Substituting Yarn

This is a reduced email distribution. Obviously, while most of us find knitting, spinning and other fiber stuff absolutely fascinating it seems to bore a few others out of their trees. Since it might be a long way down for most of them, I am trying to avoid injury in those fleeing what should obviously be something quite interesting.

Knitting.

I have a number of projects underway.

There is the baby pod for the Eldest to use in her photography.

About 1/2 way done

There is Donna (this Hanne Falkenberg) which I had put on hold pending the arrival of more yarn. There is a slight problem with most of her newer kits. She packages in the yarn, but doesn’t give the length or weight of any of the colors. (Makes it harder to substitute). Since I just about always substitute as her color tastes and mine don’t match it is hard to tell how much I might need. With Donna, I liked the basic Chambray Blue, but the cream left me flat. After much thought, I decided to substitute a lovely midnight blue which I had on hand, left over from another HF. This sweater was started in the UK, then went on hold for the deployment.

Donna - Body complete

Imagine my disgust when, with the body knit, I realized halfway down the first sleeve that I was not going to have enough of the dark blue to finish. I tucked it all back in the bag to await the arrival from Webs of more yarn. Arriving today, I will change yarns here on the sleeves, use the old yarn for the upper portion of the second sleeve then then new yarn for the lower portion. The dye lots are extremely close, but still – I want the both sides to match in color.

(process knitter? project knitter? Don’t have a clue knitter?)

Then there is the City Jacket by Vivan Hoxbro which I purchased on sale. The charcoal and pearl are fine. The harvest/fall foliage are not – so once again it is off to substitution city.

The kit - guess which yarn was not included

This sweater is constructed out of a number of rather large shadow knit squares. Unlike a lot of mitred projects, it does have sewing which is balanced by almost no ends to sew in. I tried a red I had on hand but it was extremely difficult to knit with.

After getting about ten rows past the border, I realized that my stitch count was way off. Frogged the thing, skeined and washed the red (add vinegar – red all over my hands and potentially the pearl color would not bee good). The yarn has now bloomed enough that my gauge ought to be fine and I do like the color!

would you believe ..... red?

If I am really ambitious, I will ignore my head which is responding to all the retirement processing stress and even go and update Ravelry.