I wrote at the outset that knitting blogs have been an inspiration to me, both in my knitting and in starting my own blog. The first one I came across was Chicknits, which I still read religiously. Bonnie Marie's list of links and the knitting bloggers ring led me to a world I would have never imagined existed. Now, serendipitously, I've solved a knitting conundrum thanks to reading one of my favorite bloggers, Savannahchik Knits.
Here's how it happened. Savannahchik wrote on Sunday that she was thinking of using Araucania Nature Wool for a project. I love Araucania, it's very inexpensive, relatively soft and has beautiful color variations. I was prompted to comment, though, because in my first experience using it, I didn't realize how much it varied within dyelots until after I had knit a wide swath in an unvarying shade darker than the rest of the piece.
A word now about that project -- it's a sweater called "Age of Aquarius" from Interweave Knits Fall 2001, also in the Knitter's Stash book.
I started it in the spring of 2002, my longest ongoing WIP. I decided to start with the sleeves. I was pretty familiar with cables but I wanted to nail the pattern on the smaller pieces before I moved on to the body. The first sleeve went smoothly. Two thirds of the way through the second sleeve, I changed yarn and ended up with the wide swath of olive much noticeably darker than the rest of the piece. I didn't have the zen approach to frogging that I do now, and kept going. After a few inches, I added a second skein and started alternating rows which took care of the problem. At the time I decided to leave the sleeve as is, rationalizing that it would add "character" to the sweater.
I've been knitting on the body now intermittently for the past, well, two years. There's always a reason to put it down. particularly in summer, but in winter, too. It was only after reading Savannahchik's post prompting my comment that I had the revelation that the reason I've left it unfinshed is that the off-color sleeve is NOT okay. Now I know what I have to do -- finish the body and frog the offending part of the sleeve. Thank you, Jody!