Oh... crap.

Oh... crap.

Clapotis
Originally uploaded by littlekidd.

This is our friend Clapotis. She is a cult hero... interesting, but not difficult. Utterly adaptable to a point, and then, entirely inflexible.

I have made a lot of these, in all shapes and sizes. My favorite yarn to use is not the recommended Lion and Lamb, but Lorna's Fisherman, which is cheaper and comes in 500yd. skeins. I figured out that if you cheat the pattern by one repeat on the increase rows, and then again by one repeat on the straight rows, you can knit a respectable shawl with one skein of Fisherman.

Or so I thought.

I was making one to give away at my son's school auction. I felt so on top of things... way ahead of the game. Then, I ran out of yarn about three inches from the end.

Clapotis is repetitive, and it is easy once you get the hang of it. However, once you have dropped your first stitch and let it zing all the way from one side of the shawl to the other, there is no ripping back. Well, maybe you could rip back and ladder up all of those dropped stitches, but no. That's something they only should make prisoners do.

Furthermore, let it be known that Lorna's Fisherman is not easy to find in the known universe. Portland was out. I e-mailed every yarn shop in Chicago, where Lorna's is based. No one wrote back.

Getting an order from Lorna's HQ takes about 12 weeks. The auction is in a month.

So, I started a new Clapotis with skein of Interlacements from my stash. Another big skein... the label said 600 yards. But I was insecure. Would it be enough? I didn't have any way to get more of this one either.

Then... today... I wandered into a sale at a local shop. There was one MAJORLY pawed-over skein of Lorna's Shepherd Worsted superwash in the colorway I needed. It was the yarn skein equivalent of the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. Pilly, felted together, just plain ratty.

I bought it. I wound it, pulling the best of the yarn from the inside of the skein, and I finished the shawl. Yeah, it looks a little different on that corner, but the untrained eye will never see it. Only you and I will know.