What I Didn't Know

When Louisa Harding launched her new yarn line, I was a bit skeptical. Don't get me wrong, I think that she's a fabulously talented designer. Her new collection was pretty, feminine and very flattering, but the yarn, the yarn was on the novelty side of knitting yarns.

Now, we'd all like a scarf or 3 in our wardrobe, but not many of us are going to knit multiple variegated angora sweaters. The Kashmir was nice, but my love affair with the the Debbie Bliss cashmerino blend was far from over. Kimono ribbon .. ? yeah, right, life is just to short to struggle with a slippery ribbon.. so it was a wait and see.

Then I saw the nautical cotton and things changed. I bought some, tried it and I am in love.

The nautical cotton is a mercerized cotton that knits to roughly the same tension as Rowan HK cotton and Debblie Bliss's Cotton DK. Where it differentiates itself from them is, it's mercerised, texturised and comes in shades that you can only get with mercerised cottons. I thought that the cabley twist was going to be a demon to knit with and visions of splitting yarn haunted me, but the reality was different. It knits like a dream, gliding off the needles. The slight texture helped to hide any tension irregularlities that most knitters have with cotton.

How much did I love it? well, I stayed up past my bedtime to finish the first ball. In just 3 days, I've nearly finished the Brittany dress from Jil Eaton's Minnowknits.

I must get me some more of this stuff... and the best bit? It's very well priced. Well, let's face it, compared to Rowan, most things are well priced.

The dress was a quick knit, but I'm less than motivated to sew in the ends. The last time I did this dress, I made the picot eding my picking up and casting off stitches. This time, I'd actually crocheted it. I think maybe I ought to stick to the knitting bit because I'm not really happy with the crocheted stitches. Me and hooks don't do well together.

In my indecisive mood, I attempted to start the Brora from Gladys Amedro's Shetland Lace.

I bought this book because Jean had said many good things about Gladys Amedro in the past. Let's say, I didn't get very far. I tried to knit from stash and didn't have enough yarn for a large square shawl, no problem, I had tought. Let me convert a square shawl to a triangular one. Theoretically not difficult to do, but Ms Amedro knits the edging first which again isn't difficult to do, but different from the techniques that I had worked with. I felt confident that I could crack it, that is until I realised the pattern instructions are written in a different language. I can't even claim the patterns are written by ferrets!

TB, cTc, PTB to name a few, who would had thought that I would have to master 'traditional Shetland terms' to knit a shawl... !

Posted by atu at May 22, 2006 11:36 PM | TrackBack