My mother-in-law gave me this yarn years ago. I’m generally happy to accept yarn, even when it’s yarn I’ll be dropping off at Goodwill the next time I (eventually) go. You never know where your next skein of qiviut might come from. Probably not from the hamper of acrylic your co-worker thoughtfully procured from an estate sale, but let’s stoke the fires of optimistic treasure hunting.
My MIL, though, has good yarn taste and knows her stuff and has never given me anything I’m not interested in knitting up. This yarn is gorgeous in a very non-traditionally-yarny way which makes it both appealing and confusing. It’s heavy, dense, cool to the touch, ropey, and has absolutely no give at all. Its unusual qualities are what make it attractive and also make it it hard to know what in the world to do with it which is why, I’m guessing, MIL passed it on to me way back when. It screams post-apocalyptic dystopia. That or chain mail, a knitting trend that based on a cursory google and ravelry search has not managed to catch on well at all.
It knit up at a gauge that seemed to defy all ravelry pattern database records, which is not unusual in itself for the twilight zone experience of gauge, but the limitations of this yarn’s characteristics combined with a gauge heretofore unmeasured in our physical world meant that despite my best intentions and interest this yarn languished. I started and ripped out a project that was’t going to work and wasn’t something I would have worn anyways and proceeded to put the yarn away for , no exaggeration, another 5 years after that failed attempt.
I *finally* realized that one of the things holding me back from using this yarn was that there was just so much of it. I didn’t want to make anything with sleeves because the yarn was so heavy and inelastic, but I was unconsciously holding out for a pattern that would use it up. Using some is better than using none, and I finally settled on a simple, appropriately zombie-apocalyptic pattern that required nowhere near the yardage I had on hand.

Pattern: Slope by Shibui Knits
Size: Cast on smallest hoping for medium
Yarn: Blue Moon Fibert Arts Koi, Indigo Nights (discontinued)
Needle: 4
Gauge remained an issue, but the simpler your garment the more flexible a measurement gauge can be. I cast on the smallest size hoping for something in the middle. In this case it worked fine. It only needed to fit my shoulders and it does. The rest of it is a matter of personal preference.
I flubbed the length measurement. It’s longer than it should be because I was measuring from the wrong place. You can see how a measurement from the front v. side v. back would vary significantly. I also shorted the armholes some by starting the neckline decreases a smidge earlier than the size medium called for.
And now I am ready for the technological singularity.
I know it’s been point out a million times, but how can knitwear so prevalent in post-apocalyptic hellscapes and yet nobody has the skill to repair it? So many holes and running stitches. Get it together future-dwellers.