The saga of the dye lot has finally come to a close but not without a continuing story of twists and turns, hope and disappointment, and finally success!

After returning the mix and match dye lot of Zitron Savanna and being charged a re-stocking fee, I was left with the love of a Tom Scott design and no yarn.  So, of course, I returned to a world-wide search of this yarn and came across a delightful online store I was later to find out represented a yarn shop located in The Netherlands.  This online shop indicated it carried this yarn.  I immediately regained my enthusiasm and explained the dye lot issue to the proprietor, Astrid.  As she double-checked her stock to my insistence, she indeed discovered that her yarn was NOT of the same dye lot but she assured me she would call the company which is located in Germany to get what I wanted.  In the meantime, she kindly recommended a  replacement yarn in case she did not meet with success.  Through a long host of emails, miscommunication, confusion, and my relentless desire to get specifically what I wanted, we realized she would not be able to help me.

Next effort was Ravelry where yarn for projects is posted complete with suggestions on where to purchase specific yarn.  The only posting was a store in Germany with the on-line order form in German. I thought, let’s give it a try.  I was actually able to fill out about 90% of it not speaking a word of the language but when a pop-up window appeared asking me a question, it became a dead end.   In the meantime, I was finding out that a new friend on Ravelry, Rita, was wanting to make the same project, so she became a resource for me.  (Thank you, Rita!)  She referred me to a store in Germany (ha, I wondered if it was the same one) where she said a woman spoke English and likely could help me.  The woman was indeed very friendly but when I placed the order with her and found out the shipping costs for overseas were near the price of the yarn, I thought, no way.

Being relentless, I kept looking not believing this yarn could be so difficult to find. I, then came across the next online shop entitled Elizabeth’s Fiber and Yarn.  Unlike other websites, I couldn’t quite figure out if this yarn could be ordered by a private costumer or wholesale only.  It was explained to me that I could special order it, it would indeed be of the same dye lot, but under no circumstances were “special orders” returnable.  Well, I went for it and sitting right before me are ten lovely balls of Zitron Savanna with the same dye lot, clearly in new packaging, in a beautiful color called Cornflower.

Before, I finish telling this story, I want to respond to Margaret who commented on Part I of this saga and say that indeed to alter balls of dye lot is a clever way to deal with a slight mismatch of color.  Quite frankly, I had never heard of that but could imagine it working.   A technique I have used is to strategically knit with the opposing dye lots the sleeves or the collar or trim.  Recently, I had to do that on another project.  These are all great techniques, but when purchasing brand new yarn for the start of a new project, paying full price and thinking I am getting new merchandise (in this case, yarn) from the same lot,  I expect to get what I want.

The picture below is of my beautiful new yarn with the pattern from Vogue Knitting, Spring 2013.  And, if you are thinking, Hey!  That is a different color than the original purchase, you would be right!  Just call it artist’s allegiance or not wanting to be reminded of the difficulty of this purchase!