Singing the Blanket Blues

I'm having my annual September pity party. Why? I don't have a good reason.

There are what seems like an overwhelming number of chores that need to be done, summer is over, I don't feel as well as I would like, and the world isn't perfect. But that's life, and I don't normally react to it by getting cranky and unhappy.

Deep in my soul I know that I am blessed and this is a temporary mood without a cause. So, I zip my lips, keep my unpleasant thoughts to myself, and wait for it to pass.

Last weekend I cast on a knitting project to match my foul mood. Not the project itself, which is a nice thing, but my execution of the project which was destined to result in grumbling and possibly unusable results.

Patternworks is having a special contest to knit a blanket for Project Linus. To enter the contest, it's required you buy a kit with two 100 gram skeins of cream Utopia and then you're allowed to use other colors with the cream.

I bought the kit and started a blanket last Saturday. It soon became obvious that I was not going to have enough yarn, but I kept knitting. (Just a little bit dumb.)

Monday I called Patternworks and tried to order three more skeins in the same dye lot. The customer service lady told me I couldn't order by dyelot.

Short digression: What kind of yarn store service is that? Isn't dye lot an important thing to knitters? I could understand them being out of my dyelot, but I don't understand them not being able to sell it to me if they have it. And, while I'm complaining, I also think they could have mentioned the project was going to take five skeins which should all be ordered at once for a monotone blanket.

I'm still knitting on this blanket and plan to keep knitting until I run out of yarn. If they don't send a dyelot I can use, it's going to be totally wasted knitting. In that case I will have proven that being cranky and stubborn serves no useful purpose except to result in half of a blanket that can't be finished.

I'm usually much more mellow and sensible than that. Really.

Maybe after posting this, I'll relent and pack the blanket away until the rest of the yarn arrives. That would be the smart thing to do.


I'm making this blanket up as I go along. That's why it's so much fun and why I want to keep knitting.

The center square is the Enchanted Cottage from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

Does anyone have any worsted weight Utopia in color 111 cream, dyelot 626 they'd like to sell me?