Dear Kay,
My mom used to say, when something was great, “Now we’re cooking with gas.”
Well, I wish she were here so she could hear me say it about this Plucky Knitter yarn and this Peak Color scarf pattern.
I’ve never worked with cashmere yarn before. The first stretch of this scarf has some irregularities in gauge, and I think it’s because I have a Fear Of Cashmere.
Yarn is yarn, right? It has taken me a while to knit cashmere like any other yarn: with a respectful firmness. I need to boss this yarn around, but it’s such tender stuff, so very cushiony and unlike anything I’ve knit with before. It is definitely a treat, and I feel indulgent to be making this candy-colored scarf. Fear Of Cashmere is one of the easier phobias to overcome, I find.
These colors. Pastels are nowhere to be found in my wardrobe, but maybe I need to think about them.
And these colors do seem to show up around here, these days.
Of course, I keep thinking about that lone blue stitch. Way to dissent! Stand firm, blue stitch! You be blue!
Breaking News: Fweeoo Bird Identified
Thank you, everybody, for the bird ideas. A giant high five to Mo Barger for figuring out that the bird waking me up at 4:49 am every day is a ROBIN, a bird that All About Birds calls “the quintessential early bird.” No kidding—get a load of this “Dawn Song.”
Love,
Ann
Loving your new Plucky creation… It’s like a whisper… Those delicate colors! Surely you’ll find a way to enjoy wearing it. For now, enjoy knitting it!
Haha a ROBIN! That was my first thought, but then I reasoned that it couldn’t be an ordinary robin! Certainly you have more exotic birds down there! But they are usually the first to wake up. Wait until you get a house wren. Incessant.
Love how your scarf is turning out! That green really sets it off!
Ohhh eeeee we got a house wren in one of our bird houses last year. She returned this year. I do love her song. It’s amazing that so much volume comes out of such a teeny bird
I’ve never worked with cashmere yarn either, but I’m a baby knitter (in terms of experience, not age) compared to you. It is definitely on my wishfor list. Those Plucky colors are gorgeous! Wish I could see and feel it in person. xo Tammy
Ha! love that mighty blue stitch most of all.
6:27 am in Minnesota. Robins are still going. Blue stitch power.
Cashmere is just scrumptious! If you like knitting with it, just wait until that scarf is around your neck!,
Haha! I hear them every morning anytime after 4:30a. Know when I wake up early and can hear the birds that it morning and ok to get up.
I love my 4:30am robins. And although I’ve only done one project with cashmere I can’t wait to do another. It’s so soft and yummy.
I’m with you on not choosing pastels. But…. it will look great with those darker solids like navy and gray or brown!! You may start a pastel revolution…
I hesitate to write about a love of cashmere here, because it’s very possible I would not stop 🙂
I’d love to pet some Plucky yarn sometime. I suspect with the attention brought to it with your lovely project, the frenzy will be even more intense the next time a new batch of it is put up for sale. I chuckled this morning when I noticed on Ravelry that 100% cashmere Plucky is stashed over 3,000 times but made into only over 700 projects. That’s a lot of yarn headed to estate sales (or caskets) of the future. Knit it now, kids!
Boy, I’ll say! Estate sales are GREAT places to score some terrific yarn!
I’ve been knitting with a brand-new Lorna’s Laces line with little acid drops of color that you don’t expect, but end up loving, much like your blue stitch. Right now the yarn is mostly bright-bright pink with paler pink and cream, but then there are these random bits of orange (yes, orange) that just pop up when you least expect them. I’m loving it.
I think the line of yarn is called splatter shot. It was just introduced at TNNA (I’m a sample knitter for them, so I get to “taste” the yarn before it’s in the shops…my favorite bonus ever!)
It’s that lovely, weird shade of green that balances the candy colors beautifully. And I can feel the cashmere from here …
So true about the Robins – they start singing hours before sunrise. The cashmere is lovely.
Mmmmmm cashmere. And that skein is enough to make a person take up pastels.
We have the 4:30 am bird chorus here too, with robins, wrens, several phoebees who feel compelled to yell PHEEEBEEE right in my ear, and lately a newly fledged family of ravens. The raven children sit in the big maple tree and yell the raven equivalent of ‘Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom? MOM!? Mom! Mom! Mom!’. Fortunately they are relatively late risers.
That’s some beautiful yarn. Even if you don’t keep the end result, you’ve had the joy of knitting it up. And that blue stitch? From where I sit, it appears he may be winning over a convert further down on the right. I’d keep an eye on them if I was you.
I love colors found in natures palette. It will look great with jeans and a shirt. You really got on it with this yarn. The cashmere must really be inspiring. ML makes a great point-I also wonder about all the stash that ends up hoarded and never knit?? That is the reason I am addressing my beloved stash. I do not want to leave behind any of my most coveted skeins. So much to knit, so little time!
Scrolling through the variety of Peak Color shawls on Ravelry is almost as much fun as looking at #Bang Out a Sweater. That is one great do-your-own-thing pattern.
The Stash may be immortal, friends, but we aren’t. Yesterday I attended the funeral of an avid 82-year-old knitter. What a gal! What a stash! Her daughter offered me first pick of the stash, but I restrained myself (thinking of the Immortal Stash in my sitting room closet) and suggested that she give her mum’s stash to the LYS where all of Caroline’s stash could be oohed and ahhed over by her knitting chums and divied up. “Knit it up now” is outstanding advice. Excuse me while I go look for those skeins of mink(!) yarn and a pattern before it’s too late.
I like in the woods near a pond. This is exactly what serenades me at early dawn.
4:49? Slackers. Our robons start at 4:30. I find it relaxing, strangely enough…it’s dawn song!
With cashmere, the colour doesn’t matter. I LOVE the lone blue stitch. And a robin. The bird of spring.
“Now we’re cooking with gas,” was also a phrase of my Dad’s that made it into our personal family lexicon, surviving into another generation. Glad to hear we’re not totally alone on this. (I think he referenced a billboard for the gas company in his childhood.)