Sunday 14 December 2014

The next blanket


I got the yarns for this blanket together without any clear idea of the colours.  I wanted it to be light medium with blue.  I had an idea to include a thin contrast yarn, but the bright cyclamen I had in mind did nothing.








The pumpkin coloured Patons Purple Heather Fingering - an old 4 ply favourite - on the other hand looked just right.  The eight one ounce balls that I have should be enough for every third row.

This grey mohair turned out very nicely, as well.  The colour disappears and you see the halo only.  It is Charisma mohair - with colours by Adrian of Edinburgh.  And I like the other wool with a piper on the label, Torpedo Shetland type wool.

I  unravelled this alpaca cardigan.  It is obviously machine knitted with a label saying Rowlands.  It had a satin lining and shoulder pads, both easy to remove.  The seams had been sewed together by machine, ending with an overcast stitch, but not serged.  It was impossible to undo, and I had to cut, cutting into the yarn a number of times.  The yarn consists of two thin yarns, so thin that I would not try to separate them.  It is nice alpaca, and it came out completely straight after washing, but I wish I had not bought it.  It is too thin and the lengths are too short.  There are too many short lengths in the yarn store; it will take me forever to get rid of them.

The second garment was this Kaffe Fassett vest in the Sawtoothed stripe pattern from Glorious Knitting.  I wrote about it here earlier.  The pattern has been made simpler by doing the rows between the saw tooths in a single yarn, instead of stripes.  The saw tooths have been done by the fair isle method, carrying three or four strands in one row making it very thick.  Most of the yarns are acrylic or synthetic, so this is no great addition to the yarn store.  Unravelling was not even very satisfying, because of the fair isle method used.


Knitting this blanket is very satisfying.  I love the colours, there are no awkward yarns, and very little non-natural fibres.  And it uses up a lot of odd blues.