Hunting for rare beasts

Fair isle romper for baby Marte

For the following story to make sense, you need to know that the romper design calls for seven colours - one main colour, and six colours for the fair isle motif. My original plan for the fair isle motif was to have three separate colour strips: red/pale pink, royal purple/lavender, and royal blue/baby blue, with canary yellow as the main colour. I had already managed to pick up the red, pale pink, royal purple, lavender, and some yellow. But I was missing the two blues. So this weekend I went yarn shopping so I could start the darn romper.

Hahahaha.

On Saturday I spent two hours hitting three different Zellers (Zellerses?). The first one (closest to my house) was a complete bust. The second one did yield some baby blue fingering weight yarn, as well as a pounder of cream-coloured sport weight yarn (I hardly ever see that, so I nabbed it), and some other yarn that I could not resist (read further down in today's entry for more details).

However, I was still SOL on the royal blue sock yarn. I know that Bernat Sox comes in this colour, and I know that Zellers carries Bernat Sox yarn. However, hoping that there was a Zellers anywhere which carried royal blue Bernat Sox yarn was obviously asking too much of the universe.

Fortunately, at the third Zellers, there was some very pale yellow fingering weight yarn. I figured, okay, maybe I replace the royal blue/baby blue combination with canary yellow/pale yellow instead, and use white as the main colour for the romper. (I vowed long ago never to knit anything white for a baby because they have no control over the explusion of various bodily fluids and I have no desire to inflict laundry nightmares on already stressed new parents - but I was desperate at this point because the alternative was a mostly green project, so I figured what the heck.) I bought the pale yellow fingering weight yarn and several balls of white. They looked like this:


So today I sat down with all these colours and swatched my fair isle design.

DISASTER.

The canary yellow/pale yellow turned out to be a terrible idea - the motif pattern was completely lost wherever I used them. I had no choice but to find my royal blue Bernat Sox yarn (and exchange my several balls of white fingering weight yarn for canary yellow).

DH and DD were sleeping. I left a note and took off for Zellers #4.

No luck. In absolute desperation I threw our family's boycott to the wind and visited a Walmart. I got very excited when I saw they carried more colours of Bernat Sox than I had seen at all four Zellers combined, but was intensely disappointed to discover that none of the new colours was my royal blue.

Completely discouraged, and having wasted much precious gas, I went home to search on eBay. There are currently two auctions for royal blue Bernat Sox yarn. The shipping on the Canadian auction is fairly exorbitant. I'm waiting to hear back on the shipping for the other one. Hopefully it is less outrageous.

If anyone snaps up either of these auctions I will have no choice but to hunt them down. You have been warned.

Striped socks for moi

While shopping I discovered a new colourway of Bernat Sox yarn:


It is all for me. Mine, mine, mine. I know I posted just on Thursday that I was going to make myself some sleep socks using the Amazing Feets pattern and some light worsted weight yarn, but, you know, when the colours of yarn in the store speak to you, there's not much you can do. You know what I mean?

Stornaway sweater for BIL (blue)

My goal of finishing the back by the end of tonight is toast. I have 39 rows of 196 stitches left. There is no way.

Herald tabard for moi

No progress, but I have taken a picture of the three yellows:

I definitely will not be using the one on the left. I'm currently trying to decide between the two right-most yellows.