When I saw a bag of 10 skeins of Louisa Harding’s hand dyed Grace Silk DK for a silly bargain price of £2.90 a skein I couldn’t resist.

Just look at it…isn’t that pretty?

From Beatriz Silkwool

I eagerly started to look for a pattern to use it…

Hmmmmm Actually – there’s not that much yardage in each skein – probably because the silk is heavy. It’s a good thing I’m a small size as I didn’t have enough yarn for several of my choices and I needed a pattern that would lend itself to the floppy, drapey nature of the yarn.

Then inspiration hit me – I had the Rowan Lenpur book from when I made Katia – remember Katia?

This is the book I mean…

From Beatriz Silkwool

Lenpur in a linen yarn and very, very floppy so I hope that the patterns will suit the Silk Wool. In that book I found what I hope will be the perfect garment – Beatriz.

Here’s the book pic….

From Beatriz Silkwool

I had a bumpy start to Beatriz – not least because the hand dying process seems to have welded some of the Grace silk fibers together making balling the skeins on my swift a “swear-worthy” task 😉

Then there was the “What size? What needle size dilemma?”….

“Oh Dear, I’m slap in the middle of the first two sizes”, Thinks Susan. Hmmmm… ,”I’ll make the larger one….”

…..several inches later….

“Hmmmm, that’s feeling a bit stiff and I really have to tug it to pretend I have the right gauge”

……..< Swearing >

……Starting again….

So, I’m now knitting the smaller size but on 4.5mm needles rather than the 4mm given. I’m using two balls at a time – 4 rows from each ball – so and variation between skeins isn’t too obvious.

Wanna see her so far?

From Beatriz Silkwool

Not bad huh? I know this is fabulous yarn but part of me is never quite as thrilled with these variagated, hand dyed yarns when they are knit up – I guess I like solid colours.

So wanna see a close up?

From Beatriz Silkwool

Pretty though huh? So far so good….

But now I’m starting to worry it’ll be too big!