01 July 2008

Brightly bobbled

Hanks of hand-dyed wool are too tempting, the beautiful colours changing from one end to the other. But I'm finding them disappointing when knitted up.

This is half a hank that went from blue-green through plum and terracotta to raspberry, and looked so gorgeous when it was a hank -The different patterns are due to fewer or more stitches on the needle (the overall numbers change inexplicably when I knit lace patterns) and also to starting out on impossibly small needles. It's nearly finished and I'm fed up with it! And in the middle, it gets very slushy....

But there is still half a hank of this delicate, part-mohair wool to use up. While winding it I had various thoughts about how the multicoloured feature of such wool could be used to advantage. With this one, the lengths dyed various colours are fairly consistent. Pick one colour and showcase it by literally pulling it out of the background. Raspberries, anyone? Here's a closeup, on circular needles:
But by the time you read this, it will be pulled back, and rather fewer stitches cast on. The idea is to make a tubular, double-sided scarf, and 120 stitches will make it too wide.

It'll be interesting to see how many stitches are needed to get the bobbles falling into a pleasing pattern.

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