A good LYS is your best knitting partner.

Case in point. Jillian started this whole thing by giving me some of this delicious Summer Tweed. Color 528, brilliant. I bought more at my last stop on the book tour last December. Same dyelot! And when The Sheep started stocking Rowan, Lorena was almost psychic. Same dyelot again, so now I had 10 balls.

Which turned out to be insufficient for anything I wanted to knit.

I started the Trinity sweater [now put aside since its season is past -- it'll be lovely to work on at the end of winter next year]. I started a Retro prep. Twice. Ripped. The lace thing I'm working on was the last straw. I want to knit something to wear on my whole upper body, dammit.

This is where the good LYS part comes in. Lorena had put aside at least 4 balls of my beloved Summer Tweed in Brilliant to knit a ballet wrap for herself? The shop? Dunno. But she hadn't finished it. She offered me the remaining balls so I could make something wonderful. At first, I said no, cause it felt wrong. But there is no yarn speaking louder to me at the moment than this beautiful pink stuff. So I will be buying the last bit she'd stashed, with immense gratitude.

Result: raglan cardie with a collar, using the Ann Budd handy sweater book. Did you know that, if you don't get exactly 4 or 5 sts/in, you can just find the number of sts you SHOULD cast on to get your correct finished size, and then follow the numbers for that all through the pattern, when it comes to width? For example, I get 4.25sts/in. To make the cardie the size i want, that means 212 sts. Which you can find in the chart under a different gauge/size combination. I don't get numbers, but I trust Ann Budd. I have photocopied the pattern and circled my numbers. I have cast on and if all goes well, this sweater will actually be on my body before fall is out. [I haven't knit an actual SWEATER in years.] Vacation knitting!

Thank you, Lorena.

p.s. I knit this yarn on every needle in the house and the only ones that make it tolerable to work with, for me, are the Addis. This is a challenging bugger of a yarn -- delicious when knit, but anti-slidey on almost all needles. I'm glad I didn't get rid of my Addis after all!