Damn, Knit & Blast It

I now need a self indulgent, luxurious project.

Something beautiful to wear, soft as a kitten’s belly fur and ideally something I can use some of my every growing stash on.

Did I ever tell you about when I used to travel to “the London office” every Friday? Friday lunchtime could only mean one thing. Grab a sandwich to eat on the bus and head for John Lewis, Oxford Street.

Quite often there was nothing I needed but I just couldn’t leave empty handed could I? So I developed an expensive habit of buying an odd ball of Rowan’s Kidsilk Haze. It was just one ball - I was being good wasn’t I? It looked so pretty and inviting. All the sumptuous colours begging to be stroked and loved…

The upshot of this weekly expedition is that I accumulated 57.5 balls of KSH in my stash! I’m too afraid to work out how much I spent! Some has been give too me by stash-phobic friends (I love you generous stash-phobics!) but I was truly shocked when I catalogued my stash on Ravelry.

I have heard Kidslik Haze referred to as “Cracksilk Haze”. I guess I now know why….

My partial solution to this embarrassment is to start Kaffe Fasset’s Earth Stripe Wrap from Rowan 42.

It’s the one on the cover…again

It takes 14 balls of KSH and 10 different colours. I had single balls of every colour in stash - I just had to go buy the extra 4 “doubles”.

Here’s the different colours…

I started Saturday and I’ve just done one full pattern repeat of 182 rows. That’s not a mistype - 182 row pattern repeat!

The good news is that it’s absolutely plain stocking stitch holding two strands of KSH together. No problems there - this stuff sticks to itself like clingfilm!

The fascinating part is which two colours are being held together? Nevermore than 5 rows the same, you are constantly changing one or both of the colours to give a beautiful subtle effect. I’m very impressed at Kaffe’s skill, blending the colours and using muted shades to tone down some very bright shades when knit together.

Want to see my progress?

The down side is what to do with the ends? There’s millions of them! OK, that’s an exaggeration but hundreds at least…

I started weaving them in but I thought it showed. I took this pic to show you but I don’t think you can see them!

So I decided just to knot the new yarn on and leave the ends dangling (the KSH will not slip!). They will then be secured and hidden by the double crochet edging. I plan to just lay them along the edge and crochet over them. If it doesn’t work I’ll have a month of sewing these ends in…