I don’t know how many times I have written about projects where I have yarn, purchase more yarn to go with it and then make something with the later purchased yarn, leaving the original yarn in stash.
This happened with my latest finished project. In 2015 I received a beautiful skein of yarn in a subscription box. It was just over 500 metres of DK weight yarn in a lovely shade of red. I loved it, but didn’t know what I would make with just one skein so I ordered another from the same source. Imagine my surprise when what turned up was quite different from the original. The photo shows the difference. Now I had two skeins that I didn’t know what to do with.
As skeins came up on destash, I purchased two more skeins. Here are the four skeins I ended up with, as you can see, two are very similar and the other two are quite different.
But what to make with them? I could use just the two similar colours in one project or use them all in one project but I felt the lusciousness of the original skein would be muted if I used it with the other skeins. In the end I went with a project that would use about three skeins. The pattern I made was Kerrera. This is a paid-for pattern, but I still made changes to it. The first being that I didn’t get gauge, so I had to make allowances for that. It is worked from the bottom up with decreases worked from the top of the hips to the waist. Although I agreed that this would give a nice shape to the garment, I wasn’t convinced of a good fit on the top part, so I added increases after the waist. The sleeves are picked up from the armhole edge and worked downwards. I wasn’t convinced that with this yarn the pick up would look good, so I worked from the cuff up and sewed in the sleeves. The original jacket is done up with three loop buttonholes at the top, as mine is made with 100% alpaca, I thought that buttons all the way down would be a better idea. I had decided to do that before I started the jacket but I wish I had thought it through before actually starting the bands as I would have put the buttonholes in the front band. Instead I had a finished garment that I somehow had to add button loops to and I wanted the bands to overlap. This was the biggest delay in finishing the jacket. The pattern has simple chain loops but I didn’t think they would be strong enough, so I had grand ideas of using rat’s tail – a satin string – that didn’t work out either. One of the problems was that the buttons I chose, although appropriate for the jacket were big and needed big loops, which weren’t sturdy or very neat. A friend bought me some buttons which I was worried were small but with a chained loop have worked fine. Yes, you read that correctly, chained loop; although I worked it as a single crochet foundation chain for some thickness. Also, I have quite a bit of yarn left over so if any of the loops wear through I can easily make more.
I started this project at the beginning of August last year. All the knitting was finished by the end of November and everything was sewn together by the end of January, when the great button delay started. Although to be fair to me, I couldn’t see any rush to finish it as it would not be worn until it got cold again and I really wanted the buttons and loops to be right. And here we are with winter just around the corner and the WIP KAL as an incentive and I have a finished garment that I look forward to wearing.
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