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.

Back on Track

Carve Charlie has been on hold after running into some structural weirdness, but I resumed work on it after receiving some new needles from Knit Picks. I purchased another set of sevens since my other ones are currently occupied, and I'm not pulling them off that project. If I do it'll never get done.



Anyway, I bought a pair of nickel plated inter-changeables, a 40 inch cable set and some markers. I've been curious about these for a while now, and with the great support of buyers I was able to get a pair. These feel fantastic. I like the sharp tips, and they screw onto the cable nicely.

What I don't understand is the absence of any kind of marking on the needles to indicate what size they are. I find that odd. What if your sixes and sevens got mixed up? I suspect some kind of marketing strategy. I guess they're entitled to that. I still love these needles.



Despite not knowing what the heck I intend to do with it all, I've amassed a hefty amount of cotton thread weights. I've been experimenting with holding multiple strands together in different colors, and the results are interesting. The fabric is reminiscent of television static, as the lack of plying creates a dithered effect to the colors. I kinda like the effect, but if I were to do this, I'd like a more analogous pairing. Quiet hues would also be great with this. Now I need more colors...

Speaking of thread weights, I got through the silks in my sweater pile. They're really beautiful. The blue and green ones are silk cashmere blends, and the white intarsia is pure silk. They feel downright decadent.




I was particularly impressed by this lamb's wool lace weight. It's a heathered brown two ply that's as soft as you'd expect of a lamb's wool. It's this wonderful natural color that wows me. I may just double this up for Skew Delta.

Carve Delta

Carve Bravo wasn't in my possession very long after it was completed. Someone bought it two days after it was listed, and it was gone. So I made another one for myself. Carve Delta is structurally the same hat as Carve Bravo with an adjustment to the height of the seed stitch band. I wanted that section shorter since the stitch counts per row were increased from 96 to 108. I wanted more slouch. Big surprise, right?



The yarn came from the same sweater (never photographed) which consisted of a medium gray as the main color with a lighter, silver gray stranded into vertical columns. The medium gray was used for Carve Bravo, but I was never sure if I had enough of the silver gray for another. That is until now. I had just enough, and this one is all mine.