“Bo” 帛

Tags

Anna Gratton, cowl, FO, hand-dyed, Knitting, Little Wool Co., New Zealand yarn, yarn

Variegated yarns are delicious.  Their gorgeous tones and wondrous contrasts excite and delight the eye.  The beautiful colours make the heart beat faster, and bewitch the knitter into a fast exchange of cash for a bundle of squishy, hand-dyed joy.

For me, that’s often where it ends.  The pretty skein sits in my stash looking cute, but never knitted.  It’s very sad.

Why?  Two main reasons:  For the most part it’s the thought of potential pooling that gets me.  Also, I just can’t quite actually deal with wearing a riot of colours in one piece (socks are an exception).  Even fair isle, which I love knitting and love to look of, is reluctantly worn if it contains a lot of colours.  I guess that’s why I adore self-striping yarns, semi-solids, and tweed.  They’re more interesting than plain colour, but less provocative to my “OCD” tendencies when it comes to multiple colours in garments!

However, when I saw this hank of “autumn in a skein” from Anna Gratton (the actual colourway is called Topaz), I had to buy it.  The tones were just too beautiful to resist.  (Reference paragraph one… ahem).  Orange tones are not normally my colour.  But this is an irresistibly beautiful, gloriously rich, true burnt terracotta, autumn leaf orange/brown captured in a magical hank of yarn.  Such a masterful dye job!!

You might remember this image:  The way the silk and mohair content caught the light made it look like a glowing ball of embers in the evening sunset.  There is very little I did to alter this image – the silk and mohair content really does catch the light and turn it into something awesome.

I was determined to knit something with this beautiful yarn.   Something that would show off the dyework at its best, and highlight the tweedy look and quality of the silk content.

I started to swatch.

These were a couple of my more successful swatches.  I went with the top one for a beginning concept for my design.

I really like how the linen stitch breaks up the variegation and gives it a more textural, earthy look.  It’s quite a slow stitch though, and also makes the fabric quite dense.  So I decided to break it up with stocking stitch and something in between to give it visual interest and increase the draping quality of the fabric.

It has taken me all summer to finish knitting this design.  I don’t really know why.  But they say that slow and steady wins the race, and indeed, it is done.

It’s still way too warm for my comfort levels at the moment, so this is how it needs to be worn until Winter finally decides to come play in the Southern hemisphere:

This pattern is called “Bo”.  Bo (帛) is the general reference to silk in the Chinese language (I’ve used Mandarin), and is the predominant fibre in this cowl of Little Wool Company’s 40% Silk/30% Mohair/30% wool blend.  The name is a nod to my Chinese heritage and the origin of silk.

Deliberately textural, earthy and organic looking, I’m happy with how it has turned out.  I wanted it to look like woven cloth when worn, but not quite woven.  The garter stitch/purl detail on the front of the cowl is reflected in the other side, so that together, the two sides complement each other very well.

It takes just 120g of a 200g hank of Little Wool Co. Silk/Mohair/Merino fingering-weight yarn to knit this cowl.  It’s a very light and airy yarn, so if you are wanting to substitute this yarn be sure to choose something with similar qualities.

The pattern will be ready in about a week.  It’s a simple pattern, and I hope it will bring some of you a bit of knitting pleasure.

This version is being packed off as a gift.  However, I’m going to knit another sample for me.  Perhaps you’ll join me?

 

When the going gets tough…

Tags

Knitsch, Knitting, New Zealand wool, New Zealand yarn, silk, Spinning a Yarn, yarn

the tough go shopping.  Well, that’s what I did this month.

These yarnie beauties were my consolation presents to me for a month of very stressful work.

From the top -

Spinning a Yarn, Silk Merino Luxury (fingering) inAutumn Hydrangea

Spinning Yarn, Silk Merino Indulgence (laceweight) in Lichen

Knitsch, 100% merino wool sock yarn in Pencarrow

Knitsch, 100% merino wool sock yarn in Charlemange.

It’s a slightly dangerous thing to go looking at yarn online when you’re feeling in need of cheering and there’s money jangling in your pocket… there’s nothing like a bit of yarn shopping to make a girl feel better though, huh?

Trefoil

Tags

fair isle, Knitting, Trefoil, WIP, yarn

I’ve had this Jamieson & Smith 2 ply jumper weight yarn in my stash for quite a long time.  Waiting for the right project.  I’ve blogged about it before when I thought I might have found the right thing for it.  I think I’ve finally (!?) found it.

For quite some time I have also been searching for a fair isle project that I’d love to wear.  That, combined with the classic feel and look of a traditional yarn like the Jamieson & Smith yarn merged into the perfect combination recently: Trefoil.

It has the perfect amount of fair isle – just around the yoke – so that I don’t get bored of all that stranding, and it’s a lovely design.

I started swatching before Christmas.

After I’d finished, I wasn’t sure if it was right. The middle section looked murky.  You can’t really see the flower pattern.  Frustratingly, I didn’t really have any other colours in my stash that were any better.  I didn’t really have anything similarly textured and shaded (ie tweed or heathered) to match nicely with it.

