I’m Having a Yarn Dilemma. Which option would you choose? WWYHD?

So I cast on Knit Picks’ Gallatin Sweater a week ago, and I’m enjoying it so far. Lured by the pattern’s seamless design (this is the second time in my blog’s short life where I mention that I hate seaming) and ability to increase the length of the sweater to mid-thigh with the amount of yarn included in the kit (it even shows you where to add length and gives two options on how to go about doing it), I am happy with the motif options and surprised that I’m even enjoying the stranded colorwork. I’ve knitted from the bottom of the sweater up to the hip, and everything’s looking good so far.

And then it hit me today – things are looking too good. I had the panicked thought – what if I run out of the fawn-colored yarn (CC1)? Am I adding length the way the pattern expects me to? This is where reading a pattern can get a little tricky, especially if it’s not very well-written. Patterns can be vague and confusing – or flat-out wrong – and I usually find grammatical and spelling errors and typos, and I swear I’m not actually looking for them.

So the pattern says I can add langth (yes, langth) to the sweater by knitting more rows of bare (undyed, MC1) Wool of the Andes Bulky within the patterned bands.  But for the cool arrowhead-looking motif I selected, I think it would ruin its coolness to add more rows of white within the two dark brown (CC2) rows, leaving the arrowhead things floating in white, disconnected from the dark brown stripes.

The second option is to add more patterned bands within the fawn-colored background. So that’s what I chose to do, and got busy doing to the math to avoid having to knit that same patterned band four times in a row – three would look better and be easier to work.

However, all that math made me use more fawn-colored yarn than I think I should have…the pattern says “the yardage requirements in this pattern are sufficient to lengthen the piece to mid-thigh, or add a total of 40 additional rows of knitting to the piece as written.” Since the pattern spells out only the first option (explained in the paragraph above), does that mean I’m screwed? Will I run out of fawn-colored yarn?

I’d hate to get to the shoulders of this thing and find out I should have gone back and changed my approach from the beginning. But I’ve been knitting it on and off for the past week, and the stranded colorwork is coming out so nicely. I’d hate to rip it back now. The hopeful little voice in the back of my head tells me I could always buy another skein of the fawn-colored yarn, but the knitting stickler in me says I know it will be from a different dye lot. Sigh.

Here are my options:

A)      Ignore the knitting stickler in me and keep knitting, hoping that because I’m knitting the third size (medium) and the kit includes yarn for a sweater three sizes bigger I’ll be in the clear.
 

B)      Listen to the knitting stickler in me and rip back and knit four patterned bands with less fawn-colored background in between.
 

C)      Tune into the hopeful little voice and pretend dye lots don’t exist. Maybe the way the pattern stripes work out the slight color change won’t be so noticeable if I need to buy another skein.
 

D)      Stifle all the voices and shove the sweater, needles and all, into my bin of UFOs.

Note: I’ll never really choose D, as this yarn was an early Christmas gift from my husband, so don’t pick D.

Which option would you choose?

And better yet, what would the Yarn Harlot do?  (WWYHD)