixing fibers and acting like they're all basically the same yarn.

I tried to do the right thing, I really did. I trawled Ravelry for over a week, peering into people's stashes and sending polite "Are you done with that? Can I have it?" messages, but to no avail. And I surely was not going to spend $6 on shipping and $8 on yarn to finish a scrap yarn project. But I fear that this time, I have gone too far. I pray to the goddesses of blocking for their intercession.

3 comments:

  1. Same thing has happened to me before - except that the yarn I chose to continue with was really quite a different shade. I kept knitting regardless - big mistake! Yours looks lovely and I'm sure that the drape will work out 'in the wash' of things. At least the colour matches!

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  2. Don't lose any sleep over a different yarn in a baby sweater! Your little pea will be out of it before you know it and you will be looking for the next sweater to knit.
    And I totally know what you mean about sock yarn! They are the sirens of the yarn store.

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