What I Didn't Tell You Yesterday: The Yarn, Part 1

I really needed to get back on the blog-wagon.  I never would have left all this out in the Olden Days.

Back when I decided to knit Knitty's Totally Autumn I didn't tell the full story of my yarn indulgence.  Not only had I ordered the requisite amount of Abundance yarn, I ordered a comparable amount of Wistful, an alpaca, merino, silk blend that comes in 500 yard skeins. Buying the entire dye lot?  Of both yarns? Well, that was greed, pure and simple.

This was rather over the top yarn-buying, even for me, but I had been bitten hard by the afghan bug.  At the same time as, and as a feeble excuse for, the Yarn Binge of the Decade, I also purchased the pattern for the Rosebud Blanket. At the time it seemed ample reason for the whole descent into the woolly maelstrom thing.  That, and the fact the Briar Rose Fibers produces any given colorway in limited lots.  If I wanted a particular combination, I had to buy it then or risk it being gone forever.  Never mind that the clever and creative people at BRF were guaranteed to come up with many, many other combinations to which I would lose my heart. (The ability of the human mind to come up with rationalizations and justifications is truly a wonder to behold, isn't it?)

With all this on my conscience, the decision to knit from stash yarn was not simply understandable, it was almost a mandate.

Having ditched (for the time being) the Rosebud Afghan, or indeed any lace pattern involving charts, while and at the same time having found Embellished Squares, I should have been ready to knit my merry way along for weeks and weeks. Except (are you ready for a further foray into rationalization and justification?), Embellished Squares, as designed, is knit with two yarns, one solid and one self-striping. I tried, I really did try, to persuade myself that knitting with variegated hand-dyed yarn obviated the need for a contrast color.

I failed.

Three times.