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What are the lengths you will go to in order to pick the perfect yarn colors for your project? You can get almost every color of every yarn online but actually choosing the color – that’s hard to do from a screen. The slight shifts in hues on electronic device screens make it difficult to decide if a color combo will really work well together. I have this problem more often than I would like to admit, and I’ve come up with some reasonable…and maybe not so reasonable… work arounds.
When I wanted to make a doily to match a bedspread, I carried the blanket into my local yarn store. The owner was happy to help me compare yarn so I could pick out the perfect skein. Sometimes, though, I want a specific yarn that my local store doesn’t carry. Then things get more complicated.
For the challah covers I designed, I ordered about 13 different single skeins of yarn so that I could compare them in person. I used my camera’s black-and-white filter to test out the color combos (details on how to do that here). Once I picked the combination I wanted, I placed a second online order for the quantities I need of those colors. The only problem with this was that I wound up with leftover skeins I didn’t need. “No problem!” I thought. “I’ll use those in another project.” Of course, that required getting another color, and then another. I have an insane amount of Scheepjes Catona now.
Now, I think I may have done the craziest thing yet. I fell in love with a yarn that my local store did not stock. So, I enlisted the help of a fellow fiber arts teacher who is based in California. She was going to be at Jimmy Beans Wool, where I knew they would have a large selection of the yarn I was interested in. I told her the general combo I was looking for (teal, cream, and gold) and she pulled the physical yarn in person to confirm exactly which shades of those colors would go great together. I’m on the east coast, she is on the west coast, but we are united by the insane lengths we will go to for the perfect yarn.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to get the perfect yarn for a project?
