Disillusioned

Last night I cast on a sweater for the husband.

The pattern is Ranger by Jared Flood.

My  yarn of choice was the discontinued Waterlily by Classic Elite. I have 20 skeins in a lovely grey-blue called Wedgewood.

This is a yarn I have used several times and I have loved the colors and springiness of the yarns.

I made four sweaters just last year with this yarn.

The thing is, each and every time I have used this yarn, it has taken far more yarn that the respective patterns have called for. Fortunately, I tend to buy more than I think I will need.  The pink cardigan above used four more balls than the pattern called for.  I had them, but I had less than five yards left, when I was done.

The whole yarn shortage thing with this brand puzzled me.

For the Ranger sweater above, the pattern calls for 1,730 yards.  Each ball of Waterlily is supposed to be 100  yards.

As I was knitting on that sleeve last night, I had a weird feeling.  Two balls into the sleeve and it was not half-way done.  

At first, I dismissed the feeling that I was going to run out of yarn because I had 20 balls, each 100 yards for a total of 2,000 yards, when the pattern only called for 1,730 yards.

This afternoon, a friend and I went made a quick trip to Tinsmith's Wife in Comfort to retrieve a design sample from the shop, and I expressed my fear of running out of yarn on this project.  I also mentioned how each of the four times I had used the yarn before, I always used more than the pattern called for.

When we returned to my house, I pulled out the yarn and showed her how far 2 - 100 yard balls had gotten me on this sleeve.

We ended up weighing the remaining balls.  They are supposed to weigh 50 grams, but not one of them did.  Several were 47 and 48 grams.  One weighed 49.5 grams.  

Laying a yard stick on the kitchen island, I measured the 49.5 gram ball...There were 79.5 yards to that ball...NOT 100 yards as written on the ball band.  So, at most, I had 1,590 yards of yarn...NOT the 2,000 yards I thought I had purchased.

It was not my imagination that each of the projects I had previously knit had used more yarn than expected and more than called for in the pattern, each of the balls were short by 20%.

I shall let you draw your own conclusions as to what I really think about this.  The immediate issue is that I simply do not have enough yarn to knit the above sweater...

No wonder they discontinued this yarn.

Suffice it to say, Classic Elite is now off my list of yarns on which I will spend my money.