Dilemma

I've been so busy knitting I've had little time to blog but here goes.

I was asked to knit six shawls/wraps/coverups for bridesmaids at a wedding in December. Mother of the Bride saw me wearing a triangular shawl in Kid Silk Haze and asked if I could knit "Something like that six times before December 22nd" "Something like that" turned out to be something totally different:

The Bride didn't like the shape - could they be more flat at the bottom? She didn't like the top - could there be long ties for the girls to have a bow at the back? She didn't like the border (it was too wide) and she didn't like the stitch pattern used on the border- couldn't it be "plain". She didn't like the stitch pattern used in the "body" of the shawl- could it be more "holey"? (technical term).

I trawled through stitch pattern books and we settled on "punto piastrelle" (tile stitch) from an ancient Pingouin/Mon Tricot book for the body, plain garter for the (narrow border) and I made up the ties at the top. The only thing that is remotely like the original is that I am increasing one stitch at each end of the even numbered rows. Oh, and the yarn is Kid Silk Haze.

And therein lies another tale. I happened to have one ball of KSH in the right colour (blue), and anxious to start and not able to get to the LYS, start is what I did. When I made it to Shipston Needlecraft there were too problems: they didn't have enough KSH in the right colour and the dye lot was different to the one I had started with. No problem, I think, I'll just do the "knitter's fudge" of knitting two rows with the old and two rows with the new for ten rows or so - thus fooling the eye into not seeing the join. So it proved to be - no problem.

I ordered the rest of the yarn I needed and went home to knit. Eventually, the new yarn arrived. I whizzed into the shop, clutching my one remaining ball of yarn. Jane took one look at it and, without even showing me the yarn I had ordered, said, "We've ordered the wrong colour!" Well, we hadn't ordered the wrong colour but it is a different dye lot and it's so different that it is obvious to the naked eye. You don't even need to hold the two balls together - they are so obviously not the same.

This has thrown me into a bit of a panic - what on earth am I going to do? Various solution present themselves:

I can try to find the same dye lot (shade 592, dye lot 742) by getting on to Rowan (in fact, Jane in the shop is doing this for me); or by throwing myself on the mercy of all the internet vendors out there (so if that's you, have a look!); or by sending a post to the various lists I belong to and begging them to have a look in their stashes.

I can carry on regardless and dye the whole lot.

I can wait to start the third shawl until we explore avenue 1, if I find the right dye lot, all will be well, if I don't - two wraps will be different to the other four. However, time is getting on and I don't want to fail the bride.

What to do? Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

No pictures of the finished wraps (Bride doesn't want to spoil the surprise) and no picture of the swatch (yes, I did one!) for the tile pattern because the camera is playing up.

Back to the knitting.