Last year I purchased a skein of yarn at my LYS – local yarn store – 88 Stitches. I was inspired by it because it reminded me of the autumn colours you see back east at this time of year.
I didn’t have any particular pattern in mind, or even a thought about what kind of an item I would want to knit up. I just loved the colours.
I started knitting a pair of socks, but stopped because the yarn just striped and I wasn’t looking for a pair of striped socks. Ripped it out.
So I tried something else. I started a scarf from which uses a dropped stitch pattern and blocks of knitting and purling. The end product looked woven. It would be a lovely scarf/wrap in any other yarn. But this one just wasn’t working. It sat there in my UFO box.
On Sunday, inspired by the fact that I no longer had to focus on getting those items completed for the sale, I was FREE to play and imagine new things. So I headed to my studio and took out some fun yarns I have had on the back burner. I had this small ball of lovely merino left over from a pair of socks I made. I wanted to try the Feather and Fan Lace pattern, so grabbed that yarn to do a test swatch.
Feather and Fan Lace: works on multiples of 18 stitches
Row 1: Knit
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: K2tog – 3 times, YO knit 1 – 6 times, k2tog – 3 times. Repeat across the row.
Row 4: Knit
Repeat these four rows for the pattern.
A variation of the patterns adds a stitch at the beginning and the end – so it is 18 stitches plus 2. Knit the first and last stitch on row three.
Not only was it easy to knit, I loved what was happening with the colours. They weren’t striping, they were pooling. That’s exactly what I wanted the Fall Coloured yarn to do, but hadn’t yet found a way to do this.
This one was pooling in two distinct columns, which is kind of pretty, but not what I had in mind for the Fall yarn.
I ripped out the dropped lace scarf and was secretly happy because I could reclaim all my abalone stitch markers. Re-wound the ball — and dug up some slightly larger needles than the ones I used on the test swatch. For that I used 3mm. I grabbed the 4mm, cast on 38 stitches and started knitting. In a very short while I realized I had found what I was looking for. It’s really hard to imagine how happy this made me — so happy in fact I tried to share my enthusiasm with sleeping hubby. Got a much better reception from the gals at work the next day.
Here it is. It is what I envisioned — it looks like an eastern forest in mid October. The golds, oranges and reds are at their height causing the dark greens from the evergreens to stand out.