Blame It on the Yarn Fumes

Kaleidoscope Yarns had a giant "warehouse" sale a couple of weeks ago. By "warehouse," they meant that they borrowed an empty room in the office building next door to the shop. And by "giant," I mean that "I haven't seen this much sale yarn since Dunwoody Yarns broke my heart by closing two years ago."

What with my flexible-schedule-having and all, I was totally there an hour before the store opened on Friday morning. It was kind of an accident -- I said I'd meet Emily there about 9:30 or so -- but I also woke up that morning with some rare energy that usually only strikes at 11 p.m. I'm not a morning person. And I was out the door at, like, 8:30. I usually can't manage to open my eyes before 8:30. And not only had I showered, eaten breakfast, and gotten dressed, I'd also taken the Yarn Harlot's advice and prepared a list of what I was going to buy at the sale.

The list read: superwash wool; cotton; Blue Sky Alpaca and Silk; yarn!

Perhaps not the most effective list, but it helped me to focus. I was not messing around with books or notions or knitting bags. My sister's having a baby, and I need to start buying some damn baby-friendly yarn.

Friends, I scored at that sale. I scored big-time. I went over budget by $50, but I got everything on my list. And a fifty-cent hank of the finest purple alpaca ever spun. Seriously. Amazing. (And no, I will probably never actually do anything with it.)

So a couple of weeks ago, as I was looking for something new to bring to my Sunday afternoon knitting group -- because I was at the finishing point with my blanket-with-sleeves, and I am not carting that entire project with me to be miserable sewing the seams twenty times -- I discovered a horrible mistake that I made at the Kaleidoscope sale:

I bought four skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas cotton yarn, all navy (or "indigo" as they call it -- but it's totally navy). I just happen to have the leaflet with their Eyelet Cardigan pattern, which calls for four skeins of their Dyed Cotton or Organic Cotton... and y'all, I bought two skeins of each. Okay, technically I bought two skeins of Dyed Cotton and two of "Blue Sky Cotton," and they are actually the same yarn, but the names and labels on these particular skeins are different enough that I should have noticed I was not purchasing four of the same exact thing!

Somehow, what with all the yarn fumes in that "warehouse" sale room, I completely didn't stop to read labels or check dye lots (or look at much of anything but prices). Nor did I notice that the two yarns have completely different tags on them. I looked in this bin and thought "cotton! That's on my list! And it's blue! And each skein is $4!" And that's about as far as I got with that thought process. Whoops.

Had to be the yarn fumes. Had to be.

So now I've got to be careful on the knitting end and be sure to alternate my skeins. And wash very gently. Good thing I decided that the yarn wanted to be a sweater for me, and not something for my sister's baby. Whew!

Also, I am loving both pattern and yarn. Both are a total pleasure to knit. So hooray for that.