A happy New Year to everyone who celebrates the same this week.

Progress continues on the Mystery Project. Apologies to those who have written in dying to know what it is, but I can't reveal more details without permission from those who have contracted for the article in question. I haven't asked them yet if I can do so. Being late on delivery doesn't put me in a position of moral certitude from which to ask special favors.

What I can say is that it's fulled, it's knit from Classic Elite Renaissance in purple, it's double stranded, and it's being embroidered right now. In addition to the base purple, I received several complementary colors of the same yarn in which to do the ornamental stitching. The design I've sketched out is a fanciful fruit, sort of like a Renaissance pomegranate. Given the colors supplied, it was either going to be that or autumn leaves, and leaves are all too commonly seen. Because the stitching yarn is worsted weight and the ground is fulled quite thickly, I'm taking pains to use stitches that cover ground and anchor without requiring that the stitcher pierce the fulled cloth completely. Yanking a needle full of worsted through a tight fabric is a huge pain. There's also a bit of couching, in which a lighter thread is used to fix down the heavier worsted.

On yarn consumption - I've seen people dither at yarn shops because the project they wanted to make required just a bit of a contrasting yarn for the ornamentation. They've wondered if it's truly necessary to buy a whole skein for just a yard or two. Sometimes it's not. If you've got a good stash and have yarns roughly comparable to the suggested one on hand and you are comfortable color matching (or selecting a whole new color suite) - there's no particular reason to buy a whole skein for a tiny bit of embroidery or other embellishment. Stitching in the same color as the ground is also a possibility, especially for fulled items, as the color/texture play of the original texture yarn used for the stitching and that of the fulled background can be very effective. Or if wools are being used, I sometimes look to the yarns sold for needlepoint. They're thinner than knitting yarns, but can be worked multi-stranded to make up the equivalent. Personally, I prefer the look of stitching when done in thinner wools, so I'd probably use tapestry in less than worsted thickness equivalents, but a commission is a commission and for this item at least I'm sticking to the "use what's furnished" paradigm.

I'm still not 100% pleased with the item. In spite of intensive swatching, my final row:stitch gauge fulling ratios were off a bit and the shapes didn't turn out as I had hoped. I wish I could do it again, taking the lessons learned on this piece to make the second one better. That's a big problem with fulled pieces compared to plain knit ones. Unlike unfulled projects where you can always rip back and start again, you only get one shot at the fulling. After that you've got what you've got and you can't return to the beginning.