Skip to main content

Artist of Pentacles

I have had some lovely yarn in my stash and since I've had a big interest in using my stash a particular toque/hat came to be.



On the left is 547 yards of 100% merino hand-painted wool by AbiGood, a Nova Scotia company and on the right is some leftover creamy coloured yarn.  They were both worsted weight.  (One of the things about knitting as much as I do is that there is a bin full of lovely leftover yarn.)

The concept was to put these two colours together in a way that really allowed the beauty of the variegated cream, brown and pinky/red yarn to show through.  On Ravelry I found a pattern by Jess Knowles called Artist of Pentacles.  (She mentions in her explanation of the name of the pattern the Queen of Pentacles Tarot card.  Should you want to know more about it, click here.)

Photo credit J. Knowles Ravelry
I really liked the interplay between the variegated blue/turquoise with the light brown in the photo above, but my hand-painted yarn has longer runs of colour.   So this was another experiment to see what would happen with colours and how a different type of variegated yarn would look using this pattern.   And here's the results. 




I am satisfied that this worked, although a dark brown instead of cream yarn might have been a better contrast had I had any in my stash.  This is toddler size so I'll see how impressed Miss M will be with it.  If she doesn't like it, it can be donated.

The only down side of all this is a toque doesn't use much yarn so I still have some of cream and a lot of the variegated yarn left.  Sigh, but it is less than before I made it.  I seem to be taking baby steps with my stash.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms...

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned ou...

Knitting-Related Guinness World Records

I had to share some of the Guinness World Records connected with knitting.  It is amazing to me the type of skill, stamina and unique characteristics these record holders have in common. How about trying to knit with these SPNs?? Ingrid Wagner and her large needles and knitted swatch The largest knitting needles measured 3.5 m (11 ft 5.8 in) long and had a diameter of 8 cm (3.15 in). Ingrid Wagner, a rug and art creation artist, from the UK used the needles to knit a tension square of ten stitches by ten rows at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on March, 10 2008.  (And I complained about getting certain SPNs stuck in my clothes.)  See how this swatch was done with merely 5 people managing the needles.  And what about the yarn?  It is truly ex-bulky.  It looks like they're knitting in a warehouse, but with a wingspan of almost 24 feet or 7 m, you'd need all that space.  Or h...