little blue lace

Here are a couple of the projects I’ve been working on for the little collection I’m doing. Everything in it will be fairly small, accessories and wee things that would make good gifts for others or yourself and that won’t take too long to knit. This is a scarflette neckwarmer thing and beret set, something kind of like this.

The yarn is Phildar Phil Soie in colour 102 that I got on our trip to Le Bon Marche in Paris. It’s a blue grey 100% silk sport weight that looks quite grey in certain lights. The lighting in the yarn department wasn’t wonderful and I pulled several balls from what looked like a cubby full of grey yarn. I was holding them up trying to figure out whether they were different colours or dyelots or what when a sales assistant came over and in broken English asked if I wanted grey grey, blue grey, green grey or pink grey. Loved that.

The beret starts with ridiculously cutesy little leaves and will feature bigger leaves that match those on the neckwarmer. Rather obviously I’m playing around with the same sort of idea as Verity.

This is a small, pretty simple shawl worked in one of Lillith’s yarns, a 50% suri alpaca 50% merino 4ply. (That looks like a similar if not identical colourway). It’s quite a thick, lofty 4ply so it makes for a cosy shawl that’s great worn as a scarf (although I’m too sensitive to wear it around my neck despite it feeling super soft to my hands). My friend Rebecca is test knitting it in a laceweight yarn and making a larger version that’s really pretty and airy. Changing the yarn is so easy with lace, but can make such a difference.

You can kind of see in this photo that although it’s a triangular shawl it’s an elongated triangle, the edges are longer than the centre. I like wearing triangular shawls as scarves so I was trying for something that would have lots to wrap around without being huge. That turned out really well even though I was worried that the garter stitch edging would pull in to much. It was a problem while it was still on the needles but once blocked it it stretched out perfectly and held it’s shape. However the bind off did end up a little tight, re-doing it might be worth it to get a nicer, more shapely edge.

Thank you for all the great entries for the Coraline contest, it’s making me want to read so many things. There’s still plenty of time to enter too, if you haven’t already :)