Maluka

Everything about this project was about color. I wanted to test a theory I had about creating a slightly nuanced yarn with distribution of the color variations in advance before immersing the yarn into the hot water. To my satisfaction the experiment was very successful and I am eager to try it again with other colors and even to try to duplicate it on several skeins for a bigger project.

Out of this ball of yarn with very limited yardage - only 240 yards in 100 g, all I could hope for was a neckerchief. I chose a shawlette pattern that called for less than 300 m. Maluka is a very well written pattern, generously provided by Bea Schmidt as a free download from Ravelry. For me - certainly not a beginner in knitting, but a beginner in shawl knitting, it was very easy and understandable, and she has even included photos of how to make for some of the stitches.

Pattern: Maluka by Bea Schmidt
Yarn: Alize Ecolana 100 g, 220 m, hand dyed
Needle: 4.5 mm
Time to knit: 2 days

Wet blocking - spread the shawl took the whole bed. I'll have to buy blocking blocks.

As I didn't have enough yarn, I had to compromise between length and width. Above is my first version of the shawl with only 23 (of 33) repeats of the border chart. The balance between the border and the body was perfect, but the shawl was too short to be wrapped around the neck, as I wanted mine. So I unravelled the body and elongated the border. And of course, now I had to make the body much more shallow for the yarn to suffice. I made the short rows with a step of four instead of two stitches and the final rows were knitted with a step of six stitches. As a whole I spent more time calculating the number of stitches each version of the shawl would be, based on the arithmetic progression the rows represent, then turning this number into grams and meters, than on actually knitting the thing :))). It's a good thing I adore mathematics :)))

These photos were actually taken in front of our building in two sessions - yesterday evening, when the sun had set and the light was not sufficient, and today, when it started drizzling just when we went out to take the pictures. (I had almost given up on publishing the shawl, the photos are of poor quality.) To my amazement, in only a few hours the leaves of the tree had reduced at least by half :(
It's a cold and rainy autumn day and I was reminded of this beautiful song from my teen years:

"... листопаден идва вече дъждът"

Seasonal Stashing

Let me share with you my latest stash enhancements. There must be an inner need for knitting in me, crying out loud, because the less I knit - and I haven't knit much this last month, the more yarn I buy.
First - the greens, though the camera makes them look more like dark blues:

1) 300 g of Cashmira, color 598, 100% fine merino. This should become a cabled sweater, still haven't picked the pattern, but the color - deep pine green - was very tempting.

2) 300 g of Alize Lanagold, color 586, wool-acrylic mix. I bought it for a man's vest - I've had my eye on Debardeur for some time and always imagined it in petrol melange.

3) 100 g of Alize Cashmira Batik, color 3130. A spontaneous buy, I had even forgotten I had bought it too :)) Last year I had an idea to knit Lanesplitter in this yarn, but something else got in the way. Maybe I'll test the yarn in a hat or a cowl first.

4) 50g Alize Superwash, color 433. I haven't knit with this yarn, so I bought this small ball to test it. I'll sample it together with a viscose yarn I bought some time ago (in a momentary lapse of reason) for this shawl - Glitz at the Ritz. I actually meant to buy a proper glitzy yarn, like Angora Gold Simli, but when I saw it in the yarn store it was too glitzy for my taste.

And two yarns bought with a dye job in mind:

5) Alize Ecolana white 55, 100% wool. I'm planning Aidez with Ecolana, but first I'll test it on a scarf or a hat, hand dyed in advance. Or maybe I'll drop everything and just buy a pack of Ecolana and start Aidez first :)))

6) YarnArt Pure Merino, color 2557, 100% merino. This I want to dye in yellow-brown and to knit into Wildflower cardigan.