Wooltide
It’s no secret that I love wool. Bring me your Shetland, your Cormo, your Wensleydale yearning to breathe free. Wool is warmth, comfort, tradition, balm. My favorite soothing music? Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” from Cantata No. 208.
I see a lot of wool in my job at the yarn store (and in my closet at home, for that matter). I don’t get jaded about it — I still pet my favorites and fuss over arranging them in their tidy towers. I carry them to the natural light by the door to better admire their beauty and surreptitiously sniff them when the customers aren’t watching. And still, once in a while, a new woolen yarn comes along and knocks me arse over teakettle. It was love at first sight with the Garthenor Organic Blue-Faced Leicester, and love all over again a few milliseconds later when I cradled a plump ball of it in my two hands. Months passed, and still it haunted my dreams. I leaked it through the appropriate channels that I would not be at all averse to receiving some under the Christmas tree. And lo, five fat sheepy angels of the Lord descended!
Pure and minimally processed from the good sheep of Wales, my friends. This is honest wool, earnest wool quivering to serve the appreciative knitter. It’s woolen spun, soft and lofty, beautiful in being not quite perfectly even, in the way that your loved-ones’ faces are not quite perfectly symmetrical. The stitches link arms companionably and hold firm and trusty, each proudly taking its place in the knitted fabric before you’ve even slipped it off the needle. I love this wool.
It likes a 3.25mm needle, the dear little pet. And it deserves a whole fine-gauge sweater that I’ll wear for the next sixty years until I’m dribbling my soup down the front in the nursing home. Although I sometimes balk at knitting the Project of the Moment, Tangled Yoke might just be classic enough for it.
I have no doubt that every stitch of this precious stuff will be gratifying. In fact, stop me if I contemplate ripping out the completed sweater so I can knit it again, okay? But in case I get the urge to knit something to wear now, like, oh, say, Brooklyn Tweed’s scrumptious new EZ cardigan, and since I always feel I need to support the yarn shop in my wee hometown, I picked up this:
Chuckanut Bay Bulky Perendale wool from New Zealand. I’ve got 660 yards, which means I’m seriously flirting with a shortage if I try to bang out a slim-fitting feminine version of Jared’s cardi. It was all the shop had in this luscious cinnabar, my new favorite color. I decided to live dangerously. You’ve got to burn the candle at both ends while you’re still young, right? (On a wild tangent, I feel it’s my duty to remind you all that yon tired cliché is from a brilliant Millay poem: My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends / It gives a lovely light!)
Next time, more luscious cinnabar. It’s time to show you not one, but 1.25 Drifting Pleats scarves!
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 4:35 am
Hooray for Millay!
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 am
Maybe you could make the sweater with 3/4 sleeves and not have to worry about shortage.
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 5:55 am
Oooh, that all looks very luscious! Looking forward to seeing your projects unfold
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 am
The new organic wool looks so soft and gorgeous. I can’t wait to see it knitted up!
I have some of the Chuckanut yarn in a dark green, for a ribbed turtleneck I have yet to make, and it seems like a good wool for sweaters. Yay for you for knitting dangerously!!
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 7:31 am
Beautiful wool! What a treat.
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
Holy moly, I’m drooling over that wool. It looks amazing! I think it will produce a very lovely, timeless Tangled Yoke. 🙂
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Ah, yes, that is some lovely wool!
I’m not usually much for the Pattern of the Moment either, but I knit Tangled Yoke and I won’t apologize because I wear it ALL THE TIME. It’s a great sweater, simple and classic and the cable is so clever… You know, maybe I’ll order some of this yarn you’re so gaagaa for and knit another!
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
Oh what gorgeous yarn! Tangled Yoke does seem to be the hot knit this winter. And cinnebar is such a great color. Too bad there was not more to be had 🙁
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
That is a very pretty swatch (my swatches always look like the bastard love child of knitting). I still need to finish (more like restart) Tangled Yoke. I realized I was grotesquely off gauge and decided to take some time off.
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
*drool* That Leicester seems to have a halo!
I bought some Green Mountain Spinnery New Mexico Organic wool at Rhinebeck that I pet often. Like you, I haven’t quite settled on a project yet…
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Love the yarn. I have a special fondness for organic wool.
I found your blog right before Christmas and I’m enjoying it immensely. My husband gave you the ultimate compliment that day while I was looking at your pics of the No-Frills Fingerless Mitts. Looking over my shoulder, he said, “Hey, can you make me a pair of those?” 🙂
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm
What Britt said… and I do think that cabled yoke cardi is worth it.
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Ooh, you should definitely do the Tangled Yoke!! It’ll help me motivate myself to pick it back up!! That swatch looks scrummy, as does that cinnabar!
Posted: January 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
so strange. i just found this welsh wool tonight on the internet and wanted to order colourcards. since i have decided that this year has to be all about cables and traveling stitches. so right now i am exploring beaverslide and next will be skye tweed and then maybe.
the tangled yoke is so adorable. knit it.
about yardage: hm, hm you are seriously flirting.
and i love the pictures of mr.garter wearing his fish trap. it wears well and i hope he will use it until you are both in an old people’s home a hundred years from now.
happy new year and happy knitting.
Posted: January 4th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
oooh, that swatch looks soft and luscious 🙂
Posted: January 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am
That BFL is so pretty…so, so pretty…
Lucky you!
Posted: January 17th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Mmmmmmmmm. What lovely wool!