sweetgeorgia

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.