April Stashdown

Gothic Rose

I walked into April a tad burned out from my frantic pace of knitting the Echo Flower Shawl (which has flown off to its new home). I haven't really wanted to look at complicated knitting and certainly nothing lighter than a middling finger-weight yarn.

So when I started spinning my Gothic Rose batts, I aimed for something a bit more substantial. And I achieved that in a lovely 3-ply yarn.

This yarn is about 8 ounces and approximately 300 yards of Worsted gorgeousness. Black and fuschia blend into a deeply gothic purple that is shot through with bronze angelina. It is sproingy and squishy and soft just like you'd like out of a yarn.

In addition, I pulled out a small skein of yarn I spun up last year. This is about two ounces of a fun blend of naturally colored wool. Cormo and Romeldale make up the bulk of it, but there is also a lovely and perceptible dusting of the elusive quiviut in there, as well. This spindle-spun yarn came out a wonderful slightly-uneven yarn with a lot of character. I'd been saving it for the right pattern, which presented itself in the form of the Yarn Harlot's "Pretty Thing". I thought this would be the perfect cowl, and it almost was.

Pretty Thing, for me, has one small flaw. The lovely flare derived from the way the pattern causes the fabric to bias flips out around my face like some sort of clown-ruff. Not attractive. I tried many ways of tugging it this way and that to no avail. So then I ripped back the final section of the pattern to try and alleviate the floppiness. Only, it followed the knitting down into the previously-firm-seeming knitting below and when bound off the cowl once again proceeded to look very ruff-like on me. As a final attempt to make the cowl more wearable, I tucked the final repeat of the lace pattern inside the rest of the cowl. Viola! Now it looks like an elegant collar when worn, and it is just snug enough to keep out even the stubborn gusts of wind. I still call this pattern a "win".

There is one more knitting project for the month, which was the reason for my "radio silence" earlier. But I am saving it for the "perfect" moment! You'll hear more about it, soon.

Weaving for this month is a handmade iPad case! I'd like to go into this project in a lot more detail. So that will come up in another post!