It’s been cold and rainy here in the valleys of the mountain west, while a few thousand feet above us in elevation ski resorts have had a banner year of snow, a whopping 700+ inches!!! We did have one warm spell, and my feet were hopeful that winter was over because they were clad in sandals. During those few warm days, I was knitting a summer sweater.

But the cold has settled in again and I’ve changed back to winter knitting. I’m knitting a dress, something I haven’t done in a LONG time! When I lived overseas in a house that was very chilly, I knitted a bulky dress. This time I’m knitting a fingering weight dress which, of course, is taking much longer, but it is keeping me warm as it gets longer and the cold sticks around.

This dress pattern is from Justyna Lorkowska called Hanke dress. It’s an above the knee dress in fingering weight yarn. Fingering weight and dress = a ton of knitting. At least I can read and binge watch something while I’m working on this dress.

The yarn is called Poems Puzzle by Wisdom Yarns. WAIT! That’s a super-bulky yarn! Yes, it’s a chain yarn and the suggested needle size is from 11 up to 50. What gives? Well…

I bought a batch of Poems Puzzle yarn on eBay along with a Vogue Knitting magazine containing a cowl pattern using 4 skeins of the yarn. BUT, the cowl was to be sewn, not knitted together. Uh, no.

So I stared at the yarn and then decided to unravel it. To my surprise, each skein of the Puzzle yarn became 200 grams of Wisdom’s Poems Sock yarn…over 800 yards. With 4 skeins of the Puzzle yarn, I figure I’ve got 3200 yards of yarn! That’s how I settled on a dress.

My hope is to get the body of the dress finished before the warm weather sets in (3 days away!) and I still have about 9 inches to knit. I’ll give it my best shot, especially since school is winding down and after-school meetings are at a minimum.

Burning question: is this my favorite yarn? No, not by a long shot. But it’s what I had and I think this will be a colorful way to celebrate the dead of winter.