A Pattern Revision Saga

The original Mary Lennox Tam was made for my friend’s daughter when I first started publishing my designs. She was also kind enough to model it for me.

As part of my store update, I'm re-editing every single one of my designs. And for designs like the Mary Lennox Tam that were made with yarns that are now discontinued, I'm finding new yarns and testing them again.

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Video shows a stack of circular tams from above on a wooden table. The top one is dark red with ridges of garter around a centre that looks like it has spokes of knit running through it. There's a pompom in the centre.

A hand reaches in and removes the red hat to reveal a green one of the same size (without a pompom), and then removes the green one to reveal a turquoise one that's a little larger with a dark red pompom. The camera zooms in on the pompom, then zooms out.

The top hat in this video is made with the original yarn I designed it with in 2011… which has been discontinued since 2012. (Bernat Chunky.) No big deal. There have to be plenty of new yarns to choose from, right?

Except there don't seem to be a lot of modern yarns that knit up to this gauge. (15 stitches in 4 inches on size 6.0 mm needles.) I've pored over yarnsub.com to no avail. Almost everything else in that gauge is also discontinued. (Was this a yarn weight that had a decade and is now to be no more?)

Attempt #1 at finding a substitute was with Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Superwash Bulky (the green one). Although my swatch wasn't far off, so I thought, I made it in the biggest size, and it's the same size or smaller than the original size medium red sample.

Then I tried Knit Picks Biggo (turquoise), and the angels sang... not only was it the perfect gauge, it also has many of the same qualities as the original, and it's actually softer.

With glee, I went to type up the revision… and discovered that Biggo was discontinued sometime last year. *Cue screaming…

So, now I'm about to start attempt number three at finding a substitute. At this point, I'm thinking of redesigning the pattern for a different yarn weight. Like worsted, since there's a lot more consistency between yarns in that weight, and I'm almost guaranteed to be able to find a substitute for anything that gets discontinued ever again. (The original inspiration hat that the character Mary Lennox wore in the 1993 movie The Secret Garden was in worsted anyway.) Or I could use an available bulky-weight yarn and adjust needle sizes.

Which solution do you think is best?

(I’ve been working on this revision since before I started building this new store. Time to make a decision!)