Bobbles and Still More Bobbles

Dear Kay,

My final Giftalong project has me enraptured. I’m sorry that these pictures weren’t made using EnraptureVisionTM.

This little project is such a mashup of yarn and pattern, all from people that I’ve had the good luck to meet. I’m coming to discover that yarn isn’t just yarn for me. It’s tied up with the people who make it. I think about this all the time—it makes knitting so rich to know who the people are who create these beautiful materials and patterns. It’s why we should all try to attend yarn tastings, trunk shows, fiber festivals, book signings.

Any chance you have to connect with knitting world people is an opportunity to enrich and deepen your connection to it all.

Yarns

Beacon by Jill Draper Makes Stuff. That’s the green yarn. Which is also brown. And pale green, and bright green. It’s getting short shrift in this pattern at the moment. But it plays a crucial role in setting up the dynamic of bright and dim.

Daughter of a Shepherd, from Rachel Atkinson. That’s the deep, deep rich dark yarn, which changes color constantly. I couldn’t possibly tell you what shade it is. Except that it’s gorgeous. It’s as close to having a live sheep in my house as I can imagine: the Hebridean and Zwartbles sheep are Rachel’s father’s flock, and it has a woolly, lanolin-rich scent to it.

Pattern

The Castaway, from White Whale, Volume 1 by Ann Weaver.

This hat is kind of kicking my behind, in a friendly way. The many, many bobbles aren’t traditional bobbles, the kind where you turn your work all the time for each bobble. These are front-side-only bobbles. They’re decrease 4s. Which here is a slip 2 purlwise, then slip slip slip knit 3 together, then pass the 2 slipped stitches over. It’s a lot of slippin’ ’n’ passin’, when you have 50 in each bobble row. And remember, to get all those stitches in the first place, there’s a row where you increase 4 into every other stitch. Good. Times.

It has all the speed of a whaling ship, about four knots an hour. It is excellent to work while listening to Moby-Dick Big Read, where a whaling voyage lasts three to five years. I’ll be done in only two to four years, so yay!

This hat is named for the cabin boy, Pip, who has yet to appear. I do think this hat looks a lot like a sea urchin, which I guess Pip was.

If you haven’t read Ann Weaver’s series that we’ve been publishing this fall, “Color: A Cheerful Guide for Knitters,” we highly recommend it: Part 1 and Part 2. She’s just so good at making sense of why colors work well together, or don’t.

Love,

Ann

The Lounge is becoming such a good hangout. To get an overview of what’s on, here’s a handy Table of Contents.