Monday, July 31, 2017

The Story of a Big Bag of Yarn


Circa 2008 or 2009, my niece Clementine gave me a big bag of yarn that her mother-in-law had given her to pass along to me. The yarn was Patons Classic Wool Merino worsted in a variegated brown and pink colour called Rosewood, and there were 1200 grams of it. That's quite a lot of yarn to use when it's all one dye lot and such a specific colour, but I felt modestly confident that I was up to the challenge, and happily accepted the yarn. My niece likes brown and loves pink, so the first item I made was a cabled hoodie for her. She was very pleased to get it and I believe she still has it -- I caught sight of it in her closet not too long ago. This project soaked up a lot of yarn but there was still 310 grams left. When Clementine had a baby girl a few years later I thought I'd make my grandniece a matching jacket, but I wanted to wait until she was two or so, and then this plan slipped my mind until it was too late -- Cauliflower is eight now and 310 grams would not be sufficient to make her the kind of sweater I had in mind. But this year I spotted the yarn in my box of stashed worsted and thought it would do to make my friend's daughter Olivia a little jacket.





For this project, I turned to the Lavanda design, a pattern I already owned as I used it in 2016 to make Cauliflower a turquoise version in a size 8.






And here's the finished version, in size 2. This was one of those satisfying times when one has *exactly* the right amount of yarn to make a project. I kept an anxious eye on the dwindling last skein as I was in the home stretch of this project, and I thought I might have to piece out the yarn by making the pocket linings a different colour, but I finished the project and that big bag of yarn with just a half-handful of scraps to spare, with a net stash decrease of 310 grams. Did I do a fist pump, you ask?





Well, no, it was more like this, except with the CN Tower in the skyline.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Gift Wrap


In March 2017 one of my closest friends surprised me with the gift of two skeins of yarn bought at Pembroke Farm, Prince Edward Island, while she and her family were in P.E.I. on vacation. The yarn is variegated in beautiful old rose tones that are the closest I can get to wearing pink. There is no gauge or fibre content information on the label, but it's pretty clearly a bulky weight and feels like pure wool. I searched for a suitable pattern for this weight and amount of yarn and came up with the Aunt Julie shawl pattern.





Here's the finished project. It knitted up very quickly -- the only thing that slowed me down was a few errors in the pattern, which kept me knitting and ripping out for awhile until I figured out where the errors were.





Here's a close-up of the detail. I do wish my camera photographed colour a bit better. The colour is much warmer than it is here.

I have 80 grams of yarn left. I thought at first that I'd get some coordinating yarn and make a hat to match, but the colour proved so difficult to pair with anything that I gave up on that after a few months of shopping around. If I were starting this project over again, I would make a scarf from this yarn, one that I could cast off when I ran out of yarn.