degrees of difference

My phone camera is dying, so apologies for the poor quality. You get the idea, however. Another tidy little scrapbuster.

There I was, sitting with Dr B and watching a TV program. I needed something to do with my hands. And I need to keep whittling away at that stash. So the other night, while YoungB zizzed on the mattress with the aircon at full bore, I crocheted up a beautifully soft, warm cowl. Yeah! Just what you do when it’s above 40C.

This is a mix of yarns, all with a high acrylic content. The lighter stripe is Lincraft Big Wool Solids, in what I think was described as denim. It’s a blue colourway, rather than green. The yarn at the bottom of the photo is Moda Vera Manor in colour 52, dye lot 1010109, and it’s definitely a green colourway. The starting blue-green colourway (at the top of the photo) is a mystery, but possibly Moda Vera Bouvardia leftovers from an earlier beanie. I used a 9mm crochet hook.

Best wishes for all your stashbusting, and may you never be afflicted with unidentifiable yarn 🙂

 

 

different yarns

Have you ever had unexpected results when knitting? Sometimes a yarn that looks pretty knits up to something quite ho-hum. I’ve had that experience recently with Lincraft Big Wool, a soft, fifty-fifty wool and acrylic yarn. It’s a thick/thin yarn described as roving style and I bought dye lot 18308, a denim mix. It knitted up in blobs of colour and texture that looked clumsy; and it didn’t matter how I tried, that flat seam was never going to be invisible. The hat is OK – it even looks all right on Dr B; and YoungB rightly said it’s nice and warm – but perhaps not for gifting to anyone. Dang. There went that bit of birthday knitting!

Quite an obliging hat model, don’t you think! However, colour and texture in the hat itself are best described as lumpy.

And then sometimes, a yarn that looks all right if not spectacular knits up to something impressive. I have what is probably a love-hate relationship with Moda Vera Bouvardia yarn. It’s soft and there’s a lovely range of colours but most of them also have bits of utterly unrelated and not flattering colour within the skein and in the past, I’ve found the skeins to have significant amounts of knots. I think you’d agree, that’s frustrating at best, particularly if you don’t notice the knot till you’re halfway through a long row. This one proved a lovely exception. There were no knots and it has knitted up to an overall look that’s dark but not dull. The resulting hat/beanie is so nice I almost don’t want to give it away to anyone!

Soft yarn, smooth texture and a pretty colour mix. Nice hat!

These are a couple of my recent concurrent-with-mitts projects that I can knit at the table, listening to vigorous discussion as to what movie we might watch, and not fear I’ll make a mistake. The first is made using my Villawool Inca hat pattern, the second pretty much of my own reckoning with some assistance from the Yarn Harlot’s Knitting Rules as to decreasing. You need plain projects but the results don’t have to be plain.