Cheating will always do you wrong

Late last week I finished the second front on my simple, plain, gray cardigan. With the Michigan winter beginning to choke the daylight from the sky (and the color, too), I found myself without the will to continue into the sleeves. Too much gray (ditto for getting into gear on the Na Craga). I have a simple but colorful sock on the needles, but I’m currently apathetic about that project (I think the simple rib pattern just isn’t fitting the playfulness that is Zauberball Crazy). What’s a Michigander to do but cast on a new project using bright! cheerful! colorful! yarn? Enter Malabrigo Silky Merino, a most luscious fiber. The colorway dill is electrifying. Combine with one simple scarf pattern – Helleborus by Terhi Montonen – and you have a recipe for a quick, satisfying, uplifting knit. Just the right diversion to get you back on track with the simple, gray cardigan.



Unless. Unless, of course, you won this yarn on a blog contest (thanks, Kristy!), have only 2 hanks and have severely underestimated how far that yarn will go. Well, if you do that, then you end up knitting 5 inches, taking a few measurements and realizing that your scarf will top out at 30 inches. Sure, blocking could push that length to 35 inches, but still. 35 is not 60 (not in this universe at any rate) and a scarf of 30 inches just won’t do.

After careful analysis of the situation (read: wondering if I could magically make 2 additional hanks of Malabrigo Silky Merino in Dill appear), I found 2 options:

• Option 1: Rip the 5 inches and cast on for a scarf of half the current width. It is 12 inches, after all, and a 6-inch wide scarf is very wearable. Pro: A completed scarf from yarn all of the same dye lot. Con: I have to rip my current knitting and settle for a scarf half as wide as I’d hoped.
• Option 2: Purchase more yarn, albeit of a different dye lot. Pro: I can continue to knit with my current yarn as the remaining yarn is shipped and I get a wide, squishy scarf. Con: the dye lots are different. How gruesome could that look?
  

So what’s a knitter to do? I know what I should do. Yeah, I realize that cheating on my cardigan has brought me bad knitting karma. And while I know I should probably cast-on for that first sleeve, I suspect I will stray even further and do a little sewing.