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...yarn, that is.
I’ve done all the heavy lifting for my Pagan sweater. Using Excel, I reduced the cells down to little squares and mapped out the entire yoke design. I’m going with Runes in a circle around the yoke and some decorative stitches around those. I’m aiming for tiny Thor’s hammers and little Goddess symbols, but am not entirely sure how well those are going to come out in “fair isle” type knitting. I’m probably going to do some swatches and experiment before I attempt anything on the actual sweater.
So, that brings me to my current dilemma—the colors for the yoke design. One would think it would be easy to find gold and silver toned (slightly metallic) yarns, to nicely offset the navy blue of the rest of the sweater. Well...one would be wrong. I had last week off, and I spend most of it combing our LYS, Michaels, Wal-Mart, JoAnn Fabrics, and AC Moore, frantically searching for the perfect shades of gold and silver (well, okay, this wasn’t such a hardship...it was yarn shopping, after all).
The good news: as you see from my picture, I finally managed to find the perfect shade of gold at AC Moore. The bad news: it’s only available as EMBROIDERY FLOSS!!! I stood in AC Moore for about 15 minutes staring at the display, trying to decide how many tiny floss skeins I’d have to buy to create my yoke pattern and exactly how many strands I’d need to combine to equal worsted weight yarn. I took a skein and walked up and down the aisles of the store, trying to find THAT exact color, only in actual yarn. No dice. Even Red Heart, that company that has perfected every known color under the sun, including neon traffic cone orange, didn’t have anything.
I bought the tiny skein and performed the same exercise at a ton of different stores, but no match.
Yesterday, I finally decided to just skip attempting to be Monet with the colors and just suck it up, buy some Lion Brand Glitterspun online, and get on with it...
Yeah, you guessed it—Glitterspun has been DISCONTINUED! I found a kind soul on Ravelry who can sell me two gold skeins, but now I’m going to have to find two silver skeins...
Must get on eBay...must not appear too desperate...
Oh, you poor thing all that YARN SHOPPING!!
ReplyDeleteBut I love you combine my two favorite things Paganism and knitting
Thanks! Yes, yarn shopping beats working...LOL! I got the gold yarn from the woman on Ravelry and it looks perfect! Now I just have to find SOMEONE who has the Glitterspun silver yarn.
ReplyDeleteI think Lion Brand makes a few sparkly or shiny yarns. Check their website. I think they might be part of the Vanna's Choice line.
ReplyDeleteBerroco also makes Lustra, and it has a bit of sheen. Maybe there's a good colour there.
Try hand-dyeing. Buying Bare from Knit Picks and mixing up a few colours of Jacquard Acid Dye is one of my favourite things to do and you can blend yellows til you get the right shade. It's as easy as cooking spaghetti.