If you’re unfamiliar with the game of “chicken,” there’s a Wikipedia page about it. The short version is two cars drive towards each other, and whoever swerves first – avoiding a crash – is the loser. That is a game I have never played, since I value both my life and my insurance rates.
I do frequently play the much tamer “yarn chicken” game though, which is the gamble between the quantity of yarn possessed and the quantity of yarn needed for the project. You may recall that this year’s temperature blanket is a scavenger edition, using leftover yarn from my stash. I have lost once at yarn chicken – I ran out of the orange I was using for the 80s and had to pull something similar from my stash – and am closing to losing again on the green for the 70s. The replacement green is nowhere near the bright green I started with.
I’m also working on a historical temperature blanket – a year and location in the past, so the counts were set before I started – and woefully miscalculated on my remnant yarn for that. You may recognize these colors from last year’s temperature blanket; this is the leftover yarn from that project. I specifically mapped the colors I had more of to the more frequent temperatures for this blanket, and realized recently that I would not have enough of two or three different colors. When I checked the nearest craft store, I was able to purchase two of the three in the same brand’s style and color, but the third one, a red, was not available. In poor lighting, it won’t be noticeable, but one of the two reds pictured is definitely a burgundy. So that’s another loss to yarn chicken.