When yarn speaks...

Have you ever started a project - even gotten, say, halfway through the project, and then ripped it out because that yarn wanted to be something else?

This was me, yesterday. I was gifted some LOVELY handspun by Julie of Wasatch Handspuns. Gorgeous stuff. It sat in my yarn drawer for months, because I just didn't know what to make with it. It had to be something special.

Yesterday morning, I was online and doing my normal morning things, and I was checking into YINIA - we are celebrating our first year in business starting tomorrow. So I thought - perfect!! A special birthday celebration pair of shorts or pants. I wound the yarn up. I pulled out my needles, debating between a small and a medium (I'm really not sure on the yardage here, so I wanted to be safe)... when I got to the right cast on for the small, there was just a couple inches of yarn left on my long tail, so I decided a small it would be. I started knitting, and I just loved how it was coming out. I was a bit fearful that the short rows would throw off the way things were lining up, but everything turned out perfect. Even my short rows were better than I expected with the varying thickness of the handspun.

I got to the gusset increases - and started thinking about the legs... how would I ever make them match? I only have one skein of this yarn, and I don't want to waste any of it... I suppose I could call the difference in the legs part of the uniqueness of this special project... kept going. Got to the end of the gusset and was just about to split for the legs when I stopped and looked at what I had knit so far...It was gorgeous. The colors were forming wide stripes - the color differences in the two plies added such amazing interest. Just gorgeous yarn...

I ripped it all out.

This yarn wants to be a skirt - a skirt that can go around and around, uninterrupted, letting the yarn do all the magic. No shaping. No cutting the yarn and starting a second leg that may or may not match perfectly. A simple skirt that will be anything but simple.

And I made it in my daughter's size, just in case...