After almost six months of knitting, my Rams and Yowes blanket is finished. I realise that there is no sense of scale in these photographs, it measures one metre squared. I particularly like the sheep although these were the trickiest to knit since the strands of wool had to be carried across several stitches at the back of the work.
The wool is Jamieson and Smith Shetland Supreme Jumper Weight in nine natural undyed shades of Shetland wool. I bought the wool when we were on holiday in Shetland last November and the blanket is a very satisfying souvenier. My ravelry notes are here.
As this knitting project got bigger and less portable I knitted a couple of pairs of socks. Yesterday I tried to take pictures of my feet in the garden.
The purple socks are knitted from hand dyed sock yarn I bought at Wool and Willow in Hay-on-Wye. This is the second pair of socks I have knitted from their yarn and I must remember that they are to be hand washed - I forgot last time and after a few washes I have some very small felted socks.
The second pair are Regia Jacquard sock yarn that I bought in Shetland. I like the delicate colours but apparently the yarn is now discontinued.
I now find myself in the unusual position of not having a current knitting project though somewhere I think I have an unfinished feather and fan scarf started several years ago. I am considering an Icelandic style lopi cardigan - something on bigger needles that won't take quite so long to finish. No hurry though, I am enjoying the planning stage, thinking about colours and designs for a new project.
3 comments:
Wow, well done for completing that Rams and Yowes blanket - it is a work of art! Whilst I'm not bad at intarsia, I don't know if I'd have the fortitude to spend the amount of love and time on one thing. It is absolutely stunning, though and you should be rightly proud of it.
I do enjoy knitting socks but haven't done so for some time now. Both of your pairs are fab and I know that Mr VP prefers them as he's an avid boot-wearer and finds that a thin pair of trouser socks with a thick hand-knitted outer pair to be the most comfortable (and warm) in winter.
The lopi cardigan sounds excellent! I would very much like to do something like that. Have you got any ideas for the colourways? I got my mother a book for her birthday with the rather promising title 'Scandinavian Knitting Designs' by Pauline Chatterton (it's a really lovely but out-of-print book, from 1977) which is an encyclopaedia of pretty much most, if not all, of the traditional Scandinavian designs. I'm rather fond of a lot of the snowflake patterns that are found in such knits. I can't wait to see what you decide!
Thank you Tash.
I am looking at a Craftsy course - have you seen them? There is one that is knitting a top down icelandic jumper and I think it would be good to have each stage explained along the way. The colourway that is used as a demo is a beautiful aqua/blue with white and yellow. I am thinking of doing something similar but perhaps with a soft navy as the main colour.
Wow! Your blanket is amazing! And beautiful!! Well done. That is such a wonderful way to have a souvenir. I am hoping that I will find some wool shops to visit when we are in Scotland and maybe purchase some sort of wool souvenir myself.
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