Sometimes you can by with something that is not your first choice, but other times, there is no substitute. When I was pregnant with my first child, I had a craving for a particular kind of Mexican pastry — a marranito — so I went to the tortilleria that was across the street from the house where I had taken ballet lesson for many years in search of the pastry I desired

I got there late in the afternoon, and by the time I arrived, the pastry I wanted had sold out. 

They wouldn’t have any more until the next day.

So I bought a half-a-dozen others, and I ate them all.

As delicious as they were, not one of them satisfied my appetite for the pastry I had come in to buy, and the next morning I was there bright and early so that I could get my hands on the pastry I craved.

Lucky for me, I now live within and easy drive of Golden Crown Panaderia, and they seem to never run out of the marranitos I love.

But something similar happened again to me this week, but unlike that fateful trip to the tortilleria over thirty-seven years ago now this story involves yarn.

As my regular readers know, I ran out of Red Heart Super Saver grenadine yarn when I was in the middle of making a very large crochet flower. In addition to ordering the yarn online, I ended up going to Michaels and bought enough yarn to make two more Day of the Dead yarn bombs.

With all of this yarn for two future yarn bombs, I decided I had better get busy creating a useable chart. When I made my first yarn bomb, I only drew the left side of the chart, and after crocheting those first eight panels, I crocheted the reverse for the next eight panels. I did just fine, but it was needlessly slow, so this time, I charted all sixteen panels:

And then, because it was kind of a mess, and I needed to trim the pieces and organize them into something useable, I dug up a gray and purple marker, and got to work:

With that done I decided to follow the lead of Henri Matisse, and before I finished work on the “fork embroidery” flower for which I had finished one petal, I decided I would create a cut out that was an accurate approximation of what the finished size it would be:

After a more detailed look, I decided it was too small:

Not willing to give up on the idea, I went in search of inspiration, and discover that combs are also used to create this kind of faux embroidery, and when I went to the grocery store to get a few things, I found this BOGO deal on combs:

I didn’t really need six combs, but I had trouble leaving the three free ones in the hair care aisle, and if this future petal works out as well as it seems it might:

Then I have enough combs to wrap the petals for an entire flower at once!