Sweet Pea Coat

One of the first yarns added to my stash when I got back into knitting about ten years ago was this gorgeous, super chunky,  Rowan Harris Tweed. I started several projects with it and ripped them all back, never finding the best use for it.

Then a couple of months ago I finally managed to match up Kate Gilbert's Sweet Pea Coat pattern from Twist Collective's winter 2008 issue, which was in my Ravelry queue, with the yarn, which was languishing in my stash.

There was only one problem - although on paper I had enough yarn to make the coat, in practice I knew that I was likely to need more. In the intervening years, not only had the yarn been discontinued, it had been discontinued some years ago, making it very difficult to find any remaindered balls hanging around at online retailers.

I started knitting while retaining an optimistic outlook, somehow believing that this might be sufficient to solve the problem.

With the back and one side completed, I realised I was going to need more than optimism to solve this problem. This was another challenge for Ravelry!

Do you remember the story of the Nordic sock yarn? Contacting (almost) total strangers on Ravelry to beg yarn off them and making new friends?

This time it was a similar story, although I suspect me and my benefactor will never meet, since she lives in the USA. I could find no UK Raveler with the right yarn and colour, but happened upon Kat from Boston, MA (MyOwnOpus on Ravelry). Crazily enough she not only had the right yarn and colour, it also turned out to be the same dye lot! She was not at all offended by my unsolicited request to buy her yarn, and we agreed a price for the yarn and shipping which I was able to send by Paypal.

So the coat is now finished, and I just spent the weekend wearing it and loving it! The colour is sufficiently neutral to go with everything, yet the flecks of turquoise, yellow and red save it from being too bland. Warmer than the Central Park Hoodie and roomy enough to wear several layers underneath, I think it's going to keep me going quite a way into winter. The only thing I don't really like is the buttonholes - a couple of them are a bit too loose and they might have to undergo a bit of alteration.