Moonfleet

I'm doing another KAL this year. Last year I did the Secret Garden KAL which was a circular shawl and went to my mother-in-law. The shawl was beautiful, knitted with a silk/merino blend in a gradience colourway called peacock which went from green to purple.

I was so taken with the design and the whole KAL thing (KAL = knit along), that I decided to do another one this year with the same dyer (Unique Sheep) and same designer (Janine Le Cras).

The KAL this time round is called Moonfleet and is based on the same name book by J.Meade Falkner. It is a old tale, published in 1898, of smuggling, hidden diamonds and seafarers. I bought the audiobook and I'm hoping to knit and listen as I'm doing the KAL.

For the yarn I've chosen Marici, which is a 100% silk lace yarn, in the colourway Daybreak, a blend of yellows, orange, red, purple. It feels beautiful and the colours are just perfect. The design is going to be a rectangular shawl using beads. And that's all I know for now. The first clue is coming out this week on May 14th. I can't wait!

But we did get our swatch instructions last week and I got my first taste at using silk. It's nothing at all like wool or cotton. It's very very slippery and knots really easily. It took me 3 hours to wind the silk into a ball (by hand). I really need a wool winder! And then I had to try and knit with the slippery silk. It took me quite a few rows until I finally got the hang of it, kind of. If the yarn didn't look and feel gorgeous, I think I would've given up. But the end result of the swatch makes it worth it:

I'll keep you up to date!

New Lacy Neck Warmer

A few weeks ago I received my beautiful Blendy Box and to my surprise it had 2 whole balls of wool in it. I was thrilled to have gotten a ball of Zealana wool which is 40% possum and 60% NZ merino.

Possum is an amazing wool. The hairs are hollow on the inside making it especially insulating, which is how possums keep warm. Another animal with such unusual fur are polar bears. Unfortunately I don't think polar bears are quite as accommodating to parting with their fur.

Anyway, as soon as I held my possum wool in the hand, I knew exactly what I wanted to make from it. A lacy neck warmer.

It's knitted in three parts, a technique I learned from Anne Hanson, which I thought was quite clever. First you knit the bottom edge, then you pick up stitches from the top edge and lastly you knit the button sides. The nice thing about it is that there is no sewing up to do.

It took a while to come up with a nice pattern. I wanted cables and lace, and I wanted a nice edging to go with the cables and lace pattern. Also I wanted it to be rather fine even though I was using DK weight.

And then lastly I needed the right buttons to go with my Victorian style, lacy neck warmer.

The pattern is part of my Outside the Box collection which is available exclusively from Ravelry.

Gondwana Scarf

I just have to show off my Gondwana scarf:

Knit with Vintage Purls sock wool in Gondwana, my favourite colour way and the pattern is called Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronika Avery.