Updates to my Rhinebeck Yarn

Glancing through posts of recent past, I noticed that in September 2015, I noted the yarns I purchased at Rhinebeck in September 2014. I must have felt really guilty for not using them within the year, because yes! Progress has been made!

My Sprig!

The Lisa Souza Blue Faced Leicester Sport did indeed become Sprig, a sweater pattern by Alana Dakos. I ran into all kinds of strangeness with this pattern. It's actually written quite well, but for some reason, it turned out to be incredibly gigantic on me, even though I measured myself and chose the size I felt was most appropriate, based on the schematic. And I swatched! Fortunately, after much hand-wringing, I decided to blow the minds of knitters everywhere and take it in. On my sewing machine. And it came out great. Details are on my Ravelry project page.

When I type that it sounds like it was a very easy decision, but in fact I was all angry and flustered and upset for the better part of a week. To be fair, I cut it to fit with zero ease, instead of the 1-2 inches of positive ease intended for this sweater. But even with that caveat - it was still huge! Where could I have gone wrong??? Now that all the dust has settled and I can look back on that experience with more detachment, I can say:

• Maybe I should have someone else measure me.

and...

• Let's face it. My gauge really is different when I knit on circulars vs. knitting on straight needles. I shall make swatches in the round from now on! A huge thanks and SHOUT OUT to the knitmoregirls for explaining how to do this on their podcast. I'd seen a description before, but honestly it just looked like a crazy mess. But when Jasmin said "It's like an icord," the lightbulb finally turned on.

The best part? I have almost a full skein of Lisa Souza Blue Faced Leicester Sport left over. (Yes, it is absurd that I made a sweater with 839 yards of yarn, and then later even cut some of that away. I really don't think I'm all that small). One of these days, I will try my hand again at the Wild is the Wind hat, by Lee Meredith. I think this yarn will be perfect for it.

My attempt at That Nice Stitch in Jubilee Pumpkin Spice.
I just wasn't nuts about how it came out. Frogged it.

The other yarn I purchased at Rhinebeck in 2014 was the single skein of Blue Ridge Yarns Jubilee in the Pumpkin Spice colorway, which I snagged out of a clearance bin. Sadly, it did not become the Cedar Leaf Shawlette. Nor did it become the cowl by Susan Ashcroft, That Nice Stitch (which I partially knitted for a Mystery 220 KAL).  I really just didn't care for the way the variegation looked knitted in the cowl pattern, and I figured it would probably look pretty similar in the shawlette pattern. I finally frogged it.

But I'm very happy to say that right now, on my needles, is the Gris de lin cowl by Cailliau Berangere. And I really like how the Pumpkin Spice looks with this pattern -- I'm getting more of a striped effect instead of a mishmash of colors effect. I'll end up with a ton left over, but hey, that just means I can make something else with it later.

Of course, now that I'm catching up with my 2014 purchases, I still have yarns from 2015 and so-far-in-2016 to knit... in fact, there's probably three years' worth of projects in my queue!