Wool, glorious wool

“What’s that you’re carrying?”, DH asked when I got home last night.

“It’s an emergency wool parcel from Australia.”

The Cleckheaton Country 12-ply was on my desk when I got into work yesterday (thank you Tapestry Craft). It’s the right weight and the shade seems a good match although I won’t know for sure until I knit it up. The only major difference between the original yarn and the new is that the old yarn was more heavily plied – it really was 12 ply, with the four major strands being made up of three thinner strands plied together (sorry, I only speak pigeon “spinner”). The new Country 12-ply only has four strands plied together.

If my plan of attack works correctly, any differences won’t be noticeable at all. I’m going to frog the existing sleeve back to the cuff and knit it up again, alternating yarns every two rows. For the second sleeve, I’ll do the cuff in the old yarn and then proceed as for the first. This should leave me with enough yarn (I hope) to do the button/neck band in the old yarn. I figure that so long as the bands all match, it will fool the eye into ignoring any discrepancies in shading or plying that may be visible. The heavy patterning should work to my advantage in this because it distorts the light and creates tiny patches of shade on the fabric.

The Must Have Cardigan is still in the penalty box, but only because I have to finish my “interim project” first. I’m making a present for my MIL (so no pictures, sorry). It'll get interrupted again when my next Yarn Parcel arrives from the Yarn Barn of Kansas because I have to make not one, not two, but three Five Hour Baby Sweaters within the next couple of weeks. Two are definitely girl flavoured, so I ordered some Plymouth Encore in Baby Pink. I'll wait to see what flavour the third baby is; if it's a boy, I'll use up the Aqua that I have left over from last year.

There is a definite "thrill of the chase" to ordering yarn on-line. First you have the browsing: "what yarn will I use?" "Is it in my colour?" "Who stocks it?"; then you have the placing of the order (in my case, this usually includes the Ceremony of the International Postage, where Melissa at the Yarn Barn emails me to ask if that's all I want to order because "right now, your postage costs more than the yarn*"); followed by the long wait and finally the delivery! (On that last point, Mr Postman, could you hurry up, please!)

So much to knit, so little time.

- Pam


* My response, "Does that mean I have to buy more yarn? Such a pity. What will I do...." :o)