Cream Elves

One of the most difficult hats Jennifer ordered was also the simplest looking.  A little pointed elf hat, in a cream thick and thin yarn.  What could be so difficult about that?  The yarn selection!  I looked at the major brands in big box stores.  I went to my LYS.  They had some thick and thin yarns, but not in a plain cream.  There was a dark taupe, and many, many multi-coloured yarns.  When I left the LYS, I was originally going to go to the next town over, to another LYS, but suddenly decided to go one block over to the Salvation Army, since it was getting close to end of school.

I really lucked out and found a cream, commercially knit scarf in a thick and thin yarn.  It was 100% acrylic, but other than that, it was perfect. 

I knit directly from the scarf, LOL.  It took a couple attempts to get the right size and shape and needle size...on one hat, it was too tight and the thicker parts weren't standing out. 

On another hat, the thin parts were stacking above thin parts, creating TOO much contrast (the thick parts were also lining up).

In the end, I think I created four hats, and ripped out one to re-knit in a newborn size.  One hat went into the grey dye pot, but the result was total yuck:

 I still have some of this yarn left.  Scarves are a GREAT option for yarn, as long as you pay attention, make sure it's knit or crocheted in one piece.

 I was recently given a scarf with an awesome purple yarn in it, but it turned out to be actually woven, and even though the individual strands were long, they weren't long enough to do two rows of a newborn hat.  Got to come up with other options for it!

Yarn In:  13 184gr (scarf already counted)
Yarn Out:  122gr + 14 303gr = 14 425gr
Balance:  1241gr more used up than brought in
Cost:  $258.29/333 days = $0.78/day