Starting My Coat Project

I purchased three beautiful skeins of thick and thin merino/mohair yarn at Stitches East last weekend with the idea of making a swing jacket similar to the one my friend Shafer made. Her jacket used multiple strands of yarns to create a very large gauge - like 7 stitches / 4 inches on #13 needles. The pattern comes from Sally Melville, and is called 'Not My Mother's Jacket'. According to the pattern, each yarn in the strand needs to be 540 yds, but of course, I only have 480 yards of the lovely thick and thin purple. Sigh. So I had to put on my thinking cap.

I have a lot of yarn, on cones, and otherwise, from my long-ago weaving days so I pulled some out, and found some wonderful mohair, and wool yarn, both of which have enough yardage. I also found a wonderful skein of bulky weight plum merino wool, that I had originally bought for felting. It is 320 yards. Again, not enough for the entire project. And I really didn't want the jacket to look like I ran out of yarn!!!!

I also found a huge amount of 2-ply knitting worsted in a beige heathery tone, and so I swatched quite a lot and came up with the idea of knitting just one row with a strand containing the thick and thin, and one row with a strand containing the bulky plum weight yarn, and since I was knitting on circulars, but flat, I just push the work to the other end of the needles when necessary. So by knitting alternate rows, I have effectively cut in half the yardage needed for each yarn!! Pat myself on the back....

Then I had to deal with the beige yarn, so I played with koolaid and that worked beautifully! I used 8 packages with a glug of white vinegar for 2 four ounce skeins of the wool, which was soaked first. I brought the 6 quart pot to a boil and turned it off. I notice that the reddish part of the dye got absorbed quite quickly, leaving the water very blue, but soon that was absorbed as well. I really needed a larger pot for 2 skeins, but since I don't have one, the wool was quite blotchy. But it came out great that way. Sort of reddish-purple, and light blue-gray areas. You can see that yarn in the third picture above.

I am using 3 yarns for each multiple strand, as you can see above. I am hoping to have enough yarn but I'm worried. Stay tuned.....