Spring knitting

The local stitch and bitch held another knit exchange yesterday evening. The theme was spring colours and cables, and as usual there were some neat projects. I got a pretty felted clutch, which I'll photograph later.

For my contribution, it was a bit of a challenge to find non-garment, gender-neutral item to make.

The pattern is my own, which is basically a 13in x 13in square for the front and two rectangles for the back: one was 13in x 8in and the other 13in x 6in, each finished with a 2 stitch i-cord bind off. The back pieces overlap to make an opening for a 12in x 12in pillow form.

I used 100g of Araucania Nature Wool from Piper's Quilts knit on US 6 (4.2mm) needles. The stitches used are Moss stitch, Wheat Ear Rib from Barbara Walker's treasuries and Celtic Vine from Encyclopedia of Knitting. While knitting, I noticed that Wheat Ear rib has an interesting reverse side.

A few notes about Nature Wool: the manufacturer's suggested gauge of 4.5 stitches per inch is too loose for this yarn in most applications, washing caused a lot of colour bleeding and it pills considerably with friction. On the other hand, the variegated colours are beautiful and managed not to pool, and the final fabric is fairly soft.