Taking my breath away.

The yarn I ordered last week arrived.  I did not strictly need this yarn, not really.  Not at all.  Need is something entirely different.  It was a want, but not strictly for this yarn.  This yarn is just because it solved a problem.

I purchased for one reason.  I want my local yarn shops to be here when this is over.  Man, I hope that they can continue doing business.  I wish I could do more but that just isn't possible.

Isn't is lovely?  Sigh, and it is mine.  The mohair is Zambezi from Fleece Artist, dyed in colours to match to the lovely colours of Adam and Eve from River City Yarns.  And that, good people, is what the stunning blue yarn at the bottom is, Adam and Eve, a blend of merino, cashmere and nylon in colours custom dyed for River City Yarns. It's a sweater quantity.

I have not bought a sweater quantity of luxury yarn like this since I quit working.  I have bought a few sweaters worth of the marvelous yarns produced by Custom Woollen Mills and Briggs and Little and Camilla Valley but they were yarns bought for their very particular qualities.  But luxury  yarns?  Not at all.  I tried to purchase only things that I could not source from my stash.  If you recall something I have forgotten do tell.

I purchased this after months of searching my stash for a yarn to use for Elton.  I have loved this sweater for many many months.  I would start with a yarn but not be able to find a laceweight.  Where I had a laceweight, I had no coordinating fingering.  I did not want a sweater of stripes, I wanted a sweater of textures as the original is.

Purchasing this yarn was fun.  I looked online but I wasn't sure if the colours were right online.  I knew what I wanted for in the Zambezi which was the perfect solution to the lace part of it.  There are a thousand metres of Zambezi for 45 dollars, which may not sound like a bargain but is. To get this same look with Rowan or with Shibui, you would be spending more than double this amount.  And the lace is only half the sweater.

When I first decided to do this, I wasn't sure what yarn to use with Zambezi.  In the store, you could wander around and choose what looks right to your eye, but by phone, you have to put your trust in the person at the other end of the phone.  I hoped, on finding a colour name in the Adam and Eve line, that matched my Zambezi choice , that they did coordinate but it looked a little far off the mark.  So I called rather than using the online store.  Cynthia pulled out the yarns and had a look after I explained what I wanted and confirmed they were dyed to coordinate.  So then, sight unseen, I spent a lot of money on a lovely sweater just to keep my favourite place going through these tough times based on trust.

And it was the right thing to do because the yarn is so unbearably lovely. Cynthia and River City did a wonderful job.   It is just breathatking and I can't wait to work with it and I can't wait to see how it turns out as an Elton sweater. I wound it up

  

and I knit the swatch.

What a lovely way to spend a weekend.  The knitting commences today.  Do what you can to keep your local small businesses going.