Preparing for Madrona classes means more than knitting up
some show-and-tell.  There is some advance
homework and supplies gathering to be done as well.  In our case, just supplies gathering (a good
thing as the show-and-tell knitting up is taking up my evenings). 

Our supplies list looks pretty basic: size 4 double-pointed
needles and a few generic yarns.  One in particular
being a “heavy worsted weight wool yarn in a light color.”  Since Sarah was over at my house today, we
decided to gather up our supplies — raiding our stash for the requisite yarns,
of course.  But we were foiled.

No heavy worsted weight yarn in anything like a light
color.  None.  It took us much longer to reach this
conclusion than it takes to state it, of course.  Digging through boxes of yarn, comparing
thicknesses (an extended philosophical discussion about heaviness and girth and
body and twist and ply…), estimating yardage, and guessing fiber content.  Nothing suitable.  In the process, we discovered that we would
also need to obtain 4 colors (1 oz. each skein) of sport weight yarn, 2 other
partial skeins of the elusive heavy worsted weight wool yarn, and something woolish
in a light color suited to cabling.  We
had come up short all around!

An emergency run to the local yarn shop was required.

We went in thinking it would be a grab-and-go deal.  Find the heavy worsted weight, the sport
weight, the woolish cabling yarn and be off home again.  Instead, we spent 45 minutes pacing the shop in
a heavy and not-too-fruitful debate over which yarns were heavy worsted and
which were outright bulky or chunky and which worsted yarns seemed thick-ish, but
might only be heavy-ish and not actually heavy. 
Worse, the whole single-ply issue arose. 
Would the instructor accept a single-ply yarn?  The thick-ish single-ply we found came in
attractive colors and had an attractive price – but what if the instructor (a
knitting rock star, by the way)had not , in her wildest dreams, imagined that
one might bring a single-ply to a class devoted to Baltic braids and bobbles?  We toured the store a few more times.  Perhaps the gigantic eco-yarn would be best
after all.  Four times as much yarn as we
needed and while the cream color was nice, the others were rather dark (remember
we needed 2 companion colors). 

Obviously, we were over-thinking the whole thing – and we
told each other so.  We sat down
cross-legged on the floor like 5-year-olds and calmly discussed the dozen or so
yarn characteristics that had come to figure in the decision.  I sent Sarah to the front of the shop to ask
the owner her opinion.  She trotted around
the shop pulling out the same yarns we had considered. 

It came down to two yarns. 
But which to choose?  Even as I
said “it probably doesn’t matter – either will work” I was thinking: what if we
choose wrong?  What if we show up with an
entirely unsuitable yarn? 

(I will probably have a nice long anxiety dream tonight —
getting lost on the way to class, being late, having only a single size 3 and a
single size 10 in way of needles, knitting wee tangled cables with jet-black lace-weight
mohair…)

In the end, we decided on the large eco-wool in cream and
the single-ply in blue and a friendly mocha color.  Finding suitable cabling yarn was easier, of
course.  And we chose our 4 colors of sport
weight (after a few laps around the store and a bit of label comparison, just
for good measure) from the selection of Baby Ull.  We had to pull out most of the colors and
shuffle them around a bit, of course, before we settled on the final
combination, but we put everything back carefully and headed to the
counter.  Fortunately, I had a store
credit!

As got into the car, Sarah glanced at the shop door and said
“I thought so.” 

“What?”

“The store closed half an hour ago.”