sweetgeorgia

Life before Colour Correction

I just picked up a copy of Alice Starmore’s “Pacific Coast Highway” from an interlibrary loan. Realize that this same book just sold for $256 CDN on Ebay this past weekend. Crazy, I tell you, crazy.

There are just two items that I might make out of here: the Grant Avenue vest and the Abalone cardigan. I’m obsessing over Grant Avenue right now because I want to get the colours “just right”. It doesn’t help when these photos were published without attention to correct colours! See below:

You can see a real life example of this at Junieann’s site. She knit up Grant Avenue just a few months ago, using stashed AS Campion in the exact colours specified in the pattern. How is it that her vest looks completely different than the book’s photo? Here’s another example on Veronique’s site and also here.

Blackwater Abbey Yarns

I received my tiny order of three 1 oz. balls of Blackwater Abbey yarn a few days ago. I’m test driving the yarn for the future St. Brigid from Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting (I just managed to buy a copy — for way too much — on Ebay!). This yarn comes in gorgeous colours but is really, really scratchy. Much scratchier than Jamieson’s Soft Shetland. In fact, it’s like exfoliating your fingertips when you knit with it.

I’ve heard it’s often difficult to get gauge with AS patterns and it was funny, I got 20 sts/34 rows for the St. Brigid double moss stitch swatch where the pattern requires 21 sts/27 rows. I’m also using 4mm as opposed to the suggested 4.5mm needles to try and get a smaller gauge, but it’s made my stitch gauge bigger! In any case, I’ve also heard that there’s quite a bit of flexibility with blocking and that you can resize up or down quite a bit.

Ah, decisions decisions. Which yarn? BWA or Soft Shetland? Which colour? Pink Heather (almost the same as Jamieson’s Raspberry) or Iris (almost the same as Jamieson’s Iris). Agh. I don’t even have the energy to write about my “Meg’s Fair Isle Cardigan” angst.

Stalking Starmore

One of my new year’s knitting resolutions was to knit a steeked sweater and originally I thought I’d knit up one of Wendy’s Baby Norgi sweaters just to learn the techniques. But then I started digging through old fair isle books including Meg Swansen’s Knitting and a couple of Alice Starmore’s books… Some of the pieces are beautiful — shades of colours blending into one another… So pretty, I’ve become distracted and obsessed with the idea of knitting a full-size steeked cardi for me.

The first issue here is sizing. All the patterns (being unisex and all for the most part) are written in one size and that size gives me enough room to swim in the sweater. So, I’ll need to design a cardi for myself with the right size first and then drop on the fair isle chart (from one of Starmore’s fab charts) as I like it. Woo hoo. Math, here I come.

While at the library, I also picked up Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting book. Whoa. I showed the DH a picture of “Na Craga” and asked if he would wear something like that and he replied, “Oh definitely, it’s a very manly sweater.” Yay.

So, now to decide what yarn to knit it in… I could buy the pack of Hebridean 3-ply from Starmore’s studio (for about 100£!!!), or substitute with something else. I noticed people using Cascade 220 which means I could probably use something like Patons Classic Merino… but if I’m going to be investing that much time and effort in it, it’s got to be a glorious, fabulous, absolutely incredible yarn… What about Jamieson’s Soft Shetland, or Rowan Felted Tweed or Yorkshire Tweed… Oh, I can tell it’s going to be an unproductive day at work.