The Gold Leaf Shrug (which is the bright yellow knitting
appearing in several blog posts over the past couple of months) is nearly
done.  Nearly, oh so nearly!

I purchased the yarn from Butternut Woolens – gorgeous
sunshine-y wool/silk called “Silkie” – and thought the 2 hefty skeins would be
enough for a summery shrug.  And at
$25.00 a skein (a very fair price for such luxurious hand-dyed yarn, I hasten
to say), I hoped it would be!  That is, I
was hesitant to buy what would probably be an extra-just-in-case skein.  So, I didn’t. 
Even though it was a design project and the yardage required was pretty
much an educated (or shot in the dark!) guess.

When the yarn arrived, I cast on and began knitting.  The first skein made up the body and most of
the first sleeve.  It looked
promising.  I attached the second skein
and finished the sleeves and the edging on the sleeves. The second ball was
still goodly-sized and I began the lace edging. 
The edging is a rather large dramatic “Willow Leaf” pattern and goes all
the way around the shrug.  So, there I
was:  picking-up-and-knitting to attach
the edging as I knit it.  And the ball of
yarn was (understandably) getting smaller and smaller.  But not too quickly and I still felt optimistic.  Besides, I could always break down and order
more yarn, right?

And then Sarah found out that Butternut Woolens was shutting
down production and that all of the Silkie was pulled from the website for
inventory and subsequent discount pricing! 
Well, okay, maybe I really did have enough to finish the edging. 

Knit, knit, knit. 
Squeeze the yarn ball and wonder. 
Knit, knit, knit.  Eye the yarn
ball suspiciously, hopefully, pleadingly. 
Knit, knit, knit.  It was kind of
like that scene in The Abyss where
the water is filling up in the submarine-thing and it looks like maybe the main
characters are going to drown (but maybe not). 
Or those Arctic exploration diaries where supplies are running low.  Maybe they will make it, maybe not.

Except, of course, this was not a life-or-death
situation.  Really.

Sunday afternoon I passed the half-way point on the bottom
edge – pretty much into the home stretch. 
The ball looked puny. 
Sickly.  Buy, hey, maybe… Knit,
knit, knit – and then I saw it:  the tail
of yarn hanging from my needles.  The
ball was gone.  The yarn was gone.   And I
had 7 inches of shrug edge to go.  Crap.

Followed by a rather desperate email to Shelley at Butternut
Woolens and, the next morning, a kind and soothing reply.  Yes, there was still plenty of Mango
Silkie.  Yes, she would be putting it up
on the website again this week.  So, it
looks like a happy ending after all.  But
a cautionary tale:  ALWAYS buy extra yarn
(especially when it is a design project and you don’t really know how much you
will need).