Italian Dish Knits

Have you ever knit anything with Rowan Kidsilk Haze?  If you have, you know how gorgeous this Italian yarn is.  It is a lace weight blend of mohair and silk that is light as a feather.  It is an expensive yarn, but it’s very special.  Whatever you make from it is very warm and has fantastic drape.

This pattern is, once again, from one of my favorite pattern resources – Churchmouse Yarns and Tea.   The pattern calls for four solid colors, but I used six because I wanted a much longer scarf.  The yarn is to be held double.  The pattern has you knit one of the solid colors for a big block and then cut one yarn and add in one yarn of another color.  Now you are knitting with two colors at once and you get a great new color.  Then you cut the first color and add another end of the second color and knit with just that color.  It’s fun to see the colors that two different skeins produce together. I did not follow the pattern regarding how long to knit in one color – I just knit until I felt like switching colors.

The scarf is all stockinette stitch, except for a 7 stitch border on each side done in seed stitch, to keep it from curling.  It’s very effective.  All that stockinette makes for easy knitting while you watch TV.  The scarf lies very nicely.  I damp blocked instead of wet blocked it.  I figured it would be way too heavy to handle if I wet blocked it.  I just threw two towels in the washer on rinse and spin and then wrapped the scarf up in there overnight and then pinned and blocked it the next day, as the pattern suggested.  It worked really well.  The scarf ended up being 82″ x 13″ after blocking, a really nice length.  I did not quite use completely all six skeins.

I’m definitely going to knitting more of this pattern, it’s so great.  I can see all kinds of terrific color combinations. Kidsilk Haze is about $15 a skein, so it’s ends up being about $90 to knit one of these scarves in this length.

Pattern: ColorPlay Scarf
Needle: US 7 Addi Lace Circulars
Yarn:  Rowan Kidsilk Haze in 6 colors:
Hurricane, Steel, Smoke, Anthracite, Tornado and Heavenly
Ravelry Page

Often, I have two knitting projects going at the same time – one that’s so simple I don’t have to really follow a chart and can do it while I’m watching TV and one that’s complicated and requires attention.  This pattern is one of those that requires your full attention.  It’s lace knitting and a whole lot of fun, actually.  I loved this pattern and the design and it was thoroughly enjoyable to knit (although I had to start it three times because of mistakes before I got really going with it).  It’s knitted in two halves and then grafted together. Second half went much smoother.

Although I loved doing this pattern, I’m was not super happy with the outcome of this scarf for two reasons – no matter how much I blocked this scarf, the sides keep curling.  Badly.  If you look at the opening photo in this post, you can really see it. It really takes away from the finished look, because I don’t really care for skinny scarves.  I blocked this baby twice and even steam blocked it with an iron, but the curling stayed despite the fact that the designer put purls on the edging to counteract the curl.  So I’m not sure if it was just me or what.

Also, I have used Madelinetosh yarn for lots of projects. I realize it is a hand dyed yarn, where there will be slight differences in the skeins. And Moorland is one of my favorite colorways and I have used it before for my awesome Stockholm Scarf and my Guernsey Wrap. However, this time the difference in the skeins was amazing – you can see it in the photo above.  The yarn was all purchased at the same time. I was really disappointed with this.  It just has never happened before. Oh, well.  I guess when it’s all wrapped around your neck you won’t really notice it too much.  The Tosh is still super soft and squishy. I love it.

Pattern: Peu de Pluie Scarf
Needles: US 6 Addi Lace Circular
Yarn: Madelintosh Tosh Sport in Moorland
Ravelry Page