Saturday, August 04, 2007

I present the latest FO....




Yes, it's a heap of lovely cashmery silky lace! Here's the full-body shot of my Tara stole.
It came in at about 75 inches long by 22 inches wide with a gentle blocking. One of the joys of working a lace pattern in big yarn with big needles is that you don't have to sweat the final dimensions so much! It's big! And it was a relatively quick knit too. The last rectangular shawl I made took me about 4 months to knit. This one took about 3 months, but I've been working on other stuff too. Now for the details:

Yarns: The variegated stuff is Hand Maiden 4 ply silk cashmere. I LOVE IT! It is the nicest softest least scratchy yarn I have ever used, and it has really nice drape too. Gorgeous colors. Thanks Delenn! The solid colored yarn is a DK weight cashmere from colourmart, purchased in a light blue color, then overdyed by me. I wanted a darker blue, and I ended up with a smoky purple, either way I like it. I was annoyed by how loosely the plies were spun, but once I got used to going a little slower, and checking the problem areas (sk2p decreases) it all went OK. Once washed the yarn softened up a lot, and has a very nice drape too. I have no issues wearing this against bare skin, unlike some alpaca yarns I have tried in the past, which still have some guard hairs in there which poke me in the neck! To make a long story short, the 500 or so yards was more than worth the 35 US dollars I paid for it. I will definitely consider this yarn for future luxury knits (without the luxury price! Since when can you get 100 % cashmere for 7 bucks/100 yard ball?).

Pattern: by me. I will post it once I have the time and dig myself out from the ever growing heap of things I need to do.

Now for the camera-held-in-a-mirror-shot:
and the stitch-detail shot:
Cheers,

Ivanova

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