The day job has been keeping me busy and away from blogging and knitting for that matter, but I have been squeezing in a bit of time working on a new hat pattern.
The pattern is pretty much there but the yarn requirements still need work. It may just be me, but I like to be quite specific about how much yarn a project actually takes. This I think comes from a couple of related factors:
- I have a huge stash of yarn but very intermittent access to lovely yarn shops so when a wonderful new pattern comes along I generally have to match yarns I have to the pattern. Sometimes this means to get the yardage shown on the pattern I don’t always get to use my first choice of yarn but go for a second slightly less ideal option, only to find when I’m finished that I have loads of yarn left and could have gone for my first choice after all. Ravelry projects can be helpful here but not everyone records the actual amount of a skein that they use for a project so often I’m still left wondering.
- I’m not a very good yarn shopper – I get seduced by colours and feel and therefore I tend to have lots of odd skeins that sit and get stroked from time to time but may take ages to make it into a project. I’m the same with clothes, I’m not very good at buying ‘outfits’ but have some wonderful individual items that are poorly served by some of my choices of companion pieces…
So anyway, I’m knitting up samples of the pattern so I can say just how many meters of yarn the project take so others, similarly afflicted, can make informed choices about the yarns they choose for their project.
My current sample was inspired by the daily walk around the Williamson Park with the dogs. Emerging from dark dull days were these beautiful pussy willow:
The picture looks a bit orange but the tighter buds looked very pink and despite not being a great fan of pink in general the combination of silver-grey and pale pink lodged in my mind.
So my current sample is being knitted up in Toft Alpaca Fine yarn in silver with a pink vintage 4 ply and is looking like this:
The alpaca is so amazingly soft it’s beautiful to work with, and despite myself I like the combination with the pink.
Now will this colour combination prove equally inspiring of future projects?
