The Crying of Lot 44

Sometimes, the only way for me to learn a lesson is to ignore the official expert advice and try to do things my own way, only to feel the hangnail sting of avoidable failure.

Case in point, I am nearly finished with my biggest knitted object to date. Only one more skein to go, but the store is out of my dye lot. Yep. And the next available dye lot in my color looks really different. So there's this darker patch that makes it look as if the rest of the object was left out in the sun or something.

So I'm hunting for more of lot 44. I called an online store, and the woman on the phone said they were out, then she added, "Oh, honey. You gotta buy more than you need, then return the leftovers."

Okay, experts, you win.