In the meantime, I had an interesting conversation with my daughter:

“Mother, you know that nice green cardigan you knitted in Heron for me?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“Well, people think it looks very nice on me.  And this colour you’re knitting here looks just like that colour, and I think that perhaps you need to knit that cardigan for me!”  (accompanied by puppy eyes)

Thinking fast…(damn, I want this cardigan!) “It’s itchy wool.  You won’t like it.”

Rapid fire response… “Well, how about knitting me one in Knitsch?”

One taken aback and slightly impressed mother at how quickly her daughter can counter-attack in knitting terms (quick thinking on her part to think of fingering weight yarn with all the right colours I can choose from and that isn’t itchy!):  ”Hmm.  I suppose I could do that.”

So now it looks like I’ll have to knit two of these.  One for her, and one for me!

The project swatch then sat in my ‘think about’ basket for a couple of months.  If only I had more of that lovely Rowan Fine Tweed to play with!

Recently, I had the good fortune to engage in another happy yarn swap with Colette, and this is what I got:

Hurrah!  Thank you Colette!

I started swatching…

Hmm. No.

Better, but still not right.

Much cursing and huffing later…

Ah, this one felt just right.  It gave me that happy “twang” in the belly when I saw it finished.  Do you get that when you know something’s just right?

The colours tone with each other perfectly.  I’m not sure if you can see it in the picture, but Askrigg, the deep blue, contains the same green and red flecks that are in both Wensley (the blue/green) and Settle (the plum).  Buckden forms the neutral background, and I repeated the J&S colour (FC62) through the centre.  They tie in perfectly.  Magic!

I finally remembered that fair isle colours work best if the colours are the same tone.  Silly me.

Let the knitting begin!

Mellow

Tags

designing, Flagstaff Alpacas, Knitting, Shur'tugal, socks, yarn

I’m a happy person this week because my darling daughter is back in the country.  It is so nice to have her around again.  :-)

So far we haven’t done much because I had to finish the last two days at work, but now that I’m properly on vacation, the fun times start!  Yesterday before work, we baked my favourite orange muffins with cream cheese centre (she got up with the birds because she’s still jet-lagged).  It was lovely to chat and have girlie catch-up times while the boys slumbered.  (Although she may be slightly mortified to think her old mum thought she was ‘hanging out’ with a hip teenager… ;P)

She likes the socks, and I got the size right!

When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, there may have been some squealing at the discovery that my Christmas treat to me had arrived:

There was a 30 second internal debate about putting it under the tree for Christmas day, but on reflection I decided that it would be far better to digest it now.  :D  There’s too much distraction/activity on Christmas Day to properly appreciate one’s gifts anyway, and besides, the content looked far too exciting!  My favourites so far:

Barnwood Pullover by Grace Anna Farrow.  I’m not familiar with this designer, but her sweater is exactly what I’m looking for to go with my lovely marled alpaca yarn.  I’m very much the “over-sized relaxed fit” sweater girl, so this is just the right shape.  I’m going to modify the stitch pattern, and use DK weight yarn instead of worsted, but the basic instructions will be handy for the shape and fit I want.

Market jacket by Tanis Gray.  It has the perfect amount of cabling and it looks smart but casual.  I might lengthen the sleeves though.

Cobblestone Trenchcoat by Veera Valimaki.  I’ve admired this on Ravelry, so was very pleased to find that November Knits was the book the pattern came from!  I’m not sure I’ll knit it though.  There’s a dislike of short rows happening here, especially where sleeve caps are concerned.  Perhaps if I adapt it…

Trefoil Cardigan by Gudrun Johnston.  Just the right amount of fair isle!  Just the right shape!  And pockets!!  A little swatching may have already started…

I can’t believe it’s still a few days ’til Christmas!  Seems that if you are organised (and you keep it simple) that everything does fall into place after all.  The shopping and planning is done, and there’s nothing to do now by enjoy the days with the kids and relax.  Bliss!  I’m not quite sure what happened there.  One minute I was staring into a vortex of ‘nothing has been done yet’ and suddenly, it’s organised, sorted, done.  It’s quite gratifying.

The secret knitting actually got completed in time to send off.  I hope the recipient has received it, but I’m not sure.  So I’ll wait to know before I do the reveal of a new pattern.

I’ve started a new sock.

This is Shur’tugal, a free Alice Yu pattern.  It’s far easier than it looks, and I’m absolutely loving it.  In fact, it’s rather hard to put down.  Thanks Kb for the recommendation!

The yarn is the amazing, but now no longer Fibre Alive, which I hope James will one day rekindle.  In the meantime, I treasure every single precious skein of this gorgeous yarn and wish so much that I had been a little more ‘financial’ during the time he was in business so as to have been able to invest in more of it than I have (although it is 100% NZ merino, the tight twist has made it an incredibly durable yarn, which wears very well.  Not to mention his beautiful colourways.)

I could prattle on, but I think I have gone on long enough for today!

I hope all your preparations are going well for the turn of the year and the festive season, and that all is well where you are.