If you missed part one of this saga, read it before continuing below: https://www.sierraandpine.com/blogs/articles/marius-oh-my
Last we spoke, I was in a pinch, making the rookie mistake of not buying enough of this gorgeous indie-dyed teal/navy yarn for my Marius Sweater.
I reached out to Miss Babs with hope, assuming they'd be able to dye the same colorway again and within a few weeks I'd be able to pick this project up.
Well... My hope was quickly crushed. Not only did the super nice customer service lady told me this was a "special, non-repeateable colorway", there was basically no way I'd find something similar because of the color depth/variation. She recommended a different colorway and I ordered it, thinking that alternating colors every row would help blend the new color in.
After a week or so, it came in the mail. I was so excited to open the package and hoped for the best. And... my spirits sank.
There was such a discrepancy between both colors there's no way it wouldn't be obvious that I ran out of yarn and had to substitute. See for yourself. The Georgian Bay colorway (deep teal) and the Eternity (navy blue) truly don't match. Full disclosure, the customer service lady did warn me they wouldn't match, but what other options did I have?
Apologies for the bad lighting on this picture.
The issue was that this sweater is knit in sport-weight yarn, and not every indie-dyer works with this kind of base. It's not like a single ply merino or a 80/20 fingering we can find almost everywhere. My options, and hopes, of finding a matching yarn from a different company were slim.
So... I put the sweater in timout.
And I went back to browsing, and doom-scrolling Facebook. And something that really sucks about Facebook (but can be great if you're looking for something specific), is the number of ads you get on your feed. Have you noticed you'll get one every third post or something? Annoying.
But, as a marketer, let me tell you something: you gotta learn how to play the system. Use it to your advantage. So, as I was scrolling my feed, FB pushed me a yarn ad. It looked nice, so I clicked on it. And then I was pushed another indie-dyed yarn ad. And then it clicked in my brain! Clicking on the second ad, I was telling the FB algorithm that I liked these types of ads (hand-dyed yarn, duh!). And soon enough, every third post in my feed was a yarn ad! Yes!!!
I clicked on almost all of them, searching for sport-weight yarns. And then I found this:
https://badsheepyarn.com/products/impressions?variant=47800878203157
Photo credit: Bad Sheep Yarn
It looked close to the Miss Bab's Georgian Bay colorway, even though I could tell it lacked the depth and range of the teal color variation that the Miss Bab's Georgian colorway had. So I quickly ordered two skeins of this gorgeous yarn and hoped for the best. Worst case scenario it's not a match and I can knit myself a cowl or a shawl, or even order more and make myself another sweater.
For reference, the dark blue yarn at the top is Miss Bab's Eternity, while the yarn on the left is the original Miss Bab's Georgian Bay.
Here's another shot of it:
From afar, it looked like Bad Sheep Impressions was going to be a closer match than Eternity, so I decided to keep going, alternating between Miss Bab's Georgian Bay and Bad Sheep's Impressionist every row, using the helical technique to alternate. I finished the body, and am now working on the sleeves.
And here's what it looks like so far.
It's almost a perfect match. You barely see the color changes since the color of impressions perfectly matches one of the hues of Georgian Bay!
I am now on sleeve island, and hope to be done with this sweater before it gets too warm.
Wish me luck! I'll post again when it's done.