Playing yarn chicken!

This is the fun game, the part where we are shopping for yarn and make the decision that we can scrape by with just enough yarn, rather then purchasing another ball that might not get used. I think this is probably what started off my adventures with colourwork, I was about 12 years old, and buying yarn to knit myself a jumper with my birthday money and the lovely lady at the LYS suggested I buy not one, but TWO extra 50gr balls in the same shade lot... just in case. I was mortified that my project was suddenly going to cost more then I had budgeted for and decided to buy one of each colour and knit stripes instead. I figured that if I ran out then it'd be easy enough to find scraps from my mothers stash, or buy a new ball of something else and throw that into the mix. And so it began.

I wonder if you took all the extra balls of yarn that people bought to be sure they had 'enough' in the right dye lot, and piled them all together. How high would the mountain reach? How much of a yarn manufacturers, or resale outlets profits are gained from yarn that will never see use because it is the long forgotten orphan at the bottom of the basket, a leftover from a project that has long since been worn out, felted, caught on a twig and pulled or just given over to the cat to line its bed. A ball in all its pristine newness, with a ballband that might be a little tatty from storage but otherwise still readable. I'm not talking about the sweater loads of stash people have ferreted away for 'some day' but just the leftovers that they were persuaded to buy by well intentioned shop keepers.. I guess that is what charity afghans are for huh, to consume all those overflows.. if we only ever bough just enough then there'd be no charity afghans!

Anyways, back to playing chicken. I forgot to weigh my yarn before I started knitting my mitts. Now there are a few things I 'know' about the yarn I have. I know it came in 25 gr skeins. And I know that after knitting one finished mitt, plus the lace part of the second mitt that I now have 12.4 grams of the chalk left, and 23.3 grams of the lichen left. Uh oh.. can I assume that the lichen weighed in at more then 25 grams? I'm pretty certain there is no way I knit that much from 1.7 grams of yarn... so does this mean there is a good chance the chalk weighed in at over 25 grams too? The lace section for the second mitt weighs 2.6grams. I can't weigh the finished mitt yet, since it is still a bit damp from blocking, but from where I sit now it is looking like I might be cutting it really fine with the chalk. I did knit a tiny test swatch in the two colours that weighs 1.4grams. So that is on hand if I need to frog it. And there is about three meters that I wound off the ball to see how the yarn poofed up after washing. I think I will need luck on this one!

As a taster, here is the first one completed. I can't decide if I will be bothered to write up the pattern so other peopel can understand it, or just keep it for myself. I kind of unvented the cast off, since all the kids had the computers at the time so I just played about and made up something that worked.