Sunday Knits

Some new yarn arrived today, from Carol Sunday Knits. In truth it was from the giveaway on a recent episode of the Woolful podcast, but I'm really grateful and I really like Sunday Knits' patterns and yarn, so I just wanted to review the yarn a bit as I use it, so you can see Carol's beautiful product and attention to detail. I was given enough yarn to knit the Nancy Vest pattern by Carol, a pattern that I had already admired before the giveaway. I chose the colourway, "caper" from her Brigadoon line, because I think a drapey, olive coloured piece will fit very nicely in my wardrobe.

The yarn arrived in a lovely bag too!

Carol sells three of her own bases, in sport and aran weights. Brigadoon is the tweedy one, and this colour has bits of purple, orange, and lime green. 

The yarn is really quite crisp as you are knitting, and then it blooms when washed. Soft, but not too buttery. It's going to wear really, really, well. I went down a needle size before doing my first swatch. I'm a very loose knitter, so I normally size down on my first swatch. But it's still a fairly loose swatch, so I'm going to try another size down. 

It's classified as a sport weight, but still manages to pack 246 yards into every 50 gram skein. That's a lot of yardage. So the garment is really light weight, because very little fibre goes into each yard. I think I will enjoy both the knitting of the garment, and the final garment. Also, isn't this type of project just the definition of good, low-key summer knitting? 

I also picked up some new summer reading: I've read most of the "Living with a dead language" one, and I'm quite happy with it. 

I've been knitting a second Guernsey Shawl, pattern by Jared Flood. It's such a relaxing knit. I had 2.5 skeins of Briggs & Little Regal, and it really pops in this pattern. My last one was knit in a worsted-spun yarn, so it's nice to reknit it in a woollen-spun yarn. As you can see in the second picture, I'm also done the first skein. I don't want to over block it; in fact I'd rather leave it as a dense stole, that won't be flapping about as I zip cooly and calmly through crowds of people in the subway. Don't you always find that the imaginary person wearing your newly knit objects is just a more suave, stylish version of yourself?