Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Buachaille Madness

The Buachaille yarn and the Seven Skeins Club has been almost too much fun thus far. The yarn is so wonderful to work with and the colors are so beautifully made for each other. The multicolor idea I had for the cowl  has infected my view of the next pattern release, Pawkies, the fingerless mitts.

At first I was dead set on the stranded version, fondly imagining how warm the double layers of this wool would be. But then my eye landed on the striped version, and I counted seven stripes on each mitt. Seven stripes, seven skeins! How could I not continue the theme? I had at least a smidgen of each of the seven colors. It was totally possible!

The pattern prescribes a rolled-edge cast on, and gives some resources for learning how to do it. I tried making a small swatchy trial, and got basically nowhere with it except a little balder from pulling my hair out. But casting a wider YouTube net, I found this one, which has you make a temporary waste piece half as many stitches wide as your eventual ribbing, do the business, and then pick your "real" knitting off the waste.



It makes as fine a tubular edge as any other method, with no dangling "udder" needle (thanks for that image, Cat Bordhi!) or shoogling stitches back and forth and reaching around here and there.

And here we are, tubular edge, seven-color pawkies all done:



Did you notice the color order is reversed on the pair, but still looks balanced by the Highland Coo in the center? Total accident. And the smidgen of Haar was not quite a big enough smidgen so I had to fake the second gray stripe with another yarn, but I don't think it's very obvious, do you?

I took a picture of both cowl and mitts to see how they'd go together, contrasting dots and dashes in the same color suite.



But the real stunner is how both pieces completely coordinate with the colors of my purse:



Amazing, and another total accident!