Showing posts with label Kaffe Fassett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kaffe Fassett. Show all posts

Saturday, June 27, 2015

No yarn gets left behind...

Way back in the day before you could buy ready made skeins of gradient yarns I knit this:


Knitters will recognize Kaffe Fassett's Poppy pattern, but I also used Kaffe's "Magic Ball" method for assembling colours. Essentially that means taking a whole bunch yarns, splitting them into two groups (darks and lights),  arranging each group into a sequence, breaking each yarn into 0.5-1m lengths and then knotting them together according to the sequence.  The colours were inspired by a  a Peter Dombrovskis postcard of shells on a Tasmanian beach:

There's 38 different yarns in different weights from 4ply to 12ply, a motley crew of wools, mohair, angora, alpaca silk and chenille; Jamieson and Smith, Jo Sharp, Patons, Cleckheaton, Rowan, Anny Blatt, Aarlan.

Basically, anything I could get my hands on in those pre-internet days.

Allora, fast forward 20-something years and I'm preparing to teach some classes at Sunspun. First up for the second half of the year - Slip Stitch and Mosaic Knitting.

Slip stitch knitting is one of my favourite techniques (mostly because you can knit a lot of colour with very little effort).Truth is, I really don't  need to knit any samples for this class.

But... I have a big crate of leftovers (I keep everything, 'cos all knitters know that every scrap could be useful). What's more I have trial subscriptions to Netflix and Stan atm with a couple of series queued. So it seemed to me like a few swatches were in order. And guess what I found nestled at the bottom of the crate -
Just on 50g of leftovers of the dark yarns. No sign of the light colours, so I grabbed a part used ball of Morris' 8ply (I think it's Norway); chose a really simple slipped stitch pattern and volia:
 

Who needs Noro?