Warming Trend

When we think of gray, it's the cool grays that come to mind: pale slates, and the illuminated diffusions of black. So what about the warm grays? Heathered acorn, khaki, cream white. These have been on my mind and under my fingers lately.



Duality Charlie is coming along nicely in a khaki 100% Cotton multi-strand. This third Duality is a play on the disintegration concept, where breaks between garter stitch bands get successively bigger.



Skew Delta is finally under way in a heathered beige 100% lamb's wool. I also finished that moss stitch dish cloth, and gave it to my sister for her birthday recently, along with a copy of the Guy Savoy cookbook.

As you may know by now I really dig neutrals, especially these warm and cool grays. Within an outfit these neutrals harmonize with similarly tempered hues. Cool grays with blues and greens, warm grays with oranges and reds. Hmmm... now I want to go shopping.

Merino on the Menu

These are the types of fibers that make me want to purge my yarn stash of all acrylics, and turn my nose upwards with fiber-snob piety. The merino fiber staple is as fine as a spider web, and the resulting yarn spun from it is as soft as one would expect. Add to that the characteristics of wool and what you have is next-to-skin-softness, moisture-wicking properties and the strength of a toothy protein fiber.



Indeed, the strength of these thread weight sweaters came as a surprise. I was fully prepared to deal with breakages during unraveling. There were very few. These sweaters were definitely worn, the two red ones actually had minor damage, but I still got some insane yardage.

Now I know why people go ga-ga for merino.

Carve Charlie

This lamb's wool is quickly becoming my signature color. I've used it for Skew A, Skew C, and now doubled up for Carve Charlie.



For number three I worked garter stitch columns between the ribs with the customary purl carve and angular transitions. Garter stitch seems much more subdued here than the seed stitch columns of the previous versions. It seems fitting for the darkness of this piece.