I started this, the 'Askews Me' shawl by Stephen West, not long after last Christmas. It was holiday time, I had finished a lot of projects and I took the opportunity to cast on a couple of new things for me. Of course I imagined wearing this very warm shawl by the coldest part of winter. I loved knitting it and it went pretty fast when I was working on it, but unfortunately it was also put aside several times through the year, so I only finished it quite recently. It's been too warm really to wear it, except a couple of times at home in the evening. The yarn, Filatura di Crosa 'Zara', is super squishy and quite light.
This is my first brioche rib project and I loved it. It took a little while to get into the rhythm, but it's not hard at all. Being a Stephen West pattern it has some fun other stuff going on. I wasn't sure what shape it was going to be until I took it off the needles. I did have some trouble weaving in the ends in the brioche and I'm not at all happy with those spots - after I washed the shawl it grew quite a bit, which was welcome, but almost all the spots where I wove in the ends show. You can probably spot some of them in these photos. Boo.
Though it's a bit bigger and chunkier than I expected, I think it will be fun to wear in cold weather. The colour scheme was directly inspired by a handknit cowl, striped in grey and fluorescent yellow, which I admired on an interstate colleague during a long meeting in a cold room. I had trouble capturing it in my photos, but the yellow I used is truly fluoro/neon, not just a bright yellow. There have been a few fluoro yarns around in recent seasons, and they are ugly/beautiful. My contrary self does love to try to use something 'ugly'. I love the high-contrast result with the dark blue.
No comments:
Post a Comment