Baby Camel Project

Mid last year as a curiosity, I ordered 100g of baby camel fleece blended 50:50 with silk from Fibre Arts Shed. It turned out to be beautiful stuff. Soft, shiny, slinky and lovely to spin.

It then took me over a year to find something to make with it. I found a cowl pattern I loved (Berilo cowl by Keka Guillén) but my yarn came out about 5ply/sport weight and the pattern was for light fingering. Besides, I didn’t have enough of it. Dilemma! After some grumpy stomping, I remembered that I had another 100g of commercially spun very fine laceweight yarn in the same blend, incidentally from the same seller. Ooo, could I make that work?

It looked like three strands of the fine yarn came close to matching the heavier handspun. So I swatched and yes, that works. The three strands is a little finer still but would work in the way I planned to combine it.

Then I pulled back the swatch and wound the fine yarn into three balls. Ready to go.

I figured that working with a slightly larger needle size would still work and I am not size tiny. My plan was to knit the fancy lower border in the handspun, then introduce the finer yarn worked three together and in alternating rows with the handspun, and finish with the finer yarn after the handspun ran out. This did in fact work well.

Here are the beginnings

and the whole thing straight off the needles. I messed with the pattern a bit to shorten it and make for a sharper angle of decrease in circumference. I am not blessed with a long neck. I also reduced needle sizes as I got to the last few sections.

and here it is pinned out to block.

I had quite a lot of the fine yarn left and it occurred to me that if the weather is cold enough for me to wear this, then I would want to wear a hat too and wouldn’t it be nice to have a matching one? I chose the “Burka Leaf Cap” by Lynette Meek. Again my yarn did not match the pattern, so size selection was difficult. I started with the small size on much larger needles, but at this point realised it was firmer on my head than I can tolerate. So I pulled it back and resumed with the medium size.

It’s an interesting design and a better choice for the soft drapey yarn than I realised. It’s lacey but almost entirely made of variations of rib. Lace within ribbing was a new thing for me. I didn’t block it so you just get one finished picture.

and the obligatory photo of them both on me.

I’m pleased with them. They function well, look nice, feel nice and I’m quite proud of successfully stepping through the pattern challenges. Of course I have no idea when I’ll get to wear them. Spring is sproinging and we are still and again in lockdown.

One for me

Last year, as the culmination of my Alpaca goodness project I knitted a version of Joji Locatelli’s “3-colour cashmere cowl”, written up here. That was a gift for friends and I wanted one of my very own. I’ve loved the look of this pattern for ages.

I’d been fancying these colours together:

The off white is 50:50 extra fine merino and baby alpaca. I can’t remember the seller but it was bought at a fibre muster in I think Gerringong a few years ago. The blue is this yarn bought as an absolute bargain from Skeinz factory outlet in Napier NZ, which i had to figure out how to wind into a workable form and then dyed with indigo.

The caramel is left over from the Alpaca goodness project, though the small hank pictured turned out to be too thick to work with the other two but I gleaned little bits of other leftovers from mostly the same creature. I think I ended up with five different little sections of yarn spliced together to make up barely enough of the caramel element, and then had a win with the last one running out just after the end of a round and the end of a pattern repeat! Yarn chicken win!

Here is the finished cowl straight off the needles

and then blocked

and here are a couple of pics of it on. Soft and warm and interesting.