In Which the Pirate Swaps Stripes.

Remember that time I knit a sanquhar-inspired scarf with little skulls hidden in it?

It’s not that it was a bad idea, it’s that my execution was off, and so was my estimation of whether I actually wear scarves. I’ve been looking at this thing all winter going “okay, but it’s too long and too thick to be comfortable, and not only does my jacket have scarf-eating velcro but I can zip it up to my nose so do I really need a scarf anyway? Especially one that’s going to make me look like I’m either pregnant or shoplifting? Maybe I should unravel it and knit something else. There’s enough yarn here for a sweater.”

“There’s enough yarn in that scarf for a sweater,” I’ve grumped to myself pretty much every time I see the scarf in the closet, feeling a little sad about having knit something that’s really cool but actually useless.

“There’s enough yarn in that scarf for a sweater,” I thought as I was buying entirely different sweater yarn.

“There’s enough yarn in that scarf for a sweater,” I pretended not to remember, as I picked out the gray and green and blue from my stash and charted out the stripes.

Do you know where there is NOT enough yarn for a sweater? Indeed, it’s the stripy sweater. I finished both sleeves and weighed the remaining gray yarn, and did some math. I said some bad words (sorry) and re-weighed and re-mathed. Then I called a friend who verified that my math was right and my sweater was not.

But here’s the thing. The blue yarn in the sweater is the same blue yarn that’s in the scarf. And (you see where this is going) there’s enough yarn in the scarf for a sweater. What if I reverse the stripes on the sweater body? That would actually look really neat.

“There’s enough yarn in that scarf for a sweater,” I muttered, and stomped downstairs to retrieve it from the closet. I spent an evening un-seaming my careful seams, and then Michael helped me re-wind about 2000 yards of yarn. He turned the ball-winder and I wound directly onto the swift.

There’s enough yarn here for a sweater.

It needs to be soaked to get the squiggles out, and then of course I’ll have to wait for it to dry, but there’s totally enough blue yarn here to finish the stripy sweater, and enough white yarn for… well, for half a sweater. I’ll worry about the white yarn some other time.