This yarn has gone to meet its maker!

(I put this in the Ravelry notes for my Broken Down Tara sweater, but I think it’s a little long and more post-like for that. So I moved it here.)

This is the sweater that made me decide I never want to let another person make yarn substitutions for me. My friend Heather really liked this sweater, but she’s allergic to wool. And she wanted dove grey, when dove grey was not an easy color to find. No one was using dove grey yarn. I went to the yarn shop (Jefferson Stitches in Naperville, Illinois) and asked for help finding a cotton replacement.

That’s how I came to have a bunch of dove grey Brunswick Rio in my stash.

I was almost finished with the front. It was gorgeous. It was beautiful. It had been a joy to work.

I had used almost half the yarn.

In the meantime, Brunswick went out of business. I searched and searched for Rio in that dove grey, going through closeout bins, asking people I knew to ask people they knew. The sweater is knit with two strands, so I didn’t even care what the dye lot was. No such animal as extra skeins of Brunswick Rio in dove grey existed. It was not pining for the fjords. It was an ex-yarn.

By the time I gave up, Heather had moved to Indiana, so I just picked another sweater (from a Vogue Knitting magazine I’m sure I have lying around so I’ll post it later) without her input and made it for her. I wound up with quite a bit of the yarn left.

One of these days I want to rebuild Tara. Maybe for myself, maybe for Thing One. For someone. But I’ll either use the yarn called for, or I’ll make my own substitution.

I should add that I don’t really blame the woman who made the suggestion to use Rio, and figured out how much I should have needed. Substituting yarns, especially when you’re using completely different fibers and looking for a little-used color, isn’t easy. I just would prefer that if something like that should happen again, I have only myself to blame.

Of course, a few years later, my mom bought me the yarn to make this absolutely gorgeous sweater (another VK find that I’ll have to add to Ravelry eventually), and my brother (who knits) found a substitute. I do blame him for that sweater not turning out right. How much of that is sibling rivalry and how much is deserved, I don’t know, and don’t particularly care.;-)

Tags: frustration, knitting, yammer, yarn