Planning Backfires!

I am about to spit nails right now. You know how I was going all virtue by trying to carefully plan this giant cable coat project? So I dutifully knit out a couple of swatches. I am being really careful to consider the color, what I really want from this project. Yadda yadda, the whole nine.

And halfway through these swatches, I fall in love with the Ella Rae Classic. It's really soft going through my fingers, it's knitting up like a dream, takes to cabling and just really looks great. I fall so much in love, I decide it's not even worth my while to knit up swatches on the Cascade 220. I know Cascade, and it's great, but this Ella Rae is greater. This yarn is definitely worthy of the project.

And then I fall in love with the Mustard color swatch. It's warmer than the Gray, in my mind it's perfect for my vision of the finished cabled cardigan.

What follows is lots of discussion and family input, putting swatches against cheeks for assessment, running to windows to get natural light. You know the drill.

Feeling proud of my accomplishment in the careful planning and consideration department, I jumped online and headed over to my main crack dealer. You know the ones, they have so many different brands, so many colors and they have good closeouts. Yea, those guys. Well seems like everyone on the Internet these days is buying their from the same dealer, cause MY yarn, the one I fell in love with was GONE by Monday. What???!! I sent a message to Customer Service. Yea, sorry, all sold out. I am stunned by the news. And pissed. That part about wanting to buy a yarn at a good price? Well it just flew out the window.

I started a massive Internet search for the exact same color and came up one other source. Okay not quite as inexpensive, but within reasonable range. I whip out the card and push the Purchase button pronto. I don't want anyone else to pre-empt my plan.

Guess what. Next morning I get an email from their Customer Service - that color is discontinued, would I like another one instead? Well, no since you asked, I really don't! I wanted the one I fell in love with!! Now I am beside myself. I commence another massive Internet search. I have become obsessed with seeing this project knit in the Mustard Heather, no other color will do. I come up empty.

That's when those little thoughts start to occur. The ones that lead to compromise. Like well, maybe the original grey wasn't bad, it might work. Check original source to see if they still have it. Okay, 192 skeins left, whew I have some time to consider my options. I have to give the color some thought and really decide if I love it. By the time I decide to give it a go, it's gone too!

So here I am, 10 days after I started this little planning experiment. I have two swatches done up in a yarn I really love, and which would work just perfect for the project and I have NO YARN. The color I want has vanished into thin air. And I have to now compromise big time on another color OR not knit this project at all.

I can't help thinking that my planning didn't do me a bit of good. That all this planning got me was a big zero. Wasted time, false expectations, no sweater! I suppose the big picture will reveal itself but I sure don't see it right now. Right now I am still trying to consider what my options are and I am pretty peeved.