Olympic Yarn

For your viewing pleasure here is my order from Kaliedescope Yarns. That's 7 skeins of Plymouth Wildflower DK in Ociean and 1 skein of the discontinued Mission Falls 1824 wool in Raisin. The blue is for the silk camisole in LMKG and the purple is for some fingerless glove thingies from Wendy's site. (Let us not discuss how I just found a site that offerred more skeins of the DK for less money, because that will just upset me. I plan to pretend like that never happened.)
One of the skeins has already been unwrapped and had an attempt at a gauge swatch. For you to laugh at, I present exhibit A:
How anyone could get gauge using the specifications in the book is beyond me. While the compositions of the yarn that I chose versus the one specified are different, but they have the exact same specified gauge - that being 5.5 sts per inch using US 6. That makes perfect sense to me. I might not get that, but it's about right for sport weight. No? Well LMKG specifies 6 sts. per inch on size 7s. Does that make any sense whatsoever? Do you think you could get that? I know there isn't a snowballs chance in hell that I will get near that, but I tried anyhow. What you see here is an overly drapey, see right through it, hope you are wearing a bra or you're not in public, 4 sts per inch - and that's unstretched. That's not "hey let me reach over there and tug on my tank top a little bit and see what happens" it's "let me sit perfectly still and hope no one gets a view that they don't really need, hope my father never sees me in this shirt". Total silliness. At least I tried it without laughing too hard. I think I'll try US 5 now. Normally I would have no problem doing it on US 6 - that's the Addi 6 of 4mm not the Crystal Palace of 4.25mm - but since I'm doing this continental thing now, I've loosened up quite a bit and will have to go down needle sizes now. I'm glad for that because I'd so much rather go down a size than up. Large needles make me hurt.
After I get gauge I'm going to wash it and dry it to make sure it keeps it's shape and all. It's cotton, but it's also acrylic, so I'm not really worried about it stretching or shrinking - but this is for the Olympic KAL, so there's no room for error really.
Also, I'd like to note in advance that this top is in the 6 hour section of the book, and I laugh at that. This yarn, while lovely and soft, is splitty as hell and is going to require major attention. It's like someone took their favorite sewing thread and plied 80 peices together. I'm sure it will make a lovely top, but the chances of me working with it again after this a very low.
Onto more yarn! This is that stuff that I told you about for the elephant toy. This is the "exclusively for Joann's collection". It's a wool, cotton, nylon blend. I think it will be lovely to work with, but it's going on the proverbial shelf until after the hats that I have in the works and the Olympics, um, and the sock, and...nevermind. It's really planned as a Mother's Day present (I'll explain later why that makes any sense), so I've got plenty of time to work it out.

And lastly, if you ever doubt the difficulty of trying to get a decent picture in my house, I give you this:

This is how close my lovely assistant/stealer and eater of all things wool felt that she needed to be to really provide her input.
I fell over no less than two times in an effort to protect the camera in one hand and the yarn at my feet while taking this picture. Lucky for me, the cat did not feel the need to also be involved in today's picture extravaganza.