Letting go

In the Great Spring Cleaning of 2010, I finally admitted to myself that this hat just wasn't working:


So I let it go. It was a lot bigger than this when I started. It was such a dud that it didn't occur to me to photograph it for posterity. Or as a cautionary tale about throwing together two hand-dyed sock yarns. I was just thinking I might get good at this letting go business when this showed up in my stash (I have no idea how it got there):

The Dale of Norway Notre Dame ski sweater.

When the Yarn Harlot knit the Dale of Norway Whistler sweater as her Olympic Knitting project in February, the pattern book (Dale of Norway Commemorative Collection 8501) started selling like hotcakes. Then it went out of print. Then it sold out. Just about everywhere. A copy of this booklet that had been recently sold for $16.95 suddenly went for over $200 on eBay. There is only one word for that.

Yikes!

The problem was that after it was impossible to find, I became captivated by a different sweater in the same booklet. I never had the tiniest urge to knit a Norwegian sweater, not even a little bit, but this sweater called to me. I Googled. I lurked. I eBayed. I commented on Ravelry. Vicki saw my comment and sweetly mentioned she had seen a copy in a shop off the beaten path. Nordic Accents in Elkhart Lake is not a yarn shop. She sells lots of beautiful Nordic things but also just happened to a have copy of the elusive booklet, and would I like to buy some yarn with that? Since the goldenrod and tartan green are discontinued colors, and soft blue seems rare, I put together my yarn pack from two different sources. It was a multi-email endeavor, but the proprietress was so patient and helpful. The next time I am in Elkhart Lake, I will be browsing her Finnish glass birds.

Now before you all rush to eBay to splurge a couple of C notes, WoolyBaaBaa now has the patterns available as PDF downloads; reprints may or may not be on the way. Oh, and thank you Vicki. (I think.)