This is the Three Sisters Jacket from Cheryl Oberle. I bought the kit from her at Stitches last year. The yarn is gorgeous and varied as she hand-dyes each skein herself. I started it last February right before my unfortunate fall. I got gauge perfectly and set to making the largest size of the pattern. I ran out of yarn. I ripped out my gauge swatch and knit that into the sleeve - still ran out of yarn. Due to the individuality of the yarn there was no way to get an exact match.
In discussing this problem with my fiber posse at SOAR, one of my suggestions was to buy another skein and rip out both sleeves. That way I could knit from the yarn I already had and mix in the new skein. They looked horrified. "Why rip? You're a spinner, make some yarn that you like and use that." I knew I couldn't match the color, so that wasn't a problem - I'd just look for something contrasting.
When we went into the Rovings booth, I saw this. Jillian said, "That's what you can use for your Three Sisters Jacket." I must admit, I wasn't sold. It's RED for crying out loud. Then she said, "You can spin a fat single and use Kathryn's method for swirls*. How cool is that?" I had to admit, that was a pretty good idea.
So the roving came back to the condo and I couldn't keep my hands off it. This is one of the small batches they do (you can either get a whole kilo of a colorway or one of these little batches of 500 grams). I asked if they could split this is half and the woman told me that her dye pot is big enough for 500 gm and it's one of a kind. So, no she wouldn't split it up. After further consideration, I was okay with that, figuring there's a lot of potential sampling I could do. Plus, there's lots left over even after I use it for the jacket.
I dove in and came up with this. Although I plied it, it gives you an idea of how gorgeous this roving is when it's spun up. The lighter colors look very peachy in the roving and I was concerned that there would be too much peach and not enough of the red. My fear was unwarranted. The peach blends in beautifully and the dark reds really come to the front. My next experiment is to see how fat a single I can spin and if I can get it to match the grist of Cheryl's yarn.
* I'm still working on a post synthesizing Kathryn's class. There's so much to think about.
PS for Sara - We were doing 2 smaller turkeys this year and didn't think they could hold enough stuffing for everyone so we put all the stuffing in muffin tins. They were supposed to be individual serving sizes. Unfortunately, when we de-tinned them, they crumbled. Next year, we're thinking we'll add a couple of eggs to the mix.
good idea re the muffins - I'm filing that one away to try next time I stuff something :)
love the roving and yarn - great colors.
Posted by: Sara | November 24, 2007 at 11:59 PM