What was I thinking???

A most excellent question.

Yes, I'm old fashioned. I confess that I believe little girls should look like little girls. Not like tomboys and certainly not dressed like Miley Cyrus. Neon is for orange traffic cones and side of the road safety striping, not clothing. Black is for mourning, not babies. But I digress.

So when I set out to make Lolly, I had a couple of inspired ideas. Namely, Lolly would be dressed like Buffy from Family Affair, wearing a short dress, black Mary Janes, white anklet socks, and white ruffled rumba panties. (Of course Lolly will have more than one dress! She's a southern girl.) These flashes of brilliance required advance planning in the form of a black worsted yarn purchase and scrounging through my stashed yarn oddments for white yarn.

Needless to say, Lolly now has a body with white panties (ruffles to be crocheted on after the tail is attached), and she has black shoes and white socks. Oy! Mattress stitching the heels of these shoes is going to be one sticky wicket, but so far so good. So why am I questioning my judgment?

The other Sticky Yarn Wicket or, 

Why I need to avoid online yarn stores, or 

Which DK do I need?

My point to ponder over chocolate or wine will be whether or not I will return the beaucoup skeins of 4 colors of clearance DK I bought just because the colors work for the clothes for Lolly and her eventual beau. Extra yarn is never a bad thing... but I'm not sure if this is too much of a good thing.

I found this toy  pattern on Ravelry and it was love at first sight. Then I looked at the recommended yarn; No suggested yarn, but the suggested yarn weight is DK. So I order my 3.2 lb. box o' squishilicious yarn goodness in worsted weight yarn. Enough to make critters and clothes for each. Took me awhile to figure out that DK yarn in the UK is virtually the same as worsted yarn in the US, but hey, I can learn... or so I think.

Then, I buy the pattern, and see 4 ply yarn is needed for the clothing. What is this 4 ply of which you speak? Hmm, it looks smaller than DK... so I promptly look it up. And botch my yarn comparisons. Easy enough to do when DK yarn is one size in the UK, and another in the US. Having only one limping brain cell doesn't help much either.

 4 ply = fingering (or close enough for government math)

Continuing my warped logic:

4 ply is next size smaller than DK

I'm using worsted for Lolly so I need the next smaller size down: US DK!

I have no US weighted DK yarn, and OMG I need 4 colors between 2 animals.  Whatever will I do????

Further continuing the insanity, I'm so pleased with figuring that out that I reward myself with a little yarn shopping. 

Hmmm, Little Knits has the perfect super wash wool DK yarns on clearance! I only need small amounts for the clothes and I don't want to get stuck with teensy bits of a yarn weight that I'll never be able to use because I have no matching DK weight yarn in stash. So I get the brilliant idea to order 4 bags - 1 of each needed color - so that I'll be able to make something out of the leftover yarn oddments. Full bags of the DK are even more heavily discounted by percentage than the individual skeins. Yes, someone at Little Knits saw me coming...

Now, just you wait, this will be the worsted equivalent DK when it gets here... And I'll wind up making Lolly's dress out of some sock yarn I have on hand... No more yarn shopping for you!

What WAS I thinking